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Space Science

Universe Shaped Like A Soccer Ball? 519

Posted by simoniker from the extra-time-then-penalties dept.
Rabid Rob writes "According to a New Scientist article, and prompted by data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), it's suggested the universe could be shaped like a soccer ball - the 'cosmic microwave background' has fluctuations, and a possible conclusion is that 'our Universe seems like an endlessly repeating set of dodecahedrons.' Oh yeah, the universe is only 70 billion light years across, so better buy up the real estate now while it's still cheap!" The NYT has more information (free reg. req.) on this theory, which is quickly being refuted by Wernstrom-like rival researchers.
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Universe Shaped Like A Soccer Ball? More

Universe Shaped Like A Soccer Ball?

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  • Even God plays Soccer... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:08AM (#7170386) Homepage

    When will the US finally realise and stop playing all those other silly sports with Joan Collins style shoulder pads :-)

  • Dodecahedron (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kryptic Knight ( 96187 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:08AM (#7170388)
    Actually a soccer ball is not a dodecahedron.
    It is a mix of Hexagonal and Penatagonal shapes, more commonly seen as a C60 (carbon60) or Bucky-Ball.

    Example here http://www.udel.edu/fth/java/MoleculeViewer/bucky. html

    • That is the pattern for a traditional 32-panel ball, most footballs (sorry can't bring myself to use that awful s-word) these days (e.g the ones used competetively such as Mitre, Adidas and Nike balls) have very different arrangements to enable them to keep their shape and balance better.

    • Re:Dodecahedron (Score:3, Informative)

      by John Marshall ( 175989 )

      It is a mix of Hexagonal and Penatagonal shapes, more commonly seen as a C60 (carbon60) or Bucky-Ball.

      And commonly known as a truncated icosahedron [wolfram.com].

      Icosahedra and dodecahedra are strongly related, so that's why a soccer ball looks a bit dodecahedral (having, as it does, 12 pentagons). In fact, if you keep on truncating a icosahedron's corners more and more deeply, you end up with a dodecahedron. Duality [wolfram.com] is very cool!

    • It is a mix of Hexagonal and Penatagonal shapes, more commonly seen as a C60 (carbon60) or Bucky-Ball.

      Is it just me, or did he just imply that buckey balls are a more common site then soccer balls/footballs?
    • 12-sided ones to be exact.

  • So, I'm just wondering.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What's on the outside of the universe?

    ... If I go there, will I escape Governor Conan and reality TV?

    • Re:So, I'm just wondering.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by krymsin01 ( 700838 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:15AM (#7170422) Homepage Journal
      A big foot. A really big foot.
    • Nothing, there is no outside....
      The notion of an outside is only possible in our representation of the universe mapped onto an infinite 3d space.....which isn't really there in this model

      Jeroen

      • it feels weird to think about your answer. If I understand it correct you are suggesting that only on the inside the rules of physics apply but not on the outside. Since Im human I cannot grab the idea although it feels right. Whenever I think:"Yup, got it" my thoughts spin back to zero and I have to start over again. Argh! Stop it! No, really, NOW! Aiik!
        • Think about the 2D surface of a sphere. Imagine if you existed as a 2D creature living on it. While we could imaging an "inside" and "outside" if we think of the sphere in 3D, there's no "inside" and "outside" if you think of the 2D surface, there's just the surface. And if you head in any direction, you end up where you started.

          Similarly, think of us on the 3D surface of a 4D sphere. There is no outside or inside, just the surface. It's hard to imagine in 4D, I'm not sure anyone actually can, but th

  • I was always taught that it was shaped like a basketball. This changes everything!
    C'mon guys, why would you be so specific about something so generic?
    • I think they are referring to the way in which a soccer ball is sewn together, there are lots of pentaogonal (?) shaped patches on the outside of a soccer ball.
  • ...what's on the other side? Why isn't that part of the Universe?
    • ...what's on the other side? Why isn't that part of the Universe?
      The football game!

    • Re:If The Universe Is Finite.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BabyDave ( 575083 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:36AM (#7170509)
      ...what's on the other side? Why isn't that part of the Universe?

      It is part of the Universe.

      Imagine a square sheet of rubber (so we can stretch, bend as we like). It has a finite area, and four edges. We choose one edge and glue it to its opposite edge. Now if you start from one point and draw a line in the right direction, you'll get back to where you started. Otherwise you'll just spiral around until you hit an edge.

      Now we take the two circular edges and we glue them together, giving a donut (a torus). Now if you go in [what you see as] a straight line in any direction, you'll never reach an edge. The surface of the donut doesn't have any sides in the way the original sheet of rubber did, but it still covers a finite area.

      N.b. The problem with this example is that it's difficult to think of just the surface of the donut, without imagining it being 'in' some larger space such as the 3D world.

      Now if you want a headache, try to imagine doing this starting not with a square, but rather a cube, and joining opposing faces together. The first pair is easy - you get a sort of square donut shape. The second pair gives you a donut with an inner donut removed - something like the inner tube in a tyre.

      The third one is the real bugger - you have to imagine joining the inner surface of the tube to the outer one, without going through the tube. I've seen a video [uiuc.edu] that included a representation of what a similar manouvre (sp?) would look like in the 3D world that the cube started in, and I still can't fully get my head around it.

      No matter what direction you moved in this weird twisted-cube-thingy, you'd never see an edge. It would give you the same effect as if there were an infinite array of cubes , with the exact same thing happening in each one. When you reach the edge of one cube, you ust move into the next one ... which is identical to the last one.

      This article says that the Universe is doing the same sort of thing, only starting with a dodecahedron instead of a cube (i.e. 6 pairs of faces instead of 3). Don't seriously try to picture this, or your head'll explode ...

      • Inherent problem with this argument... explaining that the universe folds in on itself in such a way that it is "inescapable", is at the same time saying that there is something bigger than the universe... that there is an "outside" place, which then must also be part of "the universe" (maintaining its infinity).

        In other words, if the "universe" is an encapsulated thing, it must be encapsulated with respect to some bigger picture.

        • Re:If The Universe Is Finite.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by misterpies ( 632880 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @09:36AM (#7171314)
          nope, inherent problem with your powers of imagination. You are extrapolating from your everyday experience, in which every finite body/shape is embedded in another. So you can't imagine a toroidal topology except as being the actual surface of a donut-shaped object. But there is absolutely no mathematical reason to do so. You can define all the essential properties of a toroidal space (for example) without any reference to an "outside" space in which it is embedded. The assumption of embedding is just an extrapolation of our extremely limited experience of living in a 3-d space.

          But there are many examples of non-embedded topologies. For example, take the space of all numbers. Real number can be mapped to a line. You might argue that this line is itself embedded in a plane representing all complex numbers. But there;s nothing in which that plane is embedded; there are no numbers that can't be expressed as a sum of real and imaginary part. Or consider the momentum space of waves in a regular lattice. Accoring to both classical and quantum physics, physical space and momentum space are complementary views of reality; neither is more valid than the other. But the momentum space of waves in a regular 3D lattice is indeed a 3D closed space: any wave momentum greater than a certain value in the momentum is remapped to another portion of the space. But there's no 4D momentum space in which these waves are embedded. (OK, you can consider energy as the momentum equivalent of time to build up a 4-d space, but then you hit the buffers -- there's nothing for that 4-d space to be embedded in).

          True advances in scientific understanding normally come about when someone realises that "common sense" is wrong, and that an alternative explanation fits the data better. So until Copernicus, it was obvious the world was flat adn the stars went around it. Until Galileo, it was self-evident that the natural state of matter was to be at rest. Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck: each revolutionised science by rejecting "common sense" and instead adopting an (initially) unintuitive approach that actually fits the facts.

          Ultimately, your argument is a lot like the argument for the existence of the ether: "in our experience, waves can only move through a substance. therefore there must be a substance through which light waves move". Of course, no-one ever found any evidence for the existence of the ether, and eventually Einstein proposed doing away with the idea altogether.

          The authors of the paper claiming the universe is closed claim that this explanation fits better with observations than an infinite universe, so let's assume for now it's true. You say it's self evident that if the universe is finite, it must be embedded in some bigger space. Now, where's your evidence for that? I'm not saying it's not possible that our universe is embedded in a higher-dimensional space. A lot of unification theories assume that our universe contains more dimensions than we see (string theory usually needs 11 dimensions), and some that our universe is indeed embedded in a higher dimensional space (brane theory) -- but that's very different from your assumption. In particular, physical theories involving higher dimensional spaces still allow the possibility that that higher-dimensional space is itself finite and closed, without being embedded in a still-larger space.

          • Real number can be mapped to a line. You might argue that this line is itself embedded in a plane representing all complex numbers. But there;s nothing in which that plane is embedded; there are no numbers that can't be expressed as a sum of real and imaginary part.

            Mr. Pies, meet Quaternary numbers [mathforum.org].

            Funny things about them:
            1. Multiplication is not comutative unless you limit yourself to a sub-body in which the third and four components are zero (that would be the good old complex numbers).
            2. Nobody has be

    • Re:If The Universe Is Finite.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ponxx ( 193567 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:48AM (#7170557)
      By definition there is nothing outside of this universe. If there was, it would simply mean that the universe is bigger than we thought ....

      Just like the line in Gattaca:
      Q "What if someone exceeds there potential"
      A "You cannot exceed your potential, it just means that we assessed the potential incorrectly in the first place." (or something to that extent).
    • It is not finite in the way you think.

      Imagine an ant on the surface of a sphere. Now imagine that the surface of that sphere is all that exists.

      We are that ant. The Universe is that sphere. It is finite but the question what's on the other side is clearly meaningless.

      • >> ...the question what's on the other side is clearly meaningless.

        Why?

        Seems to me it is contradictory to assert that the universe comprises everything, and then to also assert that the universe is finite. If it is finite, then something exists beyond its boundaries, even if that "something" is non-space, non-time, non-whatever.
        • If it is finite, then something exists beyond its boundaries, even if that "something" is non-space, non-time, non-whatever.

          But where are the boundaries?

          Say you go in a certain direction for a period of time and come back from the opposite direction, just like the imaginary ant on the surface of the sphere. Where do you draw the boundary?

          • Clearly, then, the boundary is out of the ant's reach, but it's still there.

            An ant crawling around the inside of a soccer ball can't get to the other side -- the boundary -- but that fact doesn't eliminate the reality that the boundary exists and that the universe continues beyond that bounday.
            • Ah, don't think about the ant. Think about an astronaut who flies in his ship in a certain direction and comes back from the opposite direction. Where would he draw the boundary?
              • Same issue, ant or astronaut. Both are unaware of the boundary and can't map it, but that doesn't negate the boundary's existence.

                Clearly, we -- not the ant -- are aware that the soccer ball does not comprise the universe, and we know where the ball ends and the rest of the universe begins.

                Now, if we were to change positions with that ant, the ant would become know that the ball was not the universe. And, our placement inside the ball -- where we are now unable to sense or map the ball's boundary -- doe
      • What do you mean by 'exists' ? does the vacuum between planets, stars and asteroids exist ? if yes, how different would be outer-universe vacuum from inner-universe vacuum ? if not, universe really doesn't "look like" a sphere...

        Easiest assumption is that the universe is infinite. Other points of view include metaphysic questions such as "if it's finite, where is it located" or complicated theories like the theory of Relativity :)
        • See my other reply. It can be finite in the sense that if you go for long enough in a certain direction you come back from the opposite direction.

          So there is no "inner" or "outer" vacuum, a sphere is just a way to visualize that.

  • A week ago it was shaped like a donut (or is that a Torus).

    Mmm, universal donut.
  • At first I was confused that they kept saying 'finite and small,' I mean, seriously, if you think 70 billion light years is small, what-are-you-smoking-and-can-I-have-some?

    But towards the end they mention something about small-Universe and large-Universe models, and imply that the two are scientifically meaningful terms.

    Anyone out there got a clue?

  • The universe could be shaped like a soccer ball (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sir Haxalot ( 693401 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:13AM (#7170418)
    That's football, for our English readers ;)
  • Not only is it not just a matter of life and death, but football is an integral part of the universe...
  • So now I know what that cop at the beginning of Run Lola Run [imdb.com] was talking about!
    • Yes, that's a nice movie (saw it in German, since I'm a native German speaker). But the universe exists for longer than 90 minutes. ;-)

  • Just what we need... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HiQ ( 159108 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:17AM (#7170434)
    In my country (the Netherlands) most people think that the world revolves around football (that is soccer). So let's all keep this quiet, and not let all those soccer fans know that in reality the whole universe now seems to revolve around, and is shaped like, a football...
  • What does that make Pele?

    Or Buckminster Fuller?

  • Starlight and time (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tyreth ( 523822 )
    Oh yeah, the universe is only 70 billion light years across, so better buy up the real estate now while it's still cheap!

    Sure, you make jokes now, but just wait till your kids are asking you why they have to go to school in the slums of the universe.

    On a serious note, creationist research Russel Humphreys proposed a model of space that was in line with the creationist model of a young earth. For years creationists acknowledged that astrophysics was the weakest part of our research (sure, I know all the

    • Re:Starlight and time (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zan Zu from Eridu ( 165657 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @08:06AM (#7170644) Journal
      What is the purpose of this comment?

      You're posting about some theory that claims to be scientific, but at the same time you state you're not interested in dicussing its weaknesses. This is the attitude that many creationists develop, and it explains why it's mostly creationists that refute (other) creationsts' theories.

      Fundamentalism is irreconcilable with modern science; fundamentalism means inductive research, while empirical science means deductive research. Scientific methodology doesn't allow you to just try and prove the correctness of some arbitrary theory (like put forward in the Bible or the Koran), you'll have to look at nature itself and distill your theories from observations; not the other way around. This is the fundamental weakness of creationism.

      Scientific methodology was devised as a tool to weed out superstition; you just can't support your personal faith by scientific methods; it's like using science to prove that science is wrong.

    • On a serious note, creationist research

      Damn that one beats "military intelligence" hands down. A model of earth that is 7,000 years old... oh boy oh boy.... lobbing in a world wide flood are we ?

      Old Earth creationist are bad enough, but anyone who ignores 6,000 of continual history from Egypt makes even delusional nutters look objective. Its a sad sight when this sort of rubbish is moderated up on slashdot.

      And I'm sure you have in your little mind heard the millions of cast iron reasons why a young e
    • I am not a creationist (per se). I am not religious, and I actually hold a strong detest of dogma of all forms, be it political propaganda/ideology, religious dogma, or even scientific establishment dogma, they are all forms of mental homogenization. It's worth noting that the vast majority of "science" has very little relevance, and is only incremental improvements on extant solid foundations, and that the major leaps are largely leaps of inspiration or personal eccentricity.

      The origins of earth and spe

  • Hmm (Score:4, Funny)

    by deltagreen ( 522610 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:28AM (#7170473) Homepage

    From the New Scientist article

    If we could prove that the Universe was finite and small, that would be earth-shattering, says David Spergel of Princeton University in New Jersey.
    I wonder how that sentence should be interpreted...
  • /me can see the arguments over whether the universe is shaped like a soccer ball or a football already....

  • Then what's beyond the nothing? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is something that continually perplexes me, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

    Every time I hear or read about space from news stories or published papers, it's always as though they're talking/writing about a thing, as though space had a physical presence.

    My understanding of space is that it's a big zero, empty, nothing, spotted with clusters of various materials that are in the form of gases or solids.

    There is no physical boundary to our solar system, we just made one up in our heads to differentiate betw
    • Every time I hear or read about space from news stories or published papers, it's always as though they're talking/writing about a thing, as though space had a physical presence.

      It's called 'speculating wildly to get more research money'. It's one step above from 'making stuff up'.

    • It's space, nothing, a huge empty. If it's shaped like anything than what the hell is outside?

      Space is funkier than you think.

      There clearly is an "outside" of the solar system, and thre is an "outside" of the galaxy. Those outsides also exist in the same three spatial dimensions that you can use to describe the "inside" of the solar system or the galaxy.

      A finite universe is a very different thing. It's like the surface of the Earth. Asking what is outside of the universe is like asking what is no

    • Simple answer: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pr0ntab ( 632466 )
      There's no "space" in between things, like an invisible ruler defining where you are. It's the juxtaposition of mass that defines the space between it. So there is nothing outside the universe, because there's nothing out there to be next to. And, as it turns out, things that are "close" in a euclidean sense far away in one direction, could be close to things in a completely different direction if you travel far enough. How these straight lines loop back on themselves describes the shape of the universe.

      I

  • A soccer ball? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dollar70 ( 598384 )
    OK, nevermind the part where you use a piece of sports equipment to describe the nature of the cosmos, let's look at the trouble with a finite universe: Conservation of Energy! We'd all go blind and burn to a freakin' crisp! The only reason the sky is black is because the universe is not only infinite, but it's also simultaneously expanding to absorb the energy. ("Absorb" is actually a poor choice of words, but its effect is similar.)

    Oh, and the part where they are measuring the background radiation and det

    • I fail to see how a finite universe would burn us to a crisp. It depends on the density of light-emitting matter, and on how much light-absorbing matter there is to balance it. I think you got your cosmological arguments confused (but I'm willing to read your reply if you can corroborate your hypothesis with some sort of explanation).

    • Re:A soccer ball? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rknop ( 240417 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @07:52AM (#7170578) Homepage

      OK, nevermind the part where you use a piece of sports equipment to describe the nature of the cosmos, let's look at the trouble with a finite universe: Conservation of Energy! We'd all go blind and burn to a freakin' crisp! The only reason the sky is black is because the universe is not only infinite, but it's also simultaneously expanding to absorb the energy. ("Absorb" is actually a poor choice of words, but its effect is similar.)

      That was actually an objection to an infinite universe. An infinite, static universe that had always been here would have a sun-like radiation density everywhere on the sky; this is Olber's paradox; see, for example, http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/123/lecture-5/olb ers.html

      The fact that the night sky is dark tells us either that the Universe is finite (without the peridodic boundry conditions that you'd get in modern versions of a finite Universe-- similar to the periodic boundry conditions that we have in the two dimensional space that is the surface of the Earth), that the universe is finite in age (so that light hasn't had time to reach us from the farthest reaches), or that it's expanding (so that redshift decreases the energy of more distant objects). Few cosmologists today disagree that that the Universe's age is finite, even though the simplest models supported by the data suggest it is infinite in extent.

      -Rob

  • Here [newciv.org] is an interesting animation of Poincare Dodecahedral Space [innerx.net], also known as S3#.
  • right here [nytimes.com]

  • 70 billion light years across (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @08:01AM (#7170621) Journal
    So if nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and the universe is supposed to be 7-15 billion years old (depending on who you ask), how ca n it be 70 billion light years across? Hmmm. Answer me that one scientist.
  • I think one of the first models of the universe was A BALL with the eart in the centre, moon and sun revolving arround the earth while the planets had strange trajectories inside the ball. On the interior walls of the ball the stars were painted. This model was easily accepted by the cristian church because there was room left for god, heaven and hell outside the ball. And I thought we progressed a lot in the mean time. STUPID ME!
  • Sweet finally, screw light speed. I'll move my ships 1d6 hexigons per turn.
  • I just happened to finish reading this:

    Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe by Charles Seife. Seife is a mathematician turned writer and science journalist. It was published just a couple months ago, and describes the third revolution in cosmology currently underway.

    I kept seeing articles on dark energy and the fact that the expansion of the universe was accelerating, so I bought this book to get back in touch. Easily one of the clearest explanations of current cosmolog

  • Just a little plug - over at sciscoop [sciscoop.com] we had this up last night [sciscoop.com].
  • "There are two things that are infinite : the Universe and human stupidity. Though I'm not too sure about the Universe."

    Sounds like he had the right idea. ;-)

  • Hitchhiker's Guide (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore&gmail,com> on Thursday October 09, 2003 @09:30AM (#7171256) Homepage Journal

    Did no one else think of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy parallels with the game of cricket?
  • Can someone correct me ... but I thought the universe was suppose to be shaped like a piece of paper that was slightly planed (into a U shape) - this was to lead to a possible way to time travel - by bending that space even further. But, if the universe is a dodechahedron - how would one compress or change the shape of such a mass??
  • From NewScientist:
    "If we resolved this and confirmed that space is finite, this would be an enormous step forward in our understanding of nature." -- mathematician Jeffrey Weeks from Canton, New York

    i thought that most of our quantum theories hinged on the idea that the universe was infinite, and the multiple universes can and do interact.

    if the universe is finite, and multiple universes can't interact, then string theory and gravity being a 4+ dimensional force (accounting for its perceived weakness co

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