The universe is flat????

Astronomical data, computer graphics and the emerging field of “conformal geometric algebra” are giving researchers a clearer picture of the shape of the universe, according to Anthony Lasenby, a professor at Cambridge University and the keynote speaker at Siggraph, an annual conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery that highlights advances in computer graphics.

“The universe is actually pretty close to flat at the moment,” Lasenby said Monday. “We may be close to understanding the geometry of the universe.”

[via CNET News.com]

One of the leading theories of the 20th century was that the universe is spherical. Thinking about how an explosion on earth behaves, the blast radiates out from the source, thus making a sphere. The theories goes on the predict that once the universe slows and eventually stops expanding it will collapse in upon itself. Implode!

Right now, radiation patterns indicate that the universe–which got its start 14 billion years ago with the big bang–is fairly planar. That’s good news. If the universe were spherical, we would likely be facing the “Big Crunch,” or complete implosion, in a few billion years.

The planar shape, however, won’t likely last. In a purely flat universe, the expansion of the universe would be slowing down. Instead, it is accelerating, Lasenby noted. This data indicates that the universe may be curling up into a cone, which would lead to an infinite universe. Some data also indicates that a small portion of the universe is finite, he added

I will have to do some studying to get this concept.