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 Where Your Dreams Become Reality |
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You are reporting the following post to the moderators for review and possible removal from the forum Poster: mileage man Subject: RE: If the universe was shaped like a bagel Body: In a word, no. (1) You say there is a 'well accepted view of the universe as infinite in size', but this is not true (a common misconception). All we know is that the universe is bigger than 27 billion light-years across. That is as far as we can see, since the universe is of a finite age and light travels at a finite speed. (2) Your idea about light traveling along the edge of the bagel would not actually make the universe look bigger than it is. The light would be going around the boundary of the bagel, so to us it would look like the universe was bagel-shaped, with a black wall. But this isn't what it looks like, so that's not how it is. (2a) If what you actually meant was some sort of 3d analog of the surface of a torus, then I would say instead: Within the 27 billion light-year region that we can see, space appears *flat*, hence not a 3d torus. Of course, it *could* be a 3d torus, but only on such a large scale that it is incredibly close to flat in the region that we can observe (as if the entire observable universe is 1 square foot on the surface of the earth). (2b) Similarly, it could just be a normal bagel on a sufficiently large scale that we can never observe it. But everything we have access to is in this region of effectively flat and infinite space (effectively infinite in the sense that any boundary this is, is too far away for us to even ever know about it.) Hit the submit button below if you want us to review the post. If you feel this is urgent or want a reply, email us at letsrun@letsrun.com about the post and please include a link to the thread the post is on and what page number/post on that page it is
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