Slashdot Mirror
Is the Universe Shaped Like a Funnel?
DrMorpheus writes "A new theory of the shape of the Cosmos posits that the Universe may be shaped like a medieval horn, according to Frank Steiner at the University of Ulm. This theory, if true, could explain several strange observations about the microwave background radiation. The Universe would be stretched out at one end into a long tube and flared out into a bell at the opposite end. The technical name for this shape is a 'Picard topology'. To quote the article, '...our Universe is curved like a Pringle, shaped like a horn, and named after a Star Trek character. You could not make it up.'"
I just have to jump in and be the first one to make the reference to Sir Bedevere's remark at the end of what could only be assumed to be a lengthy explanation to King Arthur, "...and that, my Liege, is how we know the earth to be banana shaped."
Imagine if he'd said, "...and that, my Liege, is how we know the universe to be shaped like a trumpet." Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones might have been Nobel Prize candidates.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Its shaped like a horn...? Is that where the sounds in my head come from?
Last year it was a dodecahedron, this year a funnel, what's it going to be next year?
How can the universe, the sum of everything which exists, have shape? What, then, is outside this funnel? Isn't it infinitely large by definition?
Man did I need to read this one. My day is a whole lot better now.
Go Gusties
If it is shaped like a funnel, does it point up -- like a Dunce Hat, or down -- like a toilet bowl?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
...our Universe is
As opposed to the other universe that somebody else owns.
Does that have something to do with the shape of Patrick Stewart's bald head?
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
It's shaped like one of these Bugles?
I guess this gives a whole new meaning to the words "Big Crunch".
Clearly, what the universe needs is an Elizabethan adventure on the holodeck!
more stuff to ponder during stoner trips...
"hey man, did you know the whole universe is shaped like my bong?"
"no waaaaaaaaay! does that mean you could use it to get high?"
...is of course named for the pointy hats Picard used to wear to crack up Wharf.
If the universe is shaped like a horn, curved like a pringle, and named after Jean-Luke Picard.
Then it is all my favorites rolled into one.
The universe blows, is made out of mashed potatoes, and is named after someone i look up to.
Sorry couldn't help myself.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Have I heard about horns and background radiation before?
All I can say is look out for that white dielectric material.....on a cosmic scale!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Be sure to pull that spit valve once in a while.
And because it is "expanding," it is getting bigger. When the universe reaches the standing wave frequency of the Great Superstring, it will all vibrate apart.
Eat your heart out Kirk!
Why do we continue to classify the shape of the Universe? Realistically, if we can not define the shape by placing it within a totally viewable package, it because useless to define it by something that we are unable to classify. Funnel? We see the outside of the funnel so that we can define the shape, but from the interior, it is just a curved or flat plane that we can only recognize by viewing from an all emcompassing view external.
:-P
Since we have no proof of anything beyond the Universe, this is just a chasing of a simple definition. Without the Universe in a 3D viewable environment and being just IT, then we can't define the shape meaningfully.
Think of it like this, we could say the work was flat, but it was not till we were able to look at it from an external view. Think being about 4 miles deep in the Earth and attempting to define the shape of the Earth.
Anyway, I shall crawl back in my hole and wait for those much smarter than me to put me in my place.
If you turn the picture sideways, it really looks like the space-time distortion caused by an extremely massive object, like a black hole. This reminds me of the theories that the universe is inside a black hole. The apparent expansion of the universe would be caused by the stretching of the space-time continuum.
So, could you have black holes embedded inside the distorted space of another (huge) black hole (almost fractally?).
Once you pop, you can't stop.
Everyone purse up their lips and BLOW!
World's (Reality's?) Largest Tuba.
Blog,Twitter
Now, if it was named after the first Enterprise commander, it would be no Pringle. But then again in this Politically Correct horn-shaped universe of ours, I doubt a dildo-shape theory would get much press.
"Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity." - David Gelernter
Good, now that we got that in place, could someone then please tell me what is outside the horn. I really don't care about the shape of the univers, it could be in the shape of a giant moose for all i care, but I what to know what's outside the univers.
"So we have determined that the universe is actually shaped like a giant cosmic donut."
"Mmmmmmm, universe..."
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
So the longest possible distance you could ever travel until you got to the starting point again would be along the curvature of the funnel?
While I respect all the hardwork at detecting various scientific evidences and dreaming up models to fit the data, there is always the reality that, upon finding a tooth, people will glamorize the whole enterprise by drawing up a whole mammoth, and tell you the entire history of that mammoth and what color its eyes are, ... Then the public will be so enamor with the whole story that they forgot what part is fact, what part is fiction, and what part is marketing techniques.
This explains why the Universe has turned out the way it has - its shaped like a rectum!
My web domain.
"At the other end, the horn flares out, but not for ever - if you could fly towards the flared end in a spaceship, at some point you would find yourself flying back in on the other side of the horn."
and... "At an extreme enough point, you would be able to see the back of your own head."
This is an example of symmetry, something that is paramount in keeping when explaining shapes of the Universe. Just had to point this out...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Slashdot loves these guessing games, doesn't it?
/. Prove me wrong.
Slashdot says; the universe is shaped like a doughnut
Slashdot says; universe is shaped like a soccer ball
I say; the universe is shaped like a
> Be sure to pull that spit valve once in a while.
Two words - black hole.
And now "this one time, at band camp..." seems to have some sort of *cosmic* significance as well. I always knew that Alyson Hannigan was somehow the key to understanding the universe.
Whatever happened to the theory (IANAP) that the universe, at least as described by our limited understanding of dimensions, was shaped like a toroid? I seem to recall this as a popular (as in popular science) theory a decade ago.
Damn those pesky terrorists
STUDENT: Professor, what is the Universe shaped like?
PROF: Ummm, a big horn. Next question.
STUDENT: Professor, what causes cancer?
PROF: Umm, breadsticks.
STUDENT: Professor, is Linux going to take over the desktop this year?
PROF: Umm, yeah sure.
DONT YOU BELIEVE IT!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
that if I could build a large enough pair of socks, and a giant dryer to dry them, I could with appropriate life support 'tunnel' the sock outside of the universe, and totally moon everyone if I pressed my butt cheeks against the glass? If the Goats.cx guy has already thought of this, I don't think I want to be the guy in charge of looking at the new Hubble images.
The universe is shaped like a funnel, and my desk would seem to be located at the pointy end.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
It is considered more philosophically pleasing for the universe to have finite volume (rather than infinite)?
The concept of a universe with no beginning in time might be un-pleasing because it could mean an infinite amount of time has passed until this moment, which seems absurd. But I don't see any similar paradoxes with infinite volume. Nothing has to travel an infinite distance to get where it is. Nevertheless, it seems the finite volume aspect of this model is one of its proposed selling point. Can anyone explain?
["If one happens to find oneself a long way up the narrow end of the horn, things indeed look very strange, with two very small dimensions,At an extreme enough point, you would be able to see the back of your own head"] Considering the notion of a force in one direction requiring an equal force pointed in the opposite direction, it's feasible that such a trumpet comes into being with an anti-trumpet pointing out in the "opposite" direction. Travelling to this other trumpet through the narrow parts of both, would come at the price of having to look yourself in the ass for aeons, considering the length of the universe. Be warned, one needs to consider these things before boldly going..
Hmmm. The big bang posits a long period of time where everything is compressed, followed by an explosion which flares stuff out in all directions.
A long thin period, followed by a huge flare...that is sort of the shape of a trumpet. These are the guys who tell us that distance equals time, too...not to pretend to be a cosmologist, but isn't it possible that we're seeing a trumpet shaped universe because our input data (i.e. energy) followed a trumpet-shaped distribution curve over time?
I have actually used the hum of the florecent lights to tune my banjo before.
The phone is ringing, I cannot linger, watch out butt here comes my finger.
What colour is it?
Maybe the universe is shaped like a klein bottle? The curvature at the end would be similar to the 'horn' model and it would explain the 'turning around' that allegedly occurs at the edge of the horn. Just trying to imagine traveling in a klein bottle is making my head hurt though.
Must have been something more like a "Big Hoot".
No, it's not like that at all. All the shapes being discussed for the universe close in on themselves. You cannot go "outside" the shape because there is no outside of the shape.
If you really want a map analogy, the best I can come up with right now is a map of the earth. You cannot "go outside" the map, you would just appear on another point of it.
bp
In the model, technically called a Picard topology, the Universe curves in a strange way.
In the begining was the words, and they were "Make it so"...
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
I've ranted here before about the shoddy reporting that the New Scientist does. It's very curious to me that the only matches on Google for "Picard topology" are from this article. Can anyone shed some light on this situation? Picard groups are certainly well-known enough. If nothing else, it's something to be skeptical about. Is this really so new that nobody has ever mentioned in on the web, or is it just poor terminology? (Note that one of the scientists is quoted as using that term, but it's phrased in a way that makes it sound like the reporter put words in his mouth.)
Steven N. Severinghaus
Evenings kinda slow down on the farm eh?!
When the universe reaches the standing wave frequency of the Great Superstring, it will all vibrate apart.
I personally hope it will reach that frequency before it reaches the "brown noise".
(nt)
A banjo is better tuned with a hammer. (Sorry... my wife plays banjo)
Jesus H, what's next, the Archer Nebula?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I heard it was football shaped and it's just for me to kick in space. Of Course the same source also said the world was biscuit shaped and just for me to feed my face, so they might have been confused.
Then your banjo was out of tune. 60Hz is actually closer to B-natural, the B-flat in that octave is actually 58.27 Hz (assuming a tempered A 440 tuning), while B-naturral is 61.74 Hz.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
This is just a hunch, but I bet "Picard topology" is named after Emile, not Jean Luc.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Does that mean that I was not necessarily hallucinating when I once saw light in the funnel after losing consciousness? Very interesting indeed.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
When I first met Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfernschplendenschlittercrasscrenbonfrieddigger- -
spelterwasserkurstlichhimbleeisenbahnwagen-n abendbitteeinnürnburgerbratwustle-z weimacheluberhundsfutgumberaber-s fleischmittleraucher von Hautkopft of Ulm, he was with his wife, Sarah Gambolputty de von...
dingledangledongledungleburstein von
Knackerthrasherapplebangerhorowitzticolensic
granderknottyspelltinklegrandlichgrumblemeyer-
gute
gerspurtenmit
shönedankerkalb
yeah I know @nd string is B, then I do relative tuning to tune all the other strings.
The phone is ringing, I cannot linger, watch out butt here comes my finger.
Scientists believe it to be 92 cents below the lowest octave of E flat.
or maybe
"Mmmmmm, funnel cake..."
*grin* ok, perhaps you're a Jazz man.. That'd be cool.
Hey.. maybe Disney got it right and black holes are a way to travel into another universe!
"I drank what?" - Socrates
At an extreme enough point, you would be able to see the back of your own head.
In this situation, am I the only person that would be tempted to reach out and slap the back of my own head? "You idiot, look where you got us now."
actually, 60 Hz is closer to B-flat... 60 - 58.27 is 1.73, while 61.74 - 60 is 1.74.
of course, he never said that he tuned the B-flat on his banjo to exactly 60 Hz... he could have known about this discrepancy and tuned from the low end until the beat frequency produced by the combination of his B-flat and the 60 Hz was approximately 1.75 Hz.
I've found myself humming along with my electric razor sometimes. :p
Matching notes with it is kind of soothing, for some stupid reason.
or maybe he wanted to tune his banjo, not set it to an arbitary frequency, which I presume the poster took from modern accepted standard concert pitch (which isn't adhered to anyway).
According to what current theory? Unless you are just being facetious and using "the universe" to mean "everything"...(whatever that is.) A lot of theoretical physics suggest multiple universes and larger space that our Universe exists in. Some even yag about how it might be theoretically testable or be used to explain some of the confusion as to why gravity seems so weak compared to the other forces (mainly, maybe it's "bleeding out" into "somewhere else" [cue creepy music])
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
A banjo is better tuned with a hammer.
Are you referring to a tuning hammer or to one you might find in, say, a hardware store? I guess it depends on how good a banjo player your wife is!
(Sorry... my wife plays banjo)
Ooooh, so much for that.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
What do we mean by the topology of the Universe?
We sort of mean the 'shape'. It is easy to talk about 2 dimensional surfaces in a three dimensional universe - planes, spheres, funnels, etc. But the Universe has 3 (large) dimensions, not 2, so it is much harder. Normally, we think of the universe as a 3 dimensional equivalent to a plane - that is, in space, straight lines are straight, never curve back on themselves, and go on forever. Another common topologies which arise naturally from gravity theory are 'spherical' - where parallel lines eventually cross, and you can see the back of your head. The group in questions is proposing that the Universe is a 3d analog to the surface of a horn. Others have proposed 3d analogs to the surface of a doughnut....
How can one possibly determine what this shape is?
If the Universe is actually curved in some way, then light coming from distant objects will be bent on its way to us, distorting the images. For the global topology of the Universe, one wants to use the largest, most distant thing you can look at. The Universe is expanding and cooling. Light takes time to travel, so if you look far enought away, you can look far enough back in time to when the whole Universe was filled with a hot H-He plasma. This is called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Most recent topology studies have looked at the statistics of the fluctuations of this distant plasma for distortion in the image from what is predicted.
So, is this true?
Could be.... but the evidence is not compelling. The anomalies they are looking at are of rather low statistical significance, and the idea that the universe is just 'straight/flat' and boring still fits pretty well. And unfortunately, for the large scale stuff, the data isn't going to get any better. The problem is, we only have one Universe, and COBE and WMAP have measured the large scales as well as can be measured. The small scale distortions have more potential given upcoming experiments like Planck, and the WMAP year2 data.
and we're living on the cake....
Sound is not a linear scale, it's geometric. (61.74/60) > (60/58.27).
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
Remember though that the arrangement inside a blackhole is that of maximal entropy. No matter how you shake a blackhole it can't get any more disordered. Looking around the universe over time it's obvious that it is not in a state of maximal entropy, if it were time wouldn't appear to flow.
Now... our Universe could be just another 3brane in a larger multi-verse of multi-branes. There's nothing that says that a braneworld has to have a certain level of entropy, or that the levels of entropy can't change over time.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Ack, that should be a less-than sign (should have used preview)
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
I didn't know there was a Dick Dale department!
that theory has stephen hawking's vote...
Hawking: Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer. I may have to steal it.
Homer: Wow, I can't believe someone I never heard of is hanging out with a guy like me.
Moe: All right, it's closing time. Who's paying the tab?
Homer: [imitating Hawking's voice box] I am.
Hawking: I didn't say that.
Homer: [still imitating] Yes I did. [the glove comes out again, bopping Homer in the face]
Homer: [still imitating] D'oh.
(courtesy snpp.com)
J
...the universe is shaped like water in flushing toilet. Ok, that explains a lot of things.
I don't know about anyone else but for me the whole concept of shape loses meaning once we go beyond three dimensions or start talking about 'infinite' shapes in three dimensions. The best I can do is translate 'shape' into operational definitions. So cone shaped as described means: there exists at least one axis along which you can proceed infinitely in one direction...but if you go the other way you return to your starting point after some finite time/distance. I don't think cone means anything but that. (And it is not obvious from the discussion how many different directions satisfy this property)
Sir Bedevere
"...and that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped."
Arthur
"This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
not the red one... I don't care how deep the worm hole is!
Of course, that's the threshold crossed by the "output" of a black hole, which appears in the next universe as a "deja vu". The black hole's input universe arrives in infinite subsequent universes, each separated by a single iota of information. That iota is recieved as the smallest, infinitesimal information change in the subsequent universe: in that universe's model of itself, in a mind, there is one extra metadatum flipped to "this exists".
Investigating this infospace led our schneidics lab to a vast, uncharted category of information science. We all know "memory": you know something that happened. And, unfortunately, "forgetting": you don't know something that happened. And "deja vu": you know something that *didn't* happen. We've planted the schneidics flag in "nemory": you *don't* remember something that *never* happened. We now believe that this "cold, dark information" composes the vast majority of information in the universe. We are currently investigating its application to the rest of the emerging field of schneidics. If you have experimental nemory data, please report it to our lab.
--
make install -not war
See e.g. The Interdimensional Universe.
literally true in all applications. They are there to aid understanding.
http://xxx.uni-augsburg.de/abs/astro-ph/0403597
Shows you that you really need to know what you are talking about if you want to make an intelligent comment about this paper.
Should flutes, recorders, and pipe organs be put in their own group?
The USian group centred on a B-flat (multiple of 60 Hz), while the Europeans centred on an A-natural (multiple of 50 Hz).
Hardly qualifies as a controlled study. But still suggestive that the background EMF frequency and device hum has some unconcious influence on the psyche?
How very strange - my Google search came up with several references to the Picard Theorem's from Laboratoire Emile Picard. Of course, these were in French, so perhaps filtering is to blame.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
The article seems to suggest that the universe is actually shaped like a horn, which is only 2D, implying they are including the "inside" as well, which means not only can you get the the end (and come back in again apparently) you can head out the edge as well. They could mean a 3-horn (the 3D equivelent of a horn) but they don't say that, does anyone have any further information?
At a guess I would say... my wang.
actually, (61.74/60) is less than (60/58.27), not the other way round, but you are right to say that this makes 1.74 a smaller percentage of 60 than 1.73 is of 58.27.</nitpick>
frequency is a continuous property of a wave... whether you choose to select linearly or logaritmically spaced points is up to you. over large scales (i.e. multiple octaves or decades), it is generally more useful to choose logarithmically spaced points, because you want to treat low octaves with the same number of points as high octaves. over small ranges (here only 3.47 Hz or about 5.78% of the nominal 60 Hz), it makes sense to deal with linearly spaced points, because the imbalance between octaves cannot come into play. in this case, if you played the B-natural against 60 Hz and then played the B-flat against 60 Hz, the resulting beat frequency signals would sound essentially the same, as the difference between them would be only 0.01 Hz.
I've been saying the same thing for decades.
If you look at an image of a spiral galaxy, it doesn't take much of a genius to say "vortex." That the universe may use proven principles on several scales should not surprise us.
I'm really not sure why people don't get this. So, for decades I've been explaining it with an original analogy that I will again share, below.
Astronomers think the universe is expanding from a "big bang" because they look out with their telescopes and see that all the stars & galaxies are moving away from each other. Indeed, they may even be accelerating away from each other!
But this does not mean the universe is expanding. Instead, the universe may simply be flowing, as in a vortex.
Imagine the following: that you are living in a world within an atom, and your atom is part of a molecule of air here on earth. There is a tornado nearby, and all of the air in your vicinity is gradually moving toward the tornado. A critical prt of the analogy is that air pressure decreases as one approaches the tornado. Now in your atom world, you have the equivalent of a telescope. You are able to look out beyond your atom, beyond your molecule and see other atoms & molecules. Your observations show that all the molecules which you are able to observe are getting farther & farther apart. Indeed, they seem to be accelerating.
You thus erroneously say, "Aha! The universe is expanding!"
I thought homer said the universe was shaped like a donut, a theory which Stephen Hawking "borrowed"... (that was one of my favorite episodes by the way).
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
Mmm, universe... ...damn! Wrong shape.
Oh no, Homer was right!
Mmm, universe...
Oh no, Homer was right!
Mmm, univ~~~~
Yeah, brown nosing God to keep the universe around a little longer doesn't sound too good.
Then why isn't it filled with beer?
Why are we always so horny?
Get a free ipod.
The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe (American 1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan / To learning much inclined, / Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind), / That each by observation / Might satisfy his mind
The First approached the Elephant, / And happening to fall / Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl: / "God bless me! but the Elephant / Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk, / Cried, "Ho! what have we here / So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear / This wonder of an Elephant / Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal, / And happening to take / The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake: / "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant / Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out an eager hand, / And felt about the knee. / "What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he; / " 'Tis clear enough the Elephant / Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, / Said: "E'en the blindest man / Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can / This marvel of an Elephant / Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun / About the beast to grope, / Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope, / "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant / Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan / Disputed loud and long, / Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong, / Though each was partly in the right, / And all were in the wrong!
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars, / The disputants, I ween, / Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean, / And prate about an Elephant / Not one of them has seen!
Sorry about the formatting... the "Your comment has too few characters per line" filter is really bad for poetry.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I live in Northeast Ohio and my power supplier is First Energy so it's a rare day when I even have power, but when I do I'm sure the frequency is much closer to 1[NO CARRIER]
There are plenty of fictional universes with clear ownership.
Your average nose is kinda horn shaped....
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)
Everyone knows the universe is shaped "/.", slashdot holds the fate of countless websites in it's grasp. This would also explain the common phenomena, known as the "slashdot effect".
/. "news for nerds, stuff that shapes universes"
If the universe has a shape, doesn't that imply it is contained within something? What would that something be?
I just heard some sad news on talk radio -- TV host Sean Hannity was found dead in his hotel room last night. The coroner has not yet officially ruled it a suicide, but apparently that's what it's going to be ruled.
I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will mourn his passing -- even if you didn't agree with him, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
This just makes me think of a bit of Eastern Mythology. In Hindu, the god (or thing as it were) named Brahma is the one that controls the universe. During the phase in which it is coming into existence/forming. (Vishnu takes care of the creation of Brahma and in the end, Shiva destroys it, leaving Brahma to create it again.)
However, Brahma's control is more correctly transalted as "play" as in the way one would play a musical instrument. So if the Universe is horn shaped, perhaps it's one big musical instrument, with Brahma buzzing his/her/its lips into the little end.
Another intersting tidbit is that Shiva destroys the universe in a dance. So maybe Brahma plays it, Vishnu sings it, and then Shiva dances to it and thereby destroys it.
Ok, just a little random thought. Do with it what you will!
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
While it seems strange, it almost seems to make sense. The Fibonacci sequence is found in nature all the time, and as you can see in shells, a spiral fits it perfectly. As old as the universe may be, isn't it possible that it's only the beginning of this spiral, shaping it like a horn?
Gregory Benford in his book COSM imagined similar funnel shaped universe held by its neck on the other end of universe by a mysterious spherical shape which was created accidental in an ambitious experiment by a young scientist in a California lab. Fascinating reading and now more fitting. Can someone post those funnel shaped universe's diagrams from the book COSM.. my scanner politely refused to work with new 2.6 linux kernel. Sorry about my English.
---
Error 404: WMD Not Found
Modern science holds that the universe is not infinite, but is of limited size.
It looks like to me that the universe is funnel shaped along the dimension of time. Since light takes time to reach us, the effect would be similar to a funnel shape in space, in every direction.
This would be because the further back in time we go, the smaller the universe is. And the farther away we observe, the further back in time we go. Thus the distortion in perception could be introduced by the effect of time across a vast distance.
However, the universe itself could still be "spherical" or whatever, and you would still see this effect.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'll be damned!
I've been involved in music for ~ 20 years and never knew this. Being scientifically minded, didn't believe a word of it. Hmm... lets experiment:
Hummed myself a note. Found an online tuner. Holy cow batman! B-flat (an octave lower than the tuner (give or take a few cents) -- but a solid B-flat nonetheless!)
Amazing!
...that the universe was shaped like my office.
Take the big bang. Infinitesimal point.
... which looks exactly like a horn.
Explode that shape over time.
Now look at it four dimensionally...
Surely you end up with an r^2 curve rotated through 3 dimensions, with r on the time axis...
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I'm no scientist, but it seems kind of obvious that the universe would appear to have this shape? If the universe is constantly expanding, and if as we look further away from earth we're actually looking further back in time because of the time that it takes light to reach us, then what these guys are seeing is a smaller universe in some areas which would have been the case at the point in time that the light we are seeing now was generated. So in theory you could say that the funnel points toward the big bang or whatever sarted the universe expanding.
Of course, I could be completely off.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Could you go on to explain how soemthing could be infinitely long in just one direction?
/i direction /i
I'm fine with one dimension of infinity, just not one
2005 will be the year of Linux' desktop breakthrough.
In "Eternity", the sequel to "Eon", Ser Olmy returns to 21st(?) century Earth having taken a *very* long round trip via the opposite end of the universe - which turns out incidentally to have been be horn shaped - in the traditional sense of a curved or rolled up tube with a wide bell-like flaring at one end.
So there.
I saw this article yesterday evening, and Googled "Picard topology" to find out more. Two hits, and both of them were the article (one at the New Scientist website and one on the Guardian website).
OFMG! He's right, it's the Goatse Nebula!
At an extreme enough point, you would be able to see the back of your own head. It would be an interesting place to explore
"Hey you! I'm lost. Can you tell me where I am?....Why won't you face and answer me?....Face me like a man, you balding fat-ass bastard!....Hey! Isn't that my same jacket you have on? It looks a lot better on me, shy Dickhead. Maybe a little phaser blast will bring you out of your shell. *ZZzzaap!* Ow! Fuck! Where'd the hell that come from? Make them stop or you'll get another one..."
Table-ized A.I.
By creating a sealed habitat for a large (100+) number of people within a spherical structure of sufficient complexity, with nooks and crannies, and extremely poorly designed shelving and cabinetry, and insufficiently illuminated laundry facilities, we'd be able to produce a negative-sock-pressure gradient via the escape of socks from our known universe into the void. This would tug the sphere long towards the point of greatest-sock-escape-density, which we could engineer to be at the fore-end of the craft.
Is that a great idea, or what?
No, next question please.
And by the way, it's named after Emile Picard from 1884, not Jean-Luc from the 25th century.
You are thinking of "shape of the universe" in 3d terms... where, like, there is just this "edge"....
they are talking about the 4d shape of spacetime... you can't go outside. What you will see as a 3d human is a big universe around you, all the time, no matter what.
This is about looking reall far away, and hence, really far back in time, and deducing how the universe has expanded, if it has done so uniformly, etc.
Remember, that expansion is not an expansion in 3d, like an explosion, where there is some central point.. its' a 4d explosion, where all wee see is everything moving away from everything else (at different rates, apparently, depending how far back we look)
was a shape charge. :)
By the second keg... Absolutely!
Talk to me about the shape of the universe after we actually figure out how may planets are in our solar system.
Kirk is horn-y.
(Quickly ducks!)
It's now called the "Dutiverse". I said so.
That faster then light travel is possible. All you have to do to achieve it is jump from one loop of the horn to another outside of the universe. The tighter the loops the more shortcuts are possible. Problem solved. Now if I can only get this antigravity module to start working....
Do not look into the laser with remaining eye.
All evidence clearly points to Homer Simpson's doughnut shaped universe theory!
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, The hands acqui
Some physcists such as Alan Lasserby suggest mysterious forces can be explained by slight pertubations of Euclidean geometry on a universe-size scale. This could explain the anti-gravity force called "dark energy". Its thought to compromise 70% the "stuff" in the universe, but obliviated by a geometric explanation.
Map analogies aren't good.
1. Think of standing on a smooth sphere and looking at the horizon.
2. everything you can see exists, everything you can't doesn't, this is your "universe" and it is "circular", what you can see is inside your universe, what you can't is outside your "universe".
3.walk in one direction, things pop into and out-of existance and therfore your "universe".
4. now imagine what happens as the sphere changes size as you walk, or even the sphere morphing into different shape.
Standing on an egg would give a bugle shaped horizon, or "universe".
One of the problems with discribing a "shape" is that there is no difference to us between "far-away" and "long-ago". A galaxy 12 billion light years away, exists 12 billion years ago, Sun does not exists "right now" it exists 4 minutes ago.
Now if you can look at your hand at arm's length and believe that your hand doesn't exisist right now but exists 3 nano-seconds ago, your probably psycotic.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
More like a drain...
Is the universe a horn shaped universe, or is the horn a universe shaped musical instrument?
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
It's interesting how Google has become the arbiter of truth. If Google can't find it, then it doesn't exist!
Who needs Geometry. I know how to 'feel' it. __ I am so cool.
OK, IMHO, it's all a matter of perception. place the 'big bang' at the pointy end of the funnel, now mark 'now time' at the big open end of the funnel. Number the universe age from 0 at the pointy end to 'now' at the big open end.
Perception.
It's NOT funnel shaped, but limited minds could perceive it as funnel shaped all depending on how far away (back) they look with instruments.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
in my car parked in a seedy neighborhood once. When I came back, wouldn't you just know that someone broke into my car and put another banjo in there.
Wrong. A banjo is best tuned with a Tin Whistle. That way you can break both of the goddamned things. /me shakes fist at Irish for inventing the Tin Whistle and bringing it into my peaceful house
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'm sure that this has been posited before, but what if there's a blackhole of phenomenal size at one end of the universe? The whole damn thing could be in the process of being sucked into one massive lump (Big Crunch, anyone? It's not just for breakfast, anymore!), with the flare at one end being at or near the event horizon, and everything below being infinitely stretched (relatively, at least) toward the core of the blackhole (or whatnot).
Of course, when everything does finally get sucked up, and with nothing else to suck up, there could be another big bang.
It explains the trumpet shape and the infinite appearance, at least.
~UP
Eat the Path.
Suppose we have a string, like a violin string. Pluck it and look at close up. You have a standing wave in the string. One of the interesting things about these standing waves is that you can glean information about the length of the entire string just by looking at a small part of the string. For example in standing waves you often see 'nodes', points along the string that don't oscillate vertically (assuming the string is stretched horizontally). Well nodes are equally spaced, and if the ends of the string are fixed then the ends are nodes too. So you know that the total length of the string is an integer multiple of the distance between nodes. So just looking locally at the string tells you something about it stotal length, even if you can't see the ends.
Now thing more generally. Let's think about a more rigid metal wire whose ends you can't see. If at least one end is fixed then when you tap it the nodes are likely to always be in the same place. But if, instead, the wire is looped back round on itself in a big circle then when you tap the wire the nodes, although equally spaced, can be anywhere along the length of the wire (because a wire circle has symmetry, you can rotate it by any angle and it's still the same). So you can tell the difference between a long wire with fixed ands and one that is a loop.
Well this paper is the same thing on a grand scale. Instead of the usual "wave equation" that decsribes waves in a wire or string we have a more complex equation. But the idea is much the same - we may be able to extract information about the entire universe just by looking at the sort of structures we get locally. Unfortunately this is a much harder problem. With a 1D string there is just one way to make it wrap round on itself - join the ends to make a circle. With a 3D space there are many more ways. Each one has a 'signature' in terms of the type of waves that can form in it. But it's not easy to go from the wave patterns to the shape. So in a sense this paper is just a bit of fumbling around looking at the sort of shape that might give rise to observation. The particular topology proposed might not be correct, or even plausible, but eventually these intermediate results might lead to a deeper understanding of the kind of shapes that are consistent with what we observe. It might even be that ultimately a boring wide open universe that doesn't wrap at all is the only consistent one - but we won't know that unless people do this kind of research first.
One thing that makes this paper more interesting are the "rigidity theorems". Basically the idea is that if the universe has negative curvature everywhere (negative curvature is like the surface of a saddle, rather than that of a sphere) then just having fairly vague information about how it wraps round on itself tells you a lot about the surface. (Essentially you just need topological information and that's enough to tell you a lot of non-topological information too.)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I guess we are not in Kansas anymore.
The Picard topology sounds like what was referred to in my math class as Gabriel's Horn.
An apparent paradox concerning this shape's infinite interior surface area and finite volume is that one could never paint the entire surface area, but could simply fill it paint, thus painting it. However, the resolution to this paradox is that since the horn's diameter eventually becomes smaller than that of a paint molecule, that part of horn could never be painted.
Or, you can read the play The House With Too Many Perpendiculars.
I don't get it. I like to read about cosmology but the way things are often explained confuses me. Maybe someone can help.
So we see back to 0.3 billion years after the big bang. What was that, 12.7 billion years ago or so? And the light that comes to us from that place took 12.7 billion years to get here. But how long did it take for whatever is producing that light to get 12.7 billion light years from here? If everything was in one place to begin with, it must have taken time for pieces of it to get somewhere else. How much time? Maybe 12.7 billion years at the speed of light. Wouldn't the universe then be at least twice as old as 12.7 billion years?
Do these questions make sense?
I'm probably wrong, but isn't this what a four dimensional hypersphere would look like to to a three dimensional being inside it? Just a thought....
The universe is shaped like a funnel. The universe is also rotating. Sounds to me like somebody pulled the plug...
we are taught that we look "back-in-time" because
of red shift... and that the universe is rapidly
expanding now, increasing the rate of expansion.
intuitivlely then, how can a horn shape support
the idea of galaxys flying apart faster?
Does the horn itself were grow uniformly? or at the ends?
if it is just the mouth of the horn that
expands, will volume increase enough to match
the observed expansion rates?
sure no answers here - just more questions for
you arm-chair physicists.
OK just out of curiosity, which way do I go to get to the narrow end of the horn?
- Some of the models are closed curves that are finite in size - the typical analogy is a 4-space hypersphere with a 3-d surface that the Universe maps onto, similar to the way the 2-d surface of the Earth is wrapped around a 3-d sphere and doesn't have edges. But that's not the only model. (The string-theory and membrane-theory folks add another half dozen dimensions to the mix, but the big dimensions can still mostly follow that model.)
- Some of the models say "no, it's not curved, it's flat, maybe a bit bumpy but it's really infinite".
- Some of the models say it's the opposite of a closed curve - these typically look saddle-shaped or horn-shaped, because instead of the curvature in the x direction and the curvature in the y direction both going the same way, they're going the opposite way.
A lot of this stuff tends to be related to models about how much matter and energy the Universe has - is there enough mass to make it close in on itself or not, and do we need to postulate lots of as-yet-undiscovered "dark matter" to make it heavier, or enough even-less-defined "dark energy" to blow it apart?Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe a layman question, but why does it have to have a shape? If there's more than one dimension, visualizing the universe is pointless, isn't it?
Sometimes the universe just misbehaves and fails to cooperate with your theories, which is when science gets to be fun - either your theories are thoroughly bogus, or they're slightly incorrect approximations, and this influences whether your previous models are or are not useful.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Like the shape of space-time made by a black hole? Also, one surface of a hyperbola can be deformed into a trumpet shape quite easily.
Is she also your cousin?
The ancient Greeks weren't Flatlanders living 2-dimensionally on the curved-but-flat surface of the Earth, discovering the curvature by the behaviour of parallel lines in Flatland or by walking around it and getting back to the same place. The basic concepts that let people think about roundness came from standing up and seeing a horizon in the distance, and standing higher up on top of things and seeing a wider horizon. That's already three-dimensional motion. The techniques that they used to figure out more precisely how big the Earth is and how far away the moon is involved going down in wells and looking at objects that were high up (Moon, sun, stars, etc.) and measuring the angles. Those objects were far enough outside the Earth that they could get good measurements, but even the most basic tools they used involved standing up perpendicular to Flatland.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
> Donuts most definitely.
Well, actually, that it might be, although with an added dimension and warped in a way corresponding to a Möbius strip. Take a look at The Interdimensional Universe. However, you will have to let go of the big bang theory...
that is the most amazing and horrible thing I have ever seen. Clearly, we cannot prevail against a technology that can assemble star clusters for shock value. Someone ought to tell congress after they clean up the internet they'll have to outlaw telescopes.
By way of analogy, check out Gabriel's Horn (or Torricelli's Trumpet). It's an example of a surface, infinite in extent, with finite volume but infinite surface area.
Then, we're mere rabbits inside a wizard's hat...
That'd explain why I'm very fond of carrot cake.
If the universe were shaped like a toroid, that could account for the horn-shape. It could also account for expansion of the universe in general.
I am not an atomic playboy.
You raise a question I've had recently.
How was the octave scale set at what it's at? Are the frequencies determined to be a B sharp or a D special in some way? When a piano is out of tune, it tends to sound pretty bad. What makes these specific notes/frequencies pleasing to the human ear? And other notes cacophonous?
What it sound like if a concert was composed entirely on a piano that was purposely out of tune to frequencies that don't match up with the traditional musical scales... could it be pleasant?
That's funny, I thought 58.27 Hz is closer to 60 Hz than 61.74 Hz.
You thought wrong. As I said in another post, music is not linear with respect to frequencies. In a tempered scale, each note's frequency is the 12th root of two (about 1.06) times the frequency of the note one half step down. For instance, in the most common orchestral tuning, the A above middle C is 440Hz, the A an octave up is 880Hz, and the A an octave down is 220Hz. So, as far as music is concerned, 220Hz is the same distance from 440Hz as 880Hz is.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
Yes, it was done in 3-D because that was the easiest way at the time. As you point out yourself, one could walk in a straigt line around the earth and arive in the same place. The conclusion would then be that the earth is finite, and curved. So even without an external perspective it could be done. This is why we are making these measurments of the universe, as we don't seem to have an external perspective available. So we don't know the answer at present. We are simply looking for a self consistent explaination.
I haven't read Flatland in some time so I do not remember the tools you refer to, but all you would need to do to walk in a straight line in 2-D is to leave a point where you start, walk some distance, leave another point, and then again walk some distance and align the two points you had already left behind, and repeate. No need to stand up perpendicular to your existence. What surprise when you eventually return to your first point.
Say no to software patents.
Why not oboe-shaped? It's a so much nicer instrument!
rather like an extremely fine spiders web weighed down with due suspended invisibly between many points. I saw it once...
n
Hmmmm.... from what I read of "A Brief History Of Time" (ABHOT), your typical black hole is made up of an event horizon ( the spherical boundary inside of which light cannot escape out of ) and a singularity, which sits smack bang in the middle of that bounday.
...lots of complicated stuff about infinitely dense materials etc ... ) we have maximum entropy at that singularity.
From outside the event horizon, we cannot ( in thermo terms ) extract any energy from it. We cannot measure the orderliness of it ( indirect theoretical measurements are proposed ). The singularity is a different matter. (
However, if that singularity was really heavy, like say, the mass of the present universe, then the event horizon would be a very long way from that singularity ( if it even exists ).
Hence, it could be imagined that we are inside the event horizon of the universe and not even be anywhere near the singularity in the middle ! Does the universe have a middle ? Well if it's now decided to be the shape of a funnel, maybe it does !
What does this mean in the big picture ? Don't buy real estate on the outer fringes. The view is lousy. IANATPP
So we are being sucked into a gravity well, but for some reason we are escaping it
If you ask any pianist, they will inform you that a piano is, in fact, a percussion instrument.
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
...but not for stretching.
A clock at a higher altitude will tick at a different rate to a clock at a lower altitude due to the difference in gravitic "depth", but if you compared a laser fired from each clock at a common point, they would be different colours. If the universal redshift were due to the stretching of space, this would not be so.
Stretch-redshift is loved by cosmologists because it appears to make big bang cosmologies possible, not because it has actually been tested and found good (it hasn't). There are other explanations which avoid the need to rely on unproven theories, explain the same phenomena (CBR, for example as well or better) and as an added bonus explain some things which are quietly not discussed in big bang communities (quantum redshifts, for example).
If you ignore stretch-redshifting, though, you'd still be right but for the wrong reasons. (-:
The photon would appear to be "redshifted" in steps because of quantum changes in the physics of the observer. Or perhaps it's the other way around, 'coz it's all relative and all in accord with GR.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing