Is the Universe a Hall of Mirrors?

PhysicsWeb is running an article by one of the researchers who has developed the theory that the universe may be finite, rather small, and soccer-ball shaped. The question is still open; it's one theory that fits cosmic microwave data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Apparently testing the theory by looking in the indicated way through the WMAP data would so far be computationally prohibitive. From the article: "The Poincaré dodecahedral space can be described as the interior of a 'sphere' made from 12 slightly curved pentagons. However, there is one big difference between this shape and a football [soccer ball] because when one goes out from a pentagonal face, one immediately comes back inside the ball from the opposite face after a 36 degree rotation. Such a multiply connected space can therefore generate multiple images of the same object, such as a planet or a photon. Other such well-proportioned, spherical spaces that fit the WMAP data are the tetrahedron and the octahedron."

Comments

WMAP 3-Year Data?

[Jazzer_Techie]

Before people start saying that these guys are crackpots (yes, I agree this does sound vaguely reminiscent of the Platonic solids), their research has been published in well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals (Nature, etc.) While this isn't necessarily a widely accepted idea, it's not TimeCube.

This article is about 15 months old and discusses this in the context of 1 year of WMAP data. Since then, the WMAP 3-year data has been released. I would be curious to see how this affects the theory.

Data from the European Planck Surveyor, which is scheduled for launch in 2007, will be able to determine Omega with a precision of 1%. A value lower than 1.01 will rule out the Poincaré dodecahedron model, since the size of the corresponding dodecahedron would become greater than the observable universe and would not leave any observable imprint on the microwave background. A value greater than 1.01, on the other hand, would strengthen the models' cosmological pertinence.

I believe that the WMAP 3-year data gave something like Omega = 1.010 +/- 0.001. Thus this theory seems to balanced on the knife edge. It's an interesting idea, but I have my doubts.

Re:if it is finite than what is holding it?

[Bjarke Roune]

I do not know the details of this, but I strongly suspect that the universe is still continuous in this model. In that case things are set up so that if you hit a boundary between two faces, then the two corresponding faces that you come out of are also adjacent, meaning that you would not notice that you have hit a boundary. Possibly the faces are just a way to explain what is going on, and there would not need to be any actual boundaries that could be detected.

History

[dcollins]

The freaky thing is that the dodecahedron has been associated since ancient times as representing "the Universe".

http://www.kheper.net/topics/cosmology/solids.html

Re:if it is finite than what is holding it?

[product byproduct]

Strangely the boundary between 2 faces is actually shared by 3 faces. Here's a figure of it. See for example how the edge "g" is a boundary between faces IV and V, faces V and VI, and faces VI and IV.

Re:Simulation?

[FailedTheTuringTest]

Hm. That's an interesting idea. One of the articles at that site includes the observation that such a simulation wouldn't have to simulate everything down to the greatest level of detail at all times, but could conserve computing power by just simulating things that are under direct observation.

"If the book you are holding in your hands is a simulated book, the simulation would only need to include its visual appearance, its weight and texture, and a few other macroscopic properties, because you have no way of knowing what its individual atoms are doing at this moment. If you were to study the book more carefully, for example by examining it under a powerful microscope, additional details of the simulation could be filled in as needed. Objects that nobody is perceiving could have an even more compressed representation. Such simplifications would dramatically reduce the computational requirements."

Isn't that what actually happens in quantum-level experiments? If we are observing the double slits, the photons do one thing, but if we're not watching the slits, they do something else?

Re:if it is finite than what is holding it?

[iluvcapra]

I've always wondered if you raised a kid the right way if he would be able to have a quantum intuition.

"Paging Mr. Dick, Paging Mr. Phillip K. Dick, you have a visitor at the front desk."

An individual with a quantum-intuitive understanding of the world might be very difficult for the rest of us to recognize. Such a person would have a lot of trouble perceiving cause and effect in the way we do, and would probably have no concept of determinism or even certainty. They would be able to see more dimensions than us (if such theories are physical), and would be unable to correlate these dimensional relations to objects within our understanding: if you are a sphere, you can describe yourself to a plane by saying "I'm a bunch of circles," but this really is incomplete and the plane really would be hopeless to have a complete understanding of you. Such a person may appear at times clairvoyant or at least extremely intelligent, but much of the time incoherent and simply apart from the human race.

In short, such a person would either be autistic or the Mua'Dhib. Read PKD's "Martian Time-Slip" or "Dune" for examples of people with quantum knoweldge or understanding, and how is basically makes them appear mad much of the time.