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.

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?