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October 09, 2003

Is the Universe Tiled Up Like a Soccer Ball?

More on the big news today -- scientists hypothesize that the shape of space-time resembles that of a soccer ball. But wait -- this brings up several BIG questions. First of all are they claiming that only SPACE is wrapped back on itself, or SPACE and TIME??? To understand the significance of this question consider this example. If space wraps back on itself, then if you travel far enough in any direction you will eventually get back to where you started from. The same is true for TIME. If time wraps back on itself like this, then the distant future is also your distant PAST!!! This leads to a lot of problems with the nature of causality: if the future actually causes the past, then what causes the present??? Yikes! Here's another conjecture: If indeed the universe is a sphere made of tiled pentagons, is there anything different about the regions of space-time on the edges of the individual tiles, or at their intersections? Perhaps this might explain black holes or other anomalies -- I wonder whether the distribution of black holes, pulsars or quasars can be mapped onto this model -- that might lead to some discoveries about the actual role that black holes play in the universe -- for example, we might find that black holes are always located at or near the intersection points in space-time.

Posted on October 09, 2003 at 03:09 PM in Philosophy, Physics, Science |

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Comments

Robin

And, of course, one final (banal) question this prompts: Is something about to kick us?

Posted by: Robin | October 12, 2003 at 05:19 AM

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    In 1999 I flew to the edge of space with the Russian air force, with Space Adventures. I made it to an altitude of just under 100,000 feet and flew at Mach 3 in a Mig-25 piloted by one of Russia's best test-pilots. These pics were taken by Space Adventures from similar flights to mine. I didn't take digital stills -- I got the whole flight on digital video, which was featured on the Discovery Channel.

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    In 1999 I was invited to Russia as a guest of the Russian Space Agency to participate in zero-gravity training on an Ilyushin-76 parabolic flight training aircraft. It was really fun!!!! Among other people on that adventure were Peter Diamandis (founder of the X-Prize and Zero-G Corporation), Bijal Trivedi (a good friend of mine, science journalist), and "Lord British" (creator of the Ultima games). Here are some pictures from that trip...

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