• Question: What is the shape of the universe?

    Asked by webbo to Meeks, Pete, Stephen, Steve, Tom on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Stephen Curry

      Stephen Curry answered on 13 Jun 2010:

      Total guess: sphere (assuming that it started with a bang and has been expanding uniformly in all directions since then). But an astrophysicist might be able to give you a more intelligent answer.

      Philosophical answer: what is the meaning of this question. To ‘see’ the shape of the universe, you’d have to stand outside it. But since the universe contains all known space and time, it is impossible to stand outside.

      This is one of those questions that makes my head hurt!

    • Photo: Tom Hartley

      Tom Hartley answered on 13 Jun 2010:

      This is a very interesting question, but it’s really outside my area, so I am looking forward to finding out what the physicists will say.

    • Photo: Steve Roser

      Steve Roser answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Now you’re asking. This is an example of where I get a little out of my comfort zone. The obvious answer is we know the shape when it started at the Big Bang (a minuscule point), and after that it gets a little hazy. It seems from my little reading on the matter that it all depends where you think it might end up. If you go for the Big Crunch theory (where it ends up where it started) then a balloon looks pretty good (altho its more complicated than that, thanks to that pesky Einstein chap), but other shapes like flat and saddle shape seem to pop up. How about..I dunno.

    • Photo: Marieke Navin

      Marieke Navin answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      What a awesome question. I love it. A few years ago a satellite was launched called WMAP which made lots of cosmological measurements. It found that the universe is actually accelerating as it expands. This lead scientists to believe in dark energy making up most of the universe and causing the acceleration to speed up.

      WMAP also found that the universe is flat (like a piece of paper), so that is how you can think of the shape. It’s hard to imagine it though…

    • Photo: Pete Edwards

      Pete Edwards answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      This is a tricky question to answer because we live inside our universe and so trying to ‘see’ the shape isn’t easy. It’s like asking the question ‘what shape is the building I’m sitting in?’ when all we can do is look out of the window and only see bits of the building.
      We currently think our universe is flat, that’s to say that if you imagine drawing two lines across space they would always remain parallel and never touch one another.

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