[gomaaa]

Fascinating stuff! I love the comment about halfway through that "God's on a budget."

I had a friend who took a class on topology once. Lots of ideas that sound completely insane unless you really know what's going on.

I wonder if a hundred years from now, people will look back on us and say what fools we were for not realizing that the universe is isn't flat just as we look back on pre-Columbus ideas about the earth and scoff.

I know it's not really the same thing at all, but it's a fun idea.

[gomaaa]

And yes, I know I spelled "doughnut" wrong.

[dirtboy]

"There's a hint in the data that if you traveled far and fast in the direction of the constellation Virgo, you'd return to Earth from the opposite direction," said Dr. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ping

[Wolfie]

Damn, that blows my chocolate eclair theory out of the water.

[jjm2111]

Fascinating article. I, for one, like the concept of a finite universe.

[amused]

Well Steven Hawking did say he was going to steal Homer's idea.

[Junior]

"Cosmologists have built a house of cards and it stands," said Dr. James Peebles, a cosmologist at Princeton.

Figure we'll see this quote rendered as "Cosmologists have built a house of cards" in some future creationist posting.

[Paradox]

All this was already theorized by this infamous cosmologist:

[MikeD]

First, I find it interesting that he mentions travelling toward the constellation Virgo. The nearest cluster of galaxies is in that direction -- perhaps that is a source of contamination.

Second, anyone and everyone can post to astro-ph. There is no peer review on that site. There is no mention that this article is slated for publication in a peer reviewed journal such as MNRAS or the Astrophysical Journal.

Just my bit. I am intrigued by the possibility of an assymetric universe, but I want to see more than an astro-ph paper and a follow-up in the New York Times.

MD

[Physicist]

You can find more information here, and even download the paper if you dare.

Max Tegmark is a physics geek's physics geek, and a truly nice guy.

[RobertYates]

Does this mean God is a giant cop?

[Physicist]

If only this story had broken in the previous Science Times, the announcement of the Doughnut Universe would have been made on Fasnacht Day, the traditional doughnut-eating holiday of the Pennsylvania Dutch.

The temporal alignment of Doughnut Universe and Doughnut Day, along with the geographic alignment of the Pennsylvania Dutch with the University of Pennsylvania, would have beaten the statistical crap out of any multipole alignment you care to model.

Alas, it was not to be.

[Captain Beyond]

bump for later read

[Physicist]

ping