Thursday 19 May 2011

INFINITY


"The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe was shot into the vacuum of space to uncloak, amongst other things, the true topology ('topos' - place - Greek, via a fat German called Klaus) of the universe.
'WMAP' measures the temperature of the Big Bang's remnant radiant heat, it has given us the conventionally recognised age of the universe - 13.75 gigayears! For the purpose of this diatribe WMAP's discoveries point toward a Euclidean "flat" universe. The flat shape was determined by measuring the multipolarity of the spectrums of cosmic background radiation. This is important when we talk about infinity.
Imagine the universe was spherical, one could start walking from a certain point and end up at the same point sometime later - one could travel through the centre and theoretically arrive at the same place. Such a shape scuppers the possibility of an infinite universe. In a flat universe one could walk into the immeasurable distance for as long as it can expand, never returning to the original position whilst following a straight line. This is the infinite we are concerned with." - Jaguar Knight

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