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Rule

Circles in the Sky
Detecting the shape of the universe

By IVARS PETERSON

polyhedron (13688 bytes)
A polyhedron representational of a hyperbolic manifold.

 

spaceship.jpg (25362 bytes)
A spaceship and two stars as they would appear in a finite, multiply connected universe.

 

125a.jpg (12769 bytes)
One way to picture what would happen in a finite, three-dimensional universe, represented in this case by a cube, is to imagine that the cube's faces were connected. Thus, an object apparently leaving the cube via one face would reappear as if it were emerging from another face.

copyright 1998 Science Service