The universe's shape

[Shoyru_Lover]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4879

Apparantly it's shaped like a horn, and if you go in one end, you come out the other.

[Paulisacretin]

Quick! Stop the presses! It seems that we've gone back a hundred years in time!

[Hyperion]

Reading the article, specifically the part under the Infinitely long section whereas it's stated that "...at some point you would find yourself flying back in on the other side of the horn", I was reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Wall of Darkness, which was first published in July 1949 by Super Science Stories. Interesting stuff, though I'm thoroughly confused, being as I am quite illiterate when it comes to scientific theories of space and time, and of the concepts themselves.

Some excerpts by the short story I mentioned:

Grayle stretched his hand out toward the cabinet beside him and fumbled for a large sheet of paper that was lying upon it. Brayldon watched him in silence, and the old man continued.
'How often we have all heard arguments about the size of the universe, and whether it has any boundaries! We can imagine no ending to space, yet our minds rebel at the idea of infinity. Some philosophers have imagined that space is limited by curvature in a higher dimension -- I suppose you know the theory. It may be true of other universes, if they exist, but for ours the answer is more subtle.
'Along the line of the Wall, Brayldon, our universe coems to an end -- and yet does not. There was no boundary, nothing to stop one going onward before the Wall was built. The Wall itself is merely a man-made barrier, sharing the properties of the space in which it lies. Those properties were always there, and the Wall added nothing to them.'
He held the sheet of paper toward Brayldon and slowly rotated it.
'Here,' he said, 'is a plain sheet. It has, of course, two sides. Can you imagine one that has not?'
Brayldon stared at him in amazement.
'That's impossible -- ridiculous!
'But is it?' said Grayle softly. He reached toward the cabinet again and his fingers groped in its recesses. Then he drew out a long, flexible strip of paper and turned vacant eyes to the silently waiting Brayldon.
'We cannot match the intellects of the First Dynasty, but what their minds could grasp directly we can approach by analogy. This simple trick, which seems so trivial, may help you to glimpse the truth.'
He ran his fingers along the paper strip, then joined the two ends together to make a circular loop.
'Here I have a shape which is perfectly familiar to you -- the section of a cylinder. I run my finger around the inside, so -- and now along the outside. The two surfaces are quite distinct: you go from one to the other only by moving through the thickness of the strip. Do you agree?'
'Of course,' said Brayldon, still puzzled. 'But what does it prove?'
'Nothing,' said Grayle. 'But now watch--'
[...]
Again Grayle brought the two ends of the strip together, but now he had given it a half-twist so that the band was kinked. He held it out to Brayldon.
'Run your finger around it now,' he said quietly.
Brayldon did not do so: he could see the old man's meaning.
'I understand,' he said. 'You no longer have two seperate surfaces. It now forms a single continuous sheet -- a one-sided surface -- something that at first sight seems utterly impossible.'
'Yes,' replied Grayle very softly. 'I thought you would understand. A one-sided surface. Perhaps you realise now why this symbol of the twisted loop is so common in the ancient religions, though its meaning has been completely lost. Of course, it is no more than a crude and simple analogy -- an example in two dimensions of what must really occur in three. But it is as near as our minds can ever get to the truth.'

Shervane ran his eye up the long flight of steps on which no feet would ever tread again. He felt few regrets: he had striven, and no one could have done more. Such victory as was possible had been his.
Slowly he raised his hand and gave the signal. The Wall swallowed the explosion as it had absorbed all other sounds, but the unhurried grace with which the long tiers of masonry curtsied and fell was something he would remember all his life. For a moment he had a sudden, inexpressivly poignant vision of another stairway, watched by another Shervane, falling in identical ruins on the far side of the Wall.
But that, he realised, was a foolish thought: for none knew better than he that the Wall possessed no other side.

[Nani]

Huh. My theory is that it's shaped like a donut, and it amused my science teacher to no end when I shouted "the universe is a donut!" at the end of one of our classes. I don't even remember the context.

[Asthaloth]

The universe is expanding, but not expanding into anything.

The universe isnt expanding at an even rate (that is, some bits expand faster than others)

The edge of the universe is... well, it doesnt happen basicly.
Very long story short, travel from your home world in a straight line and no matter what direction you go you will end up back there eventually.
Think of it like a globe.
In about nine Dimensions.

And Teseracts are cool.

Elementary fringe physics my dear, its not new, its not even the most insane idea.

[mazil]

Hm, it makes me wonder whether we're missing something. Like... we tend to think of black holes as a similar shape, but they aren't really (I don't think).

Maybe humans need to be able to understand gravity as a fourth (or fifth? or whatever we're up to) dimension to make more sense of the shape of things.

Anyways, I really like the last sentence

If they are, then our Universe is curved like a Pringle, shaped like a horn, and named after a Star Trek character. You could not make it up.

[Asthaloth]

A black hole is the concentrated mass of an object (usually a star) that is so powerful, that nothing -not even light- can escape it (well, Anti-matter and such, but lets not go there)
The Gravity is such that the escape velocity at the event horizon is infact greater than SOL.

The term black hole is widespread, even though it does not refer to a hole in the usual sense, but rather a region of space from which nothing can return.

Badly hashed from my English coursework.