Ellipsoidal? Oh pleeeeze! Even my cat knows the Universe is shaped like Christie Brinkley.

Nononono. Definitely doughnut shaped, Not the type with jam in the middle!

Not having had much experience in exploring such heady matters as the True Shape Of The Universe, I consulted with my quantum cat, Heisenberg (both of them, actually). I read to him your conclusion that the Universe is donut-shaped but, for a while, I couldn't get anything out of him. He had dissolved into a puddle of uncontrollable laughter. This called for patience.

Finally, after catching his breath (and still struggling with a fresh case of hiccups), Heisenberg assured me that (hic) yes, the Universe really (hic) is shaped like Christie (hic) Brinkley. Of this there can be no doubt. I tended to agree and we left for breakfast (by the way, if you ever come to Austin, there's a very nice little restaurant in town that makes truly heavenly migas and breakfast burritos).

As Heisenberg and I have always been interested in what makes people tick, we pondered the sort of situations in your own life that might have given rise to such a ridiculous conclusion on your part. We quickly narrowed the field down to three:

1) You make your living as cop. But you don't like jam;

2) You wrote your post on an empty stomach (unwise, as your example makes perfectly clear);

3) Both.

Not having actually had the opportunity to perform any physical measurements of your personal situation, Heisenberg tends to prefer the superposition of states implied by Choice Number 3. (And, as an aside, I might point out here that uncertainty has always made Heisenberg rather uncomfortable. He tends to avoid it by hedging his bets - and so does his counterpart (whom I've never actually met). Personally I find this trait of his to be a constant source of irritation. He's always waffling about something.)

For my part, I'm still thinking of Christie Brinkley and have long since lost my place in this thread.

--Europium

Funny, I would have thought your cat couldn't answer the second you ask him, since he'd immediately stop being a quantum cat and collapse to a real cat state.

Did he have any insight on the anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation, or wasn't he interested?

My situation is slightly more complicated than it first appears. And, as a rather private person, I tend not to publicly discuss highly personal matters such as my relationship with my cat(s). But, as your point is well taken, I feel that some explanation is perhaps necessary.

Quite simply, Heisenberg, his counterpart, and myself are all components of the same qbit. And since our identities are completely entagled with each other, we know exactly what the other is thinking. Nor does it make one whit of difference how far we are apart. This can be very handy, as you might expect.

For example, the arrangement saves us a great deal of money in telephone bills. Personally, I've never liked the bulge of a cell phone in my pocket, and I detest those clip-on thingies that always catch on something, knocking the cell phone out of its clip and into the toilet. And with the possible exception of the Motorola's new PEBL phone, neither does Heisenberg.

Nor do we need email, and so Internet Providers like AOL are SOL.

Heisenberg never stops being a quantum cat, because when I need to ask him a question about something, he instantaneously knows my question and I instantaneously have my answer. It's very convenient and it doesn't mess with anyone's identity.

As for your second question, Heisenberg and I are far more interested in knowing our actual location in the Universe (for obvious reasons which I need not explain).

Satisfied?

-- Europium

Hardly. I appreciate that you and your cat are entangled, I think its great that no matter how far apart you are from each other you know what the other is doing. Of course, if that is indeed the case, it demands that when I interact with you, you collapse into a real state, from which you no longer will have that special relationship with your cat.

Unless of course your suggesting that I'm in some sort of quantum state, which is entangled with you and your cats. Actually, now that I think of it, I do feel a bit tangled here.

I don't suppose you'd like to harness any of this imagination of yours towards the story regarding the shape of the universe? I did provide a link, though I'm not sure anyone is seeing it.

Evidently humor is unwelcome here! At least on this particular thread. By this particular original poster. I apologize for my "inappropriate" posts therefore. Perhaps instead I should have held my tongue, firmly puckered both ends of my anatomy, sprawled upon my ivory couch and, surrounded by my advanced degrees and devoted acolytes, waxed pontifical on the deep implications of the large-scale features in the cosmic microwave background on the topology of spacetime. Would that mouthful have been more suitable to your refined tastes?

Please allow me to point out one glaring fact: if a little humor is out of place here, then, strictly speaking, so is the entire topic of this thread. We are, after all, posting to an engineering forum, are we not? If my humor has no business here, then neither does your cosmology. Certainly there are other, more appropriate forums, and we both know that. Perhaps this is an auspicious moment for us both to scoot our tightly puckered behinds off to greener pastures.

It is my opinion, at least, that any discussion of nearly any topic can benefit in some way by a little non-topical seasoning. This might take the form of a cosmology discussion in an engineering forum, or of humor in a cosmological setting. They're both out of place here, so who cares?

Laugh a little. You'll live longer.

--Europium

I'm still not sure what just happened. Your free to joke around as much as you like. I agree its good for the forum. I thought I was joking along with you, but I guess not.

I must confess that the fact of your humor is not easily discerned; not even upon re-reading your posts. Perhaps the confusion stems from a simple cultural difference in expression. What may seem humorous to an Albany, New Yorker may seem contentious and sarcastic to a Austin, Texan (which, in fact, it does). I'm sure you've seen this yourself, even within the confines of your own state. Folks from the Big Apple most definitely see things differently than those from Outside, do they not? And what may seem funny to a NYNYer can (and often does) piss off others who don't share their particular cultural insights. None of this is intended, of course, but it can lead to needless misunderstanding regardless.

If you say your posts were written in a light-hearted way, then I have little choice but to accept you at your word. Unlike with Heisenberg, whose mind I can read in my little sketches by virtue of quantum entanglement, I cannot read yours. If you say you are joking, then I accept that you are. On that basis, I offer my apologies for having flamed you. (At least you were spared the heat of my original reply, which was somewhat longer and for which I am now thankful I need not apologize. I can type like fiend when I'm pissed, believe me, but I nearly always throw out 90% of everything I write. This is a Good Thing, trust me.)

--Europium

I'm sorry if anything I wrote offended you, it wasn't my intention. I guess we'll leave it at that.

I can go for that.

The actual location? Is it because you and Heisenberg don't want to step in the crap which you have vomitted?

Right. As you associate doughnuts with cops I assume you're from the US. I from the UK and we have a different paradigm about the Police! I was on my lunch beak, but had eaten. I just like doughnuts!

Let's look at the whole Christie Brinkley question. You would appear to want to be living in an unspecified part of her body? Hmmm….that's very interesting.

You are correct: I do indeed live in the US (but you need not assume this, however, as the small-print under my 'avatar' makes this quite plain. ).

BTW, I would be very interested in hearing your take on this 'paradigm.' Having never visited the UK (something I'd like to do someday), my exposure to this paradigm is somewhat limited, and mostly to a reading of Donald Spoto's biography, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock.

At one point in the book Hitchcock boasts, "It can be said to my credit that none of my family were ever policemen." Hitchcock's childhood was spent in poverty and in a section of the city where the policemen were particularly brutal. In light of this, Hitchcock's dark opinions of the police are perhaps understandable...

BTW, it's not so much that I wish to live in an unspecified part of the Universe, but simply that I did not specify which part. Sabe?

Take care,
--Europium

I see my previous response has been edited. Anna Nicole Smith your shape is fascinating and has universal appeal!

Actually the shape of the Universe (being flat) is very long and very wide but very thin with no particular shape. Shaped like an ink droplet flung on a blank piece of paper.

During Columbus' day the Universe was preceived as round and the Earth was flat. Today they are just the opposite. Go figure!

So you have given us the shape of Earth and the Universe today and on Columbus day. What may I ask are their shapes the remaining 363 days of the year. There must be a Christie Brinkly, jelly doughnut, Anna Nicole Smith, plain dougnut, and I would assume Eclair and Katie Holmes day also. For that matter there is no reason it should be a yearly cycle but a neverending variety of changing shapes. So one day the universe will (or has) look(ed) like you. However if you die before that happens it could be truly said that you were before your time.

slo

"During Columbus' day the Universe was preceived as round and the Earth was flat."

The number of people who actually believed that the Earth was flat was in reality a tiny minority. It was the bad press this group received over the years that has made their numbers seem larger-than-life. (Even the dullest sailor knew the Earth was not flat. It was well understood even in Columbus' time why the masts of departing ships seemed to slowly disappear beneath the horizon as they became more distant. For them it was quite obvious: the Earth's surface is curved.)

As far back as ancient times it was generally believed that the Earth was round (in a spherical sense, not a circular one) and not flat. At least one ancient civilization, whether the Egyptians, Greeks, or the Babylonians - I don't now recall which - not only knew the Earth was round, but had actually figured out a way to determine its radius. More remarkable still was the value that these ancient people determined was numerically very close to the radius as we know it today.

While people in ancient times were primitive by today's standards, they ware far from stupid. The nameless genius who figured out a way to determine Earth's radius in ancient times may have been every bit as brilliant as our own Einstein.

--Europium

Actually the radius and diameter of the Earth is different at every degree in it's circumference because it's more egg shaped then round. It has an 18 degree tilt that causes the seasons and a wobble that does one complete rotation about every 18 to 22 million years.

Today the axis points at Polaris (the North Star) but as the Earth wobbles on it's axis it will point elsewhere in the future as well as it did in the past. As the Universe expands the orbit around SOL will expand and the 24 hour day will get longer and the wobble will also increase. At some point the planet will no longer sustain the life.

The wobble has actually caused exstinction of species, proven by the rodent fossil record recently.

The Earth is shaped more like a pear, actually, and for some reason which I cannot explain, my girlfriend finds this fact to be rather comforting.

--Europium

I have to wonder what the margine of error in measurement is. If the ellipse eccentricity is only 1% we might be splitting frog hairs if the margine of error is close to that.

Here is the story from WMAP Satellite Mission results:

It's flat in shape according to all NASA mission data so far. ie. COBE and WMAP

Pill shape comes from someone looking at the sky map and thinking it was a geometrical representation.

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101shape.html

Quoting guest: "It's flat in shape according to all NASA mission data so far. ie. COBE and WMAP. Pill shape comes from someone looking at the sky map and thinking it was a geometrical representation."

The pill shape referred to in the OP is about 1% off from spherical, which is well within the 2% error bars on the WMAP isotropy data. So no NASA data rule out the "pill shaped universe", although I very much doubt it myself.