When I was a sophomore in college, I read a fascinating book about the large-scale distribution of galactic clusters. One might expect galactic clusters to be scattered randomly, but they aren’t. Instead, galactic clusters seem to be distributed along the surface of nearly empty “bubbles” that tens of megaparsecs in diameter. In fact, if you map the structure of the visible universe using galactic clusters, at the largest scales it looks a lot like… bubbly, frothy beer! Pretty neat. And similarly, at the most extreme end of the small scale, physicists theorize that spacetime breaks down into “quantum foam”, a seething chaotic morass of fluctuating loops and bubbles. Bubbles… foam… like beer! At all length scales, the universe seems to be trying to tell us something…
I’m sad to report that this is what passed for deep insight when I was 20.
Now according to a recent article in Nature, the universe could be finite and shaped like a soccer ball. Or more properly, a dodecahedron. If we couple that with the observation that some of our universe’s more interesting carbon molecules are also shaped like soccer balls, we are led to a rather disturbing conclusion. God clearly likes beer. God might like soccer. The question theologians have pondered for centuries lingers in the air… could God be a soccer hooligan?
Fortunately for all of us who are not soccer hooligans,[1] Jacques doesn’t think much of the Soccer Ball proposal:
Most likely, this is just foreground junk, and once the foreground subtraction is done better, these two datapoints will cease to stand out, and the apparent lack of isotropy at large angular scales will go away.
The data from the WMAP probe is still very preliminary, so it seems reasonable not to get excited over this yet. But of course I don’t need Jacques with all his fancy math to tell me that Soccer Ball hypothesis is in trouble. Just look at the hyperactive response on Slashdot. I can’t imagine that Luminet, Weeks, and colleagues could look at the raving fanboy response on Slashdot and not realize that the whole thing is doomed, doomed. At least we can be grateful that the Slashdot weenies don’t read Jacques on a regular basis. Otherwise one of them might read his post and discover that another possibly valid topology for the universe is an icosahedron. Lord only knows the tidal wave of dorky speculation that little idea would unleash.
1. Oh all right, so it’s really “football hooligans.” Excuuuuse me.
In my branch of physics, writing this sort of paper is called “ambulance chasing” — publishing an “explanation” of some puzzling experimental observation before the data go away (as they often do).
In this case, since there are an infinite number of possible spatial topologies (not all of which can be immediately ruled out), there is considerable scope for further hooliganism.
BTW, the “icosahedral group” is *also* the group of rotational symmetries of the dodecahedron. The icosahedron and dodecahedron are “dual” solids, just like the octahedron and the cube (replace faces by vertices and vertices by faces …). The tetrahedron is self-dual, which is why there are 5 platonic solids, but only three associated rotational symmetry groups.
Ehh. I can see the octahedron/cube duality, and of course the tetrahedron. But I can’t visualize the dodecahedron/icosahedron at all, it’s just giving me a headache. I’m going to finish downloading OS X 10.2.8 and call it a night.
When I was a highschool sophomore, I had a theory that protons were sour. The logic went like this:
a. Acid solutions become more acidic depending on the amount of H+ (positive hydrogren ions, or basically protons.)
b. Acids are sour. (As learned from the experimentations with litmus paper using household liquids such as tap water, lemon juice, etc…)
c. Therefore if adding more protons to a solution makes it more sour (acidic) then protons MUST be sour.
I don’t think my theory was ever DISproven.
I like your logic with the soccer hooligan theory. It gives me faith that mine might not be totally ludicrous.
Btw, rather than call it a soccer-ball, wouldn’t you say that the dodecahedon also looks like a beer ball – you know, one of those miniture kegs for you and 15 of your intimate friends. That would mesh well with the beer foam idea too.
You guys all make me feel REALLY stupid. I used to think I was clever because I could read Hawking’s “Black Holes and Baby Universes” and understand it, but now I realize that my cheese sandwich has more awareness of the universe than I.
Every month or so, I try really hard to read Distler’s blog, in the hope some of his profound genius will rub off on me. After 3 minutes, my brain is hurting so much I’m forced to retire to a dark room with 3 aspirin.
I haven’t read the Bubble book, but the first essay is by Alan Lightman, who wrote “Einstein’s Dreams,” and the 3rd is by Margaret Geller, who was my awesome astro professor senior year in a class called “The Universe and Everything.” My point? I should read this book. And if you want a better sense of how the icosahedron and the dodecahedron are duals, this site has pictures: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Icosahedron.html .
Remember when they thought all the planetary orbits mapped to platonic solids?
I remember *reading* about when they thought all the planetary orbits mapped to platonic solids. But I’m a bit too young to actually remember the time itself. I think that was at least back when Jacques was in school, possibly before.