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Cosmologists Try a New Way to Measure the Shape of the Universe
Is the universe flat and infinite, or something more complex? We can’t say for sure, but a new search strategy is mapping out the subtle signals that would reveal if the universe had a shape.
They’re taking advantage of computational capabilities that weren’t available a decade ago, buoyed by the conviction — as they wrote in Physical Review Letters in April 2024 — that “prior searches for topology have far from exhausted the potentially significant possibilities. Compact members are hoping that improved maps of the galaxy distribution due to come in over the next several years from the Euclid, Roman and Spherex space telescopes can enhance the search for cosmic topology. He is motivated to carry on, in part, because topology can potentially explain the anomalies in the CMB — not only the apparent 60-degree cutoff in its statistical correlations, but also the perplexing differences in the patterns observed above and below the orbital plane of the solar system (called the North-South asymmetry).
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