[roywiggins]

And we've done exactly that using our cosmological models of the Big Bang:

https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/sgoals_parameters_geom.htm...

One side of the triangle is the width of Cosmic Microwave Background variations (calculated from models of the early universe); the other two sides are known from how far away the CMB appears to be, which is known from independent measures of the expansion of the universe. Some trigonometry will tell you what the interior angle that should make with the Earth, which you'll see as the angular width of the variations in the sky. You can compare those two numbers (the one by trigonometry and the one observed), and determine whether they are different enough to exclude a flat universe.

In other words, if someone holds an 1 foot ruler at a distance, you can use trigonometry to work out how far away it is by using the apparent size. But if you know how far away it is, and the apparent size disagrees with the trigonometry, then the shape of the universe must not be flat. The longer the ruler and the further away it is, the greater the deviation will appear (if there is one). The CMB is very far away indeed so it makes for a good ruler.

[hammock]

> And we've done exactly that using our cosmological models of the Big Bang

What's the result- flat or not?

[roywiggins]

Flat, as far as WMAP can tell!

https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html

Of course the curvature could maybe be arbitrarily small, but... it's definitely very close to flat.

[jazzyjackson]

Hold up, so the flat-earthers just need to think a little bigger?

(Legit tho I've been trying to understand the 'shape' of the universe for a while now -- in the sense of, when I look at stars and galaxies in the sky above me, what direction am I looking as it relates to where things are in the universe relative to each other? As a kid I took Bill Nyes word for it: everything is on the surface of a balloon, expanding from the center. But do I ever see the far side of the balloon? Or is everywhere I look somehow constrained to the surface in every direction away from me, such that the 'other side of the balloon' is infinitely far away... but if I could see far enough, my own spot on the surface of this sphere would be visible to me, minus a few billion years... I want to understand this but I am very confused! This looks like an informative website so I'll keep reading ... thank you)

[roywiggins]

The balloon-surface model works if the universe is actually positively curved. It bends around in on itself and comes back. So you would be able to see yourself (eventually) after light made its way around the surface and back to you.

As far as anyone can tell, though, the universe is flat. So photons traveling outwards from you will never come back around- they'll just keep going.

I'm partial to the raisin bread model of the universe:

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/universe.html

It's a tad misleading: the raisin bread is, probably, infinite in extent. As a practical matter, we can only see a finite portion of the raisin bread. As we gaze more deeply into the sky, we're looking further into the raisin bread. Because light only travels at a finite speed, the further something is away, the older the image we see of it is. At a certain point, all we can see is the goopy bread batter that the raisin bread used to be: that's (sort of, kinda) the Cosmic Microwave Background: it's the oldest light in the universe, and we can't see anything older than it.

So the universe looks like a bunch of galaxies, with us at the center, and a sphere of microwave radiation at the edge. But every single observer sees a similar sphere around their exact location, so it's a kind of illusion.

[eridius]

Does the expansion of the universe mean that galaxies that are too far away from us are seemingly moving faster than the speed of light, and this is why we can't see any galaxies past a given point (because that's where they "accelerate" faster than light)?

[roywiggins]

A lot of the visible universe actually appears to be receding faster than the speed of light:

https://phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies-faster.html

It's because the space inbetween is getting bigger. But light keeps moving towards us from those galaxies, so we see those photons eventually anyway. You can still hear things that are going above the speed of sound, as long as they're headed away from you- if they're headed toward you, you'll not hear them (probably?). But the waves they throw off will expand behind them just fine.

[simonh]

If the universe originated with the big bang and then expanded, then unless it expanded infinitely fast it must be bounded. But if it's bounded, how can it be flat?

[roywiggins]

The math indicates that the singularity was infinitely dense and infinitely hot... if you're already allowing that something infinitely dense could be real, then infinitely fast expansion doesn't seem less crazy. Going from an infinite temperature to a finite temperature is an infinite amount of cooling, which also seems impossible; likewise, an infinite density to a finite one.

You'd need infinite expansion to do that- if it was merely finite, you'd still end up with an infinite density. Expanding an infinitely dense point to a bowling ball still gets you an infinite density; you need to expand it out "infinitely far" (whatever that means) to spread stuff out enough to get a merely finite density.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity

It seems more likely that the singularity at t=0 in general relativity isn't physical- what does an infinite density even mean?