favoured topology of Universe candidates

Boud Roukema boud w astro.uni.torun.pl
Pon, 11 Lut 2002, 18:57:04 CET


On Sat, 9 Feb 2002 Kengrimes123 w aol.com wrote:
> Could you please confirm your title and institution for the Astronomy 
> article?

Dear Ken & Alison,

Title: Dr
Institution (full name): 
Torun Centre for Astronomy, Nicholas Copernicus University

International linguistic trivium: The "n" in Torun should have a
"grave accent" on top, i.e. a forward slanting accent, like the accent
on top of "e" in "été" ('et'e, = "summer" in French).

> Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 16:51:33 EST
> From: Kengrimes123 w aol.com
> To: boud w astro.uni.torun.pl
> Subject: Re: favoured topology of Universe candidates
> 
> Sorry for the hiatus. We thought, 'We'll get back to Boud as soon as we've 
> got our heads round this.' Still trying!

Did you get anywhere with this? I admit that in my case it took many
years between learning about the existence of non-Euclidean geometry
and developing an intuition in which I was satisfied that this was
possible without needing an extra dimension. (The latter time happened
to be when I attended a course on algebraic topology.) During the
intervening time, I accepted that people were probably correct in
their claims, but it was rather unsatisfying. My hope is that with
proper explanation, the period of years could be replaced by the space
of an hour or so..., or, at least, an hour or so of initial reading
followed by a week of deep thought and playing with idea in one's mind...

I'm sure that playing with the games on Jeff Weeks' site that I
referred you to should help. Don't be embarrassed to play games -
understanding is not a matter just of cold logic, it also requires
intuition via the chaotic process of a neural network. Playing games
is what mathematicians do most of the time. Since you're
both journalists, probably the word games that Jeff has provided 
would sink deepest into the cores of your minds.  E.g. try the games

http://humber.northnet.org/weeks/TorusGames/html/WordSearch.html
http://humber.northnet.org/weeks/TorusGames/html/Crossword.html

with Java and auto-image-load enabled (this is probably the case by
default). 

And try them with the "Klein bottle" setting! Try to "unlearn" what
you thought you knew about physics, just have fun playing the games
instead.  Imagine you're really living in the WordSearch.html, like a
good movie.

And then, chances are a moment will occur when, all of a sudden, 
you'll realise that a multiply connected flat space makes perfect
sense without needing an extra dimension...

>  Thanks, Ken & Alison.

BTW, would you be able to run the final version of the draft text by
me, at least the part of the text regarding our discussions? You would
of course be free to ignore or follow my comments as you wish, but it
would be good that I have the chance to at least make my suggestions.

Cheers
Boud


 



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