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What’s the Shape of the Universe? A New Study Is Sparking Debate

For Curiosity:

What is the shape of the universe? The universe is everything that we can observe, so we can’t stand outside it to see if it’s shaped like a ball or a potato chip or something else entirely. That doesn’t mean cosmologists aren’t trying to figure it out, though. It’s an important question, though it forces us to expand our ways of thinking about shape. As it turns out, the answer to the question relates to what the universe is made of and how it began. The issue got some public attention recently when three cosmologists claimed the universe curls back on itself, which contradicts many other observations. So who’s right?

[Read the rest at Curiosity.com …]