Yet another line of evidence suggests the universe is flat: It is isotropic, meaning it looks the same from every angle. How do we know the age of the universe?īut all measurements of our real universe suggest it is just below the critical density, meaning the universe is both flat and will expand indefinitely. What is the smallest particle in the universe? (What about the largest?) What's the coldest place in the universe? If a hypothetical universe were denser than this, it would be curved like a sphere and eventually collapse in on itself due to its gravity - a proposed phenomenon known as the "Big Crunch." At the critical density, a hypothetical universe would be flat and would eventually stop expanding, but only after an infinite time, according to the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Because the universe went from coming into existence as a compact ball of matter to expanding outward at remarkable speeds, all that stretching rendered it flat, or at least as close to flat as possible.Įvidence for the flatness of the universe also shows up in what's known as the critical density. "While we can lower the uncertainty, we only at best constrain the geometry."Īnother reason Spergel is positive the universe is flat is its rapid expansion, which is captured by the Hubble constant. ![]() "We can measure the curvature with some uncertainty, so we can say that the curvature is zero with some uncertainty," Spergel said. Spergel also compared these measurements with those made by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft, which further constrained the possible shapes the universe could take. In this case, the WMAP measurements of CMB fluctuations suggested the universe was both infinite and flat.
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