Universal

Topology
On The Geometry of
the Universe

Nick Watson
11/26/2009

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 One of the major open questions in modern cosmology is regarding the

geometry of our universe and the implications it has on the fate of the universe. Is it

flat, spherical, or hyperbolic? Will it expand forever or eventually collapse upon

itself? Questions like these have been around since the early 20th century, but it

wasn’t until recently that astrophysicists have had the technology to make any

significant non-theoretical progress towards discovering the answers. The purpose

of this paper is to explore in depth the methods used and the results discovered on

the quest to answer: What does the universe look like, and how will it end?

Before humanity began to investigate the shape of the universe, we had to

know the shape of our own Earth. In today’s world of satellite photos and space

travel, this question may seem trivial, but the question was deceptively hard in the

days of the Greek scientists and philosophers. One of the earliest theories, from the

ancient Egyptians, was that the Earth rose like a hill out of a large and possibly

infinite ocean. This view was discarded by the Greeks, many of whom, including

Pythagoras, taught that the Earth was spherical. One of the Pythagoreans, Philolaus,

even taught that the Sun, Earth and stars orbited a large central fire invisible to

humans. This view would be consistent with a four-dimensional universe, in which

the stars and planets resided in a three-dimensional subspace while the real center

of the universe was in the fourth dimension and therefore unreachable. But before

delving further into that matter, how did the Greeks come to the conclusion that the

Earth was spherical?

It was immediately apparent to the Greeks and other ancient observers that

the Earth was not flat, but in fact had positive curvature. As ships appeared from

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over the horizon, the Greeks noticed that the mast of the ship always appeared

first, followed by the hull of the ship, a phenomenon characteristic of positive

curvature. Furthermore, during lunar eclipses the Earth cast a rounded shadow on

the moon. None of these observations, however, points to a spherical Earth. In fact,

there are infinitely many distinct orientable 2-manifolds1 that would have these

properties. Even the fact that Magellan circumnavigated the Earth does nothing to

narrow down that list. What’s to say the Earth wasn’t a torus? It has positive

curvature, casts a curved shadow, and if one sets out traveling in one direction, he

will eventually return to his initial position. In fact, the Greeks could never really

know for sure what the shape of the Earth was until they had mapped it completely,

though they certainly had techniques to give them a good educated guess.

Similar to the way the Greeks endeavored to find the shape of Earth, modern

astrophysicists are trying to discover the shape of universe. Unfortunately, this is

not nearly as simple as finding the shape of the Earth, because we can never view

the universe as a whole. To do this would require us to be able to exit the universe,

which is impossible because it would require us to be able to move through the

fourth dimension. To further complicate things, the universe is very large, and

modern observers can only see and map a very small fraction of it. Finding the

shape of the universe, however, is more than just mapping large areas and looking

for a shape. One of the chief instruments involved in this quest for the shape of the

universe is the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which was launched

in 2001 and succeeds the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. It measures

temperature differences (anisotropies) in the cosmic microwave background with

1 A 2-manifold is any geometric object that can be locally represented by two directions.

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much more precision than COBE, making it one of the most important satellites

NASA has in orbit.

The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) is an extremely uniform

source of energy in the universe, and it was this uniformity that led scientists to

conclude that it was heat left over from the Big Bang (for what else could cause

nearly identical temperatures everywhere?). For about 380,000 years after the Big

Bang, when the temperature was high enough for free subatomic particles to be

whizzing around, photons could not travel without crashing into these particles;

however, when the temperature dropped below 3000 K, the protons and electrons

formed hydrogen atoms, at which point the photons could move around freely. This

point is known as the surface of last scattering and the CMBR we observe today

comes from this surface and dates back to the early universe.

The CMBR is critical in discovering the overall shape of the universe. One of

the things WMAP was sent to measure was the fluctuations in this radiation. These

fluctuations would hardly be considered fluctuations by any layman, because the

difference between “cold” and “hot” is only 0.0002 K. NASA asserts that the

brightest of these fluctuations would be approximately 0.5 degrees across if the

universe were hyperbolic, 1 degree across if the universe were flat, and 1.5 degrees

across for a spherical universe. When WMAP returned the data it collected, NASA

scientists saw that the fluctuations appeared to approximately 1 degree with a 2%

margin of error, so they concluded that our universe is mostly flat.

Their reasoning certainly makes sense to me. Since a fixed radius produces

the largest circumference for hyperbolic manifolds and the smallest for spherical

ones, it makes sense that if the circumference is fixed instead, the inequalities

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would reverse and the radius would be smallest for hyperbolic manifolds and largest

for spherical ones. The fact that they are using this data to conclude that the entire

universe is flat, though, seems to be faulty reasoning. If the universe is really as

large as everyone believes it is, then WMAP is only going to be able to observe a

small chunk of it, and of course it’s going to appear flat. That’s one of the defining

characteristics of smooth manifolds; on small enough scales, they all look like

regular Euclidean space. It seems like the only thing this data does confirm is the

Copernican principle, namely that we are nowhere special. That in itself isn’t

completely trivial though. For instance, if the universe has a non-homogeneous

shape, then this proves that we are not near any peculiar characteristic of the

shape, where the curvature would be significantly different from zero, even to the

extent we could observe.

One of the simplest models of the universe2 is a flat universe, known as the

Lambda-Cold-Dark-Matter (ΛCDM) model or the concordance model, where dark

matter has non-relativistic speeds and remains mostly fixed. This model

corresponds to an Ω value of exactly one, and the universe will expand forever,

though at a continuously decreasing rate that asymptotically approaches zero.

(Perhaps its volume is proportional to ln(t), so that its rate of expansion dV/dt ∝ 1/t,

which is zero after an infinite amount of time.) This model isn’t particularly

interesting, but it explains the observations of astronomers and measurements

made by WMAP reasonably well. Though it might ultimately fail to explain the

workings of the entire universe, it is a good approximation for the nearly flat

2 Wikipedia calls it “a useful parameterization of ignorance”.

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observable universe (much the same way that a flat map works well for a city or

state). As the scale increases, however, this model runs into a few problems.

One major problem many astronomers found with the concordance model

was that it failed to explain a low quadrupole mode; that is, the amplitude of the

CMBR at an angular scale of 90° was seven times weaker than the concordance

model predicted. This is very troubling, though, because measuring the universe on

large scales gives the best indication of its overall topology. As a result of this

unexpected quadrupole, astronomers considered other possible shapes of the

universe that could possibly explain this anomaly. If the universe is not flat, then it

has either positive or negative curvature, and within each of those categories there

are various possible models, some better than others. I read and attempted to

understand the research papers that some of these astronomers wrote defending

their proposed models of the universe, and my thoughts and analysis follow.

But before talking about different potential models of the universe, we must

at least mention dark energy. Dark energy is hypothetical energy that scientists

have concluded must exist to explain the positive second derivative of expansion,

i.e. the acceleration in the expansion of the universe, as well as the overall

geometry of the universe. Regardless of the geometry, Ω must be very close to one

(or else the universe never would have been stable enough for stars and planets to

form), but measurements have indicated that Ωmat is only about 0.26. In the ΛCDM

model, the density due to the dark energy, ΩΛ, is taken to be a cosmological

constant (with a value approximately equal to 0.74), similar to Einstein’s discarded

constant (one he later referred to as his “greatest blunder”). In other non-Euclidean

models of the universe, ΩΛ varies a little bit, but not too much. One interesting

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property of dark energy is that if it is indeed causing the expansion of the universe,

it must have negative pressure; in other words, it’s not pushing but pulling on

matter. At this point, not much is known about dark energy, but astrophysicists

hope to change that with upcoming projects such as the Dark Energy Survey and

the Joint Dark Energy Mission. But that’s a topic for a different paper.

If the universe has positive curvature, the first possible shape that comes to

mind is the 3-sphere. Described as the most perfect three-dimensional object by

Plato, the sphere seems at first glance to agree with the whole idea of the Big Bang.

In fact, this is what I thought when I first heard about the Big Bang. Since the

universe exploded out of a single point, why wouldn’t it form a perfect sphere, with

all of the matter and energy expanding radially outward? I have since learned,

however, that since there was nothing before the Big Bang3, every point in the

universe corresponds to a point in the very early (t<10-30 seconds) universe, the Big

Bang occurred at every point in the universe. That’s not to say that the universe

can’t be the 3-sphere, though. In fact there was at least one person who seemed to

think this was the shape of the universe. Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy,

modeled his universe and nine celestial spheres in a strikingly similar manner to the

3-sphere.4 (Seeing as the birth of topology wasn’t for another several hundred

years, it’s unlikely he modeled it after the 3-sphere.) Unfortunately, though the 3-

sphere is one of the simplest models, this next model appears to be a better

proposal.

3 Or was there? Speculation on this comes later when the Big Crunch is discussed.

4 Petersen, Mark. Dante and the 3-Sphere. American Journal of Physics. December 1979
edition.

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 For a positively curved universe, the Poincaré dodecahedral space (PDS) fits

the data collected by WMAP the best. Mathematically, the PDS is the quotient

space SO(3)/I, where SO(3) is the group of all isometric (distance-preserving)

rotations about the origin (in ℝ3) and I is the icosahedral group (group of isometries

of the icosahedron). Alternatively, it is the quotient space S3/Ī, where S3 is the 3-

sphere and Ī is the binary icosahedral group. Intuitively (or maybe not), the PDS can

be modeled by taking an ordinary dodecahedron and identifying opposite faces.

These faces are then “glued” together after a 36° (π/5) twist to line them up. This is,

of course, impossible to do in three dimensions, but it is a perfectly well-defined

compact 3-manifold in four dimensions. One of the characteristics that makes it

different from many of the other proposed models of the universe is that it is

multiply connected, meaning that there is more than one direct path (i.e. line) from

one point to another.

In May 2008, a group of astronomers and mathematicians published a paper

that analyzed WMAP data to see whether it supported this PDS model. They used

sophisticated statistical tools such as cross-correlation and auto-correlation

functions to study the temperature anisotropies in the CMBR. They predicted that

the two correlation functions would have similar magnitudes and that they would be

able to measure the twist angle of 36° if indeed the universe were shaped like the

PDS. They believed that if the PDS was really the correct model of the universe,

then the universe was actually much smaller than we originally thought, and was

completely contained in what we perceive to be the observable universe!

This is truly odd. If the universe is smaller than the observable universe, then

some of the objects we are seeing with instruments such as WMAP are duplicates of

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each other. One of the analogies that helped me understand this phenomenon was

to imagine a hall of mirrors, where I would be able to see multiple copies of myself

at a time; however, if I threw a rock at one of the images of me, it wouldn’t just

break a mirror; it would actually hit me! In this scenario, because of the optical

illusion, the universe would appear much larger than it actually is, but in fact it

would be 120 times smaller than a spherical universe.5 The reason for this exact

number, I presume, follows from something I learned in Algebra this year:

Lagrange’s Theorem, which states that if H is a subgroup of G, then |G/H|=|G||H|,

(where |G| is the order (size) of the group G). In this case we know that PDS≅S3Ī so

PDS=|S3||Ī|; however, the binary icosahedral group has order 120, so we obtain the

formula 120PDS=|S3|. Yet despite its small size, the PDS is still a viable model of

the universe.

Many of the statistical calculations and measurements were very complicated

and went over my head6, but I was able to extract a reasonable understanding of

their work. These researchers were, put simply, trying to observe this hall-of-

mirrors effect in the data collected by WMAP using what they referred to as the

“identified circles principle”.7 They argued that they should be able to find the same

temperature fluctuations in “different” parts of the universe, but rotated 36°. As I

understand it, this is why the cross-correlation function should have magnitude

equal to the auto-correlation function; if the universe “wraps around” and seemingly

distant and unrelated temperature fluctuations are in reality very close to each

5 Luminet, Jean-Pierre. A Cosmic Hall of Mirrors. Physicsworld.com. September 2005.

6 In other words, I read their research with a Wikipedia page open in the background and my
left hand on Alt-Tab.

7 Cornish, Neil et al. Circles in the sky: finding topology with the microwave background
radiation. June 1998.

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other, then the correlation between two supposedly distant anisotropies should be

similar to the correlation between two anisotropies in the same region of the CMBR.

The team of researchers did indeed find similar correlations but also realized that

on large angular scales greater than 60° (which are sensitive to the topology of

space), there seemed to be “a lack of power” (low amplitude) in the radiation from

the surface of last scattering, especially at the quadrupole (θ=90°). The reason for

this, they suggested, was that the longer redshifted wavelengths that should have

been seen (for a Euclidean space) were missing because the space was not large

enough to sustain them, which supports the smaller finite PDS model of the

universe. In addition, the team measured a twist angle of 39°±2.5°, which is also

consistent with the PDS. They concluded that the PDS model (with Ω=1.018) was a

good fit for the data collected by WMAP.8

As we learned, an Ω value of 1.018 has serious implications on the fate of the

universe. Eventually the universe will stop expanding and collapse upon itself in a

colossal implosion known as the Big Crunch. Because the universe would be dense

enough, the force of gravity would be strong enough to eventually overcome the

force of dark energy that is causing the universe to expand. If this happens, the

universe will collapse into a singularity, sort of like a complete reversal of the Big

Bang. Intuitively, this idea of the Big Crunch makes sense. It naïvely agrees with

Newton’s third law, that every force creates an equal and opposite force. It also

seems to fit with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, where matter can be created

8 Roukema, Boudewijn et al. The optimal phase of the generalised Poincaré dodecahedral
space hypothesis implied by the spatial cross-correlation function of the WMAP sky-maps.
Astronomy & Astrophysics, August 2008.

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from nothing, just not for too long. The Big Crunch could be a way to achieve the

equilibrium of nothingness before the Big Bang.

This raises another interesting question though. If it’s possible that the

universe could collapse back to a singularity, is it possible that there were other

universes before this one? I would guess that the answer is probably not. If there

existed somewhere a singularity with the mass of a universe, it seems reasonable to

assume that we would notice its massive gravitational effects; according to the

black hole equations, the event horizon should have a radius equal to 2GM/c2, and if

M is the mass of the universe, the Schwarzchild radius is going to be outrageously

huge, even astronomically speaking. So that’s probably not the answer. In that

case, what if this universe and the previous one (if it existed) are the same? What if

our universe is just one in a cycle of universes? One universe implodes (Crunch!),

and once enough energy is amassed, it explodes into the next universe (Bang!). 9

Since everything collapsed down to a singularity during the Crunch, successive

universes would need not be the same or even be structured similarly.

All in all, I would say that I like the idea of a positively curved and finite

universe. Of the three possibilities, it’s the only model with all finite dimensions, and

it’s the only one that has a definite end. For all the other models, the notion of

infinite time and space must be introduced, which complicates things.

Unfortunately, there is not that much evidence supporting or disproving this model

at the current time, so until the next probe returns with additional data, we will

remain in the dark.

9 Forgive me if what I’m suggesting right now is complete nonsense.

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 Of the three possible models of the universe, the negatively curved one is the

strangest. Hyperbolic geometry and horned topologies are non-compact and stretch

the limit of human imagination, but nonetheless provide a viable model for the

universe. One of the proposed universes is the Sokolov-Starobinskii model, which is

a horned topological space. A way to model this space is by taking the points (x,y,z)

∈ ℝ3, and identifying points periodically along the xy-plane, so that

(x,y,z)=(x+ma,y+nb,z) for some constants a and b and m,n ∈ ℤ. This horn becomes

narrow as z increases, but becomes exponentially wider as z approaches zero,

causing it to have infinite volume. Unfortunately, this gives it the same problem as

the flat universe, namely that the low quadrupole moment is not predicted by this

model. To me, this seems to indicate that the universe is finite, and so the next

model discussed is a refinement of the Solokov-Starobinskii hyperbolic space.

This refined model of the universe is the Picard Horn, an infinitely-long

trumpeted-shaped hyperbolic manifold with finite volume. It is formed like the

above model, taking a=b=1, only the base of the horn is “chopped off” (at some

small z>0) so that the whole horn has finite volume. The reason for this is that as

we approach the narrow (infinite) end of the Horn, the cross-sectional diameter

shrinks to zero so quickly that it nullifies the infinite length. As a math major, I am

comfortable with convergent infinites series and improper integrals. In fact, the way

the Picard Horn is shaped is similar to the rotation of the function e-x about the x-

axis, which has a (finite) volume of π0∞e-2xdx=π2. One of the most interesting

characteristics of this universe (aside from the fact that it shares its name with a

Star Trek character) is that there would be a point in the horn-shaped universe so

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narrow that we would be able to see our own backs.10 Nonetheless, the supporters

of this model showed that even if we are located reasonably high up the horn, the

Picard model would still agree with the observations made by WMAP.

This research team used a similar approach to the scientists looking to

support the PDS. (In fact, there were a couple people in both groups.) Because of

the periodicity of the Picard Horn, the astronomers looked for repeating patterns in

the CMBR using the identified circles method, though they of course had to use

different mathematical equations and formulae (including the metric) to account for

the negative curvature of space. They explained the fact that few to no “identified

circles” were observed by WMAP using the integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect. The effect

describes how the radiation from the CMB is gravitationally redshifted by local

masses, and thus will appear different to observers on Earth, despite being initially

at the same wavelength as another wave from a different part of the universe. After

adjusting for this effect, they found that using a model with a matter density of 0.30

and a dark energy density of 0.65 gave the best correlation with the WMAP data,

fitting not only the data measured on small angular scales, but also explaining the

“power loss” at the quadrupole.11 The team concluded that the Picard Horn was

consistent with current measurements from the CMBR, but also that there wasn’t

enough data yet available to say much more.

Even though the volume Picard universe is finite, the fact that it’s hyperbolic

and Ω<1 implies that it will expand forever. One thing that’s somewhat unclear to

10 Is it cowardly to shoot yourself in the back?

11 Aurich, Ralf et al. Hyperbolic Universes with a Horned Topology and the CMB Anisotropy.
Classical and Quantum Gravity Electronic Journal. Issue 21, November 7, 2004.

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me is how it will expand. Due to the complex design of the model, radial expansion

doesn’t make sense, and it can’t expand in all directions, seeing as it’s already

infinitely long. It seems reasonable that it would expand outward in its finite

dimension by the scale factor, but remain fixed at the infinite tip of the horn, thus

maintaining its finite volume. This continuous expansion begs the question, though,

what’s the ultimate fate of the universe. Since the dark energy obviously outdid

gravity and caused the universe to expand forever, the Big Crunch is clearly not an

option.

One of the proposed fates is the Heat Death, in which the universe reaches

maximum entropy. This will take a while to happen, to say the least. The second law

of thermodynamics states that entropy will always be increasing (since the universe

is expanding and therefore not in equilibrium), but it gives no specifications on how

quickly it must increase. After the Degenerate Era, in which nucleons begin to

decay, and the self-explanatory Black Hole Era, the universe will enter the Dark Era,

where only massless particles remain, such as photons, electrons, and positrons. At

this point (10100 years in the future) the entropy of the universe will reach its max,

and the so-called heat death will have been achieved. Before the universe reaches

heat death, however, another less likely yet far more dramatic conclusion could

happen: the Big Rip. At this point, the cosmological scale factor becomes infinite

and the universe’s expansion literally rips matter apart, destroying all the atoms.

While the hyperbolic universe explains the large-scale measurements well,

the fact that it corresponds to Ω=0.95 is somewhat troubling. Even though WMAP

measured on smaller scales than the entire universe, the fact that it came up with

Ω=1±0.02 seems to rule this model out, unless the universe is really huge;

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however, the shape of the Picard horn is so unique that I would think that WMAP

would have picked up a little more variation on Ω, even if the universe is much

larger. We’ll have to wait and see.

Astronomers certainly have their work cut out for them for the next few years

at least. The next batch of data will come from the Planck satellite, which was

launched in May 2009 as a new-and-improved successor to WMAP. Its mission: to

improve the map of the universe, to measure CMBR anisotropies, (and to boldly go

where no man has gone before12). Also in the works are the Joint Dark Energy

Mission and the Dark Energy Survey, which will hopefully shed some light on dark

energy and its role in the universe’s expansion. If I had to guess, I would say that by

2020, we will know with a high degree of certainty both the geometry of the

universe and the cause of its accelerated expansion. As Einstein said, “the eternal

mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”

12 Shatner, William.

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Aurich, Ralf et al. CMB Alignment in Multi-Connected Universes. Classical and

Quantum Gravity Electronic Journal. Issue 24, Number 7. April 7, 2007.

Aurich, Ralf et al. Hyperbolic Universes with a Horned Topology and the CMB
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Battersby, Stephen. Big Bang glow hints at funnel-shaped Universe.

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Numerous Wikipedia pages.

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