What’s The Shape Of The Universe?

The universe is a vast unknown, a question which humans have pondered about for centuries. At first, their questions simply surrounded what we were made of, and what the universe was made of. Later, after our ancestors discovered stars and other planets, they had a little better of an idea. They started to map the solar system, originally thinking everything orbited the Earth until they corrected it.

Later, we discovered other galaxies, and determined where we stood in ours (it turns out we’re pretty far out on a limb). We discovered black holes, and formulated theories on where they lead. String theorists began to try and connect the world of quanta and the macro world in an attempt to fit the universe into a set of equations.

However, many questions still remained in the minds of most scientists, one of which we still haven’t fully gleaned the answer to: what exactly is the shape of the universe? Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to know, especially given all the factors that would design the shape of the universe. There are, however, a couple big ones which can give us somewhat of a picture of what the universe looks like and how it’s shaped:

• The overall curvature. The universe has three big options for curvature: positive, negative, and zero. As of now, the geometry of the universe is considered to be pretty euclidian.