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sabato 22 gennaio 2011

The Universe is curved?


For centuries philosophy has questioned the concept of the universe. As regards the form, the Pythagoreans conceived the universe as a sphere. This view was later taken by Copernicus and Kepler in 1500. Just Kepler was convinced that the scheme of the universe could be expressed in numerical and geometric relationships. But Albert Einstein's theory is more revolutionary in this field, since he states that the universe is finite and curved.
As for the word curved he explains that "A person from the exceptional view, looking straight ahead, should be able to see your neck." Suppose that we are all men in one dimension and to live in a universe in a single dimension. Each of us, in this case, it would be only a dash. Our universe, then, would simply be a straight line? No, because the universe is not a straight line but a circle. If one of us would walk all would return to the starting point. The universe, therefore, is not infinite, but finite, and it is finished because it is curved. The space, therefore, is curved by the presence of mass. The curvature of the universe depends on its average expansion rate and the average density of matter it contains. According to this theory, the curvature of the universe is completely determined by its matter-energy content and determines the fate of the cosmos. The General Theory of Relativity of Albert Einstein (1916) has, therefore, represented a major turning point, but the most progress in understanding the general structure of the universe and its evolution have occurred in the last two decades of the last century, thanks to new knowledge about the intimate structure of matter. These discoveries allowed a  philosophical (but also scientific) description of universe.

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