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Last year the best available (WMAP etc.) data said omega was
1.01 +/- 0.01, so univ. could be infinite and perfectly flat
or it might be slightly curved and finite. (other possibilities but those were the main two people considered)
now a new study says 1.01 +/- 0.009
which narrows errorbar down to omega range 1.001 to 1.019
in other words if we take this new study seriously we can still consider maybe univ. is infinite but more apt to be finite and just slightly curved. it has some kind of radius of curvature which might be an interesting distance to determine
So what implications might this have for Quantum Gravity?
There are some QG models which are intrinsically finite in character, or at least appear so at first glance. Like the "dynamical triangulation" modeling by Ambjorn and Loll and Jurkiewicz where they set up the geometry of the universe in a computer and create paths of evolution for the shape of the universe, and randomize. their monte carlo simulations are all finite. maybe they could handle the infinite case by taking a limit and maybe this is just a trivial observation. But my hunch is that if the idea of finiteness is accepted it will tend to favor some lines of QG thinking. I don't know which. this thread could be a place to explore that, if we can.
Here is the paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0501171
Detection of the Baryon Acoustic Peak in the Large-Scale Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
It has 48 authors and BTW Max Tegmark who wrote the SciAm "Multiverse" article is one of them
1.01 +/- 0.01, so univ. could be infinite and perfectly flat
or it might be slightly curved and finite. (other possibilities but those were the main two people considered)
now a new study says 1.01 +/- 0.009
which narrows errorbar down to omega range 1.001 to 1.019
in other words if we take this new study seriously we can still consider maybe univ. is infinite but more apt to be finite and just slightly curved. it has some kind of radius of curvature which might be an interesting distance to determine
So what implications might this have for Quantum Gravity?
There are some QG models which are intrinsically finite in character, or at least appear so at first glance. Like the "dynamical triangulation" modeling by Ambjorn and Loll and Jurkiewicz where they set up the geometry of the universe in a computer and create paths of evolution for the shape of the universe, and randomize. their monte carlo simulations are all finite. maybe they could handle the infinite case by taking a limit and maybe this is just a trivial observation. But my hunch is that if the idea of finiteness is accepted it will tend to favor some lines of QG thinking. I don't know which. this thread could be a place to explore that, if we can.
Here is the paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0501171
Detection of the Baryon Acoustic Peak in the Large-Scale Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
It has 48 authors and BTW Max Tegmark who wrote the SciAm "Multiverse" article is one of them