CAN WE SEE THE SHAPE OF OUR UNIVERSE?
- 20 November 2002
- journal article
- Published by World Scientific Pub Co Pte Ltd in International Journal of Modern Physics A
- Vol. 17 (29) , 4281-4286
- https://doi.org/10.1142/s0217751x02013320
Abstract
We address three relevant questions related to the search for the size and shape of our Universe: (i) How do the actual observation of multiple images of certain cosmic objects, e.g. galaxy clusters, constrain the possible models for the shape of our Universe?, (ii) What kind of predictions can be done once a pair of cosmic objects have been identified to be topological images related by a translation?, and (iii) Is it possible to determine if two regions of space are topologically identified, even when distortions on the distributions of cosmic sources due to observational limitations are not negligible? We give examples answering the first two questions using the suggestion of Roukema and Edge that the clusters RXJ 1347.5-1145 and CL 09104+4109 might be topological images of the Coma cluster. For the third question, we suggest a method based on the analysis of PSH's noise correlations which seems to give a positive answer.Keywords
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