A Man-sized Universe

Reaching beyond the solar system becomes more problematical. Extrapolating into the extension of familiar Euclidean space-time we are soon overwhelmed by billions of solar systems in the Galaxy, which we call the Milky 

followed by the appearance of billions of galaxies in an endless infinite space without limit or frontier. Something is seriously amiss. Have we ignored the admonition not to extrapolate from the known to the unknown Can we really trust the picture presented by our increasingly powerful telescopes  

I remember a childhood fascination with a baking-powder tin, labeled with a picture of itself, in endless progression. Is that what we see through our telescopes We are told that by looking more deeply into space we look at objects that existed further and further back in the past. Already we are looking at objects older than the universe itself and still find infinitely many objects beyond that. This is the time to reconsider our understanding of the world. 

The way in which such a topology could create the illusion of an infinite night sky is likened (Luminet, 2008) to a room panelled by mirrors on all six surfaces  

We are beginning to see why Poincare s prediction has been confirmed. To disentangle the composite picture generated by multiply-connected space-time will be a daunting task that promises to keep astronomers occupied for 

---