Teach Astronomy – The Shape of Space
According to the theory of general relativity, the universe and the space we live in may actually have a shape, and the shape need not be the flat infinite space described by Euclidean geometry. Infinite space will be flat, but curved space could be finite or infinite, bounded or unbounded. Consider for example the surface area of a sphere. A sphere is a curved surface. Its area is finite, four pi r squared, and yet it’s an unbounded surface. You can travel endlessly on the surface of a sphere without falling off. The universe has curvature that’s very subtle, and so the bending of light by gravity is only visible when viewed over very large distances, cosmological distances of billions of lightyears. It’s up to astronomers to make geometric measurements within the universe to decide what the curvature of space is, and it turns out that the universe we live in is very close to flat.
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