Is everything circular?

Question

Everything in the known Universe seems to be circular. Planets, stars, galaxies etc. If you could feasibly travel at the speed of light and had eternal life would you eventually get back to where you started from.

Answer 1

That is a really good question. I agree that there are many circles in the physical world. The type of circle that you refer to in the last sentence of your question, would be basically a continuous loop, that eventually returns to its original postion, given enough time and speed. Therefore for this question it does not matter if the loop is a smooth circle, an ellipse, or a square. The question is more about it being a continuous loop than it is about whether that loop is square or circle shaped.

Although I agree that there are many continuous loops in physical nature (eg planet orbits), the question you're asking is whether we can apply that continuous loop shape to time. Well there are other shapes in nature besides continous loops, one notable example being waves. Wave motion, in essentially one direction, is a very common shape in nature too, in eg, light and sound.

So, while there are many circle shapes in nature, they are by no means the only shapes we have, so it is too simplistic to believe that this alone is enough to infer that time is circular.

Personally, I don't think that even if we could travel at the speed of light and have eternal life, that we would travel back to where we started from. I think that life is lived in one direction only, towards the future, even eternally.

Answer 2

If you go down to the microscopic level, atoms are made of circular parts. So you could say that everything is circular.
About travelling for ever, the universe is either going to continually expand for ever at the speed of light(so you could never gain any distance on it) or will eventually slow down due the effect of the gravity of all the matter in the universe, so you will never get back to where you started from. (Unless of course you travel into a black hole and it does transport you back to the start. Of course no-one knows what is inside black holes, so there is always the chance you will die a horrible death. Good luck with that!)

Answer 3

No Everything Is Far From Circular ,
I Would Say Off Circular ,Just A Tad,
Looks Like a Circle But Isn't.

Answer 4

SOme morons assume that squares are not circles yet they are. Every dynamic object has a connection of lines that form it to exist in a particular formation. All the lines of every object are connected to make that object. Such as a square all the lines are connected they just bend at a quicker slant then that of a perfect circle. So there fore every square or any other object is an imperfect circle.

Then what is a line? A line has edges around it although it may just look like a line, it is an ellipse (bent circle). If you draw a circle around that line, intill you can make that circle smaller and smaller to it traces over that line. You can minimize the length of that line so the points form a perfect circle around that line.Once it is so thin it becomes nothing but a dot. It's simple thinking. This is just like the expension of the universe from a dot.

Answer 5

Well, first of all, you have to categorize better. Planets and stars are spherical. Some galaxies are somewhat circulare in shape...but not all of them are. Some, like ours, is a spiral arm galaxy, which is round-ISH, but not a true circle. Some galaxies are just messes. And if you look at a circular shaped galaxy on edge its just a segment of a line. That's why the Milky Way is just a band of milky whiteness in the night sky. So no, not everything in the known universe is 'circular' as you define it. But a round shape seems to be very common and stable.

If you really want to blow your mind, read "A Brief History of Time".

Answer 6

Nothing is circular. The orbits of everything in the universe are elliptical. A circle is simply a very special ellipse, where the focal points are in the same place - the centre of the circle.

Though a circle is very much easier for us to draw than an ellipse, orbiting bodies would have to position into a perfect position to orbit in a circle.

Planets and stars all rotate. That rotation ensures that they bulge at their equators. So, nothing is truly spherical.

Answer 7

I have read there is a theory that the space is flat but curved into an 8 like shape, so actually theoretically you could start from one point on it, travel some ridiculously long time, and return to the point where you were originally.

Answer 8

Let me break it down for all you damn fools.

As square, be it in three dimentional reality, or an image on a screen, is still composed of atoms. And guess what??? Surprise mofo's, the atom is ROUND!

hooray, one more problem solved,
You can all sleep soundly once again.

South Africa 1 - Rest of the World 0

Answer 9

Actually, circles are a myth. Everything in the universe is duodocahedral. If you look far enough.

Answer 10

It does seemed like it, doesn't it? Once, the Vietnamese ancestors thought that the world is square, so they made the traditional cake to celebrate New Year's in the square shape (Banh Chung).