A Short History Of Nearly Everything?

Question

I have a few questions about the book A Short History Of Nearly Everything.
In the book, there’s this example of why we cannot travel to the outer bounds of the universe…it says that, the universe bends in such a way that we cannot adequately imagine. And because if you tried to travel outward and outward in a straight line, you would never arrive at an outer boundary, but instead that you would come back to the point at which you had started.

And then they give this an analogy as a means of better understanding what was just said. The analogy says that, if for example you bring a person from a flat-surfaced universe to Earth, and if he started to roam the planet trying to find the edge of the planet, he would never get anywhere, he would just go in circles. And that in space, we have the same problem, only we’re flummoxed by a higher dimension.

1. So my question is, how can you compare, trying to find the outer bounds of the universe to trying to find the edge of a planet? Because to me, if you wanted to find the outer bounds of this planet, first of all you would have to start going a different direction, specifically; upwards. If you went up, and got past the O-Zone Layer of the Earth, wouldn’t that be like surpassing the outer bounds of our planet? Isn’t that example more suiting? And I know that we are still no where near having the technology to travel to the outer bounds of the universe even if we could, but I mean, using the analogy of going up in a rocket and surpassing the Earth’s atmosphere…couldn’t we, not yet, but someday, figure out like some sort of equation, formula, method or just some way of taking the right course or route so as to avoid the “curves” of the universe that keeps making us go in circles, and just somehow find a way to keep going straight towards the outer bound?

2. What exactly do they mean by we’re flummoxed by a higher “dimension”? Do they mean something like a 4th dimension? Does such a thing exist? I’m sorry if this question is kind of dumb, it’s just that I really don’t know.

I’d really appreciate any answers you could give me. Thank you in advance for taking the time to answer my question. =)

Thank you so much everyone for all your answers. =)

Answer 1

Checkout this video on you-tube it might help you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u4CFTZtcXE
be sure to checkout the next part also!!

Answer 2

I think what they are saying is that if you traveled in space you would come back to the same point just like walking around the world,. In space you might imagine traveling along the edge of the inside of an inflated balloon, you would wind up back in the same place also. Time is generally considered to be the 4th dimension. But to think of other dimensions use this analogy. A fish in a fish pond thinks the fish pond is the entire universe. The fish knows the water, the bottom and maybe even the slight bit of air above the water. If the fish pond is in the mall, the mall building, which the fish can't even imagine is there would be another dimension to the fish.

Answer 3

The analogy is a good one. A two-dimensional being exploring earth would never find a boundary. Tell him to look 'up' in a third dimension when he understands only two just isn't meaningful to him. The book is saying that we can't find the boundary of the universe because we're looking in only three dimensions.

Remember, this is only something to think about. No one has even come close to proving that it represents reality.

Answer 4

The book is flawed when compared to modern measurements. There's no proof that the universe wraps back on itself. All measurements of the background radiation show that it is flat. That means a straight line is indeed straight.