The Wraparound Universe [Hardcover]

Jean-Pierre Luminet (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1568813090 | ISBN-13: 978-1568813097 | Publication Date: March 28, 2008

What shape is the universe? Is it curved and closed in on itself? Is it expanding? Where is it headed? Could space be wrapped around itself, such that it produces ghost images of faraway galaxies? Such are the questions posed by Jean-Pierre Luminet in The Wraparound Universe, which he then addresses in clear and accessible language. An expert in black holes and the big bang, he leads us on a voyage through the surprising byways of space-time, where possible topologies of the universe, explorations of the infinite, and cosmic mirages combine their mysterious traits and unlock the imagination. The Wraparound Universe is a general-audience book about the overall topology or shape of the universe. The central question addressed is whether it is possible that the universe is wrapped around in an interesting way, and what impact this would have on astronomical observations and our understanding of cosmology. Along the way many of the general features and much of the history of the modern picture of cosmology are discussed.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This beautiful book on the possibility that our universe is a huge optical illusion will change the way you look at the sky . . . Luminet's book The Wraparound Universe was originally published in French in 2001, two years before the WMAP results were released. Now it is appearing for the first time in English with an extended afterword. Sophisticated and beautifully written, the book is a thorough and enjoyable introduction to cosmic topology, the study of the global structure of space. --New Scientist

Luminet's deep understanding of the history of cosmology combines with his scientific knowledge and expository skills to produce a delightful introduction to the much-debated question of the shape of the universe. Directed at an intelligent layperson, The Wraparound Universe combines geometrical insights with astronomical observations leading to the idea of a universe that is finite yet has no boundary. --Jeff Weeks, author of The Shape of Space

This book is well written and nicely illustrated, giving a clear exposition of the mathematical and astronomical ideas involved as well as the various ways of observationally testing this possibility. --George Ellis, Cape Town

About the Author

Jean-Pierre Luminet is a world-known astrophysicist at the Meudon Observatory in France and a leading expert on black holes, cosmology, and the new field of cosmic topology. He was awarded the 2006 Great Prize of the French Academy of Sciences for Science Communication, and the 1999 International Georges Lemaitre Prize for his original contributions to cosmology and astrophysics. He has published several dozen articles in refereed journals such as Nature, Astrophysical Journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, and many others. In addition to his research work he has published three acclaimed novels and several poetry books.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: AK Peters, Ltd. (March 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568813090
• ISBN-13: 978-1568813097
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outside the Box, June 9, 2008

By 

Georges Melki (Beirut,Lebanon) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wraparound Universe (Hardcover)

This book on Cosmology is in a class by itself, so the reader who is already familiar with the "Standard Model" should expect some surprises. The central theme is the following : instead of a simple topology, the Universe could have a multiply connected topology, and could be much smaller than is usually assumed. Therefore, in this "dodecahedral" Universe, some of the galaxies we see are not real galaxies, but are only images of other galaxies!
The author, Jean-Pierre Luminet, apart from being an astrophysicist and a specialist on black holes, is also a gifted writer, who has published many scientific novels and even some poetry, in addition to many popular books on astrophysics and cosmology(unfortunately, most of them are in French.For more information, the interested reader may want to visit his webpage at luth2.obspm.fr). So he leads the reader to this conclusion in a step-by-step fashion, and he explains all the nooks and crannies of cosmology, without forgetting the Einstein field equations and the Friedmann equations, which are the basis for all cosmological models. Then, drawing on his own research in cosmic topology, which is too technical to be part of this book, he uses the latest estimates of the cosmological parameters, especially the total density Omega(slightly larger than 1) to conclude that the Universe must have a multiply connected topology. This is in contradiction with the "mainstream" inflationary paradigm, which uses the same data to prove that the Universe is spatially flat, and therefore infinite. Hence a dispute between "cosmologists" and "topologists", which the latter think they would eventually win, because their theory gives a natural explanation of the so-called "low multipole anomaly" in the power spectrum of the CMB.
Luminet, with whom I had some correspondence about this and some other of his books, hopes that the Planck satellite, expected to be launched in October 2008, would give a much more accurate CMB power spectrum than WMAP, which will eventually resolve this tantalizing issue.

But whatever the outcome, this beautiful book, which offers an example of thinking "outside the box", is a must read for all those interested in Cosmology, and I highly recommend it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern cosmology and sociology of science, July 12, 2008

By 

Diego Casadei (NYU and CERN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wraparound Universe (Hardcover)

I would like to add further comments to the first review by G. Melki. The first and simplest is about the book structure, a collection of 45 very short chapters that make easier for the reader to follow her/his natural "pace". I think that the attention to the reader's needs is one of the reasons why Luminet's books (originally writtenin French) have been translate into other languages.

Second, an important part of the book is about sociology of science. Comments about the impact of different ideas or even about the same ideas in different historic and geographic conditions are scattered through all the book, and are especially concentrated at the end. Just to limit this review to modern aspects, I could say that inflation is favored by many scientists, even though it is not without problems. Naively, one can realize that inflation forbids observation of multiply connected topologies, just because one expects that the radius of the universe has been inflated so much that it lies well beyond the cosmic horizon. However, Luminet stresses that this is not enough to discard such nontrivial topologies a priori, and that one should interpret the experimental observations also from different points of view.

Other subtleties are also reviewed. For example, chapter 39 is all about the problem of measuring the curvature of the universe. Despite few recent claims that the space is Euclidean, which implies that the density parameter is _exactly_ 1, the author emphasizes that we can never measure any value with certainty, so that it is impossible to state that "space is flat". Instead, modern measurements are compatible with this hypothesis but favor values of the density parameter that are a bit larger than one, so that it seems that the geometry is spherical. Because all spherical topologies are closed spaces, this is a suggestion that the universe is spatially closed, even though the usual preferred model is that of a infinite Euclidean space!

Finally, Luminet shows that the most recent data about the cosmic background radiation from the WMAP satellite are better fit by "well-proportioned spaces", among which the best one seems to be the _spherical dodecahedral Poincaré space_, whose volume is 120 times smaller than the hypersphere (i.e. the simply connected topology) with the same curvature. This conclusion has been criticized by many researchers, but cannot be falsified with the present data, so that we need to wait until data from the PLANCK satellite will be available.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique topic that has not been explored in any cosmology book I know., November 11, 2008

By 

Wojciech Langer (Toronto, Ontario) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Wraparound Universe (Hardcover)

I fully agree with earlier reviews. It is a beautiful and important book that will expand any cosmology follower's knowledge. I have never encountered a cosmic topology subject in numerous publications dealing with Universe (please see my Listmania). I had no idea of topology role in establishing whether global shape of space is finite or infinite.
Briefly: we learn, that for spherical finite space general relativity shows how to indirectly measure the curvature of the space. Its value depends on the average density of matter/energy that it contains. However for the geometries of the two other families, Euclidean and hyperbolic, the finite or infinite character of space no longer depends simply on the curvature and on the energy density: it depends on the TOPOLOGY !
While for decades observational cosmology pushed itself to determine the curvature parameters directly while neglecting the topological possibilities, it could be that in the XXI century, it would be primarily the experimental determination of the topology of the Universe that would allow us to fix, with great precision, the curvature and the cosmological constant - those traditional parameters on which the ultimate fate of the cosmos depends: perpetual expansion or eventual contraction. Is theory of Big Bang truly valid and confirmed? - author presents its limits and simplifications. However I must admit that some parts of the book are not easy, as reader is asked to jump from two to three dimensions. This require stretching imagination to the limit (chapters about multiply connected spaces leading to cosmic crystallography methods). Lack of glossary of terms is detrimental, particularly, because there are many of them here, not to be found in other cosmology books. Nevertheless it is fascinating lecture - do not miss it !