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BOOMERANG FLATTENS UNIVERSE

Remember the amazing science fact we heard decades ago, that if you went straight out into the curved universe fast enough and far enough you'd end up back home? Well, the Flat Earthers have the last laugh. The new, new orthodoxy is that the universe is flat. A huge balloon called BOOMERANG circled the South Pole, where reception is very clear, with detectors 40 times more precise than systems on the COBE satellite, which found the ripples in the earliest radiation the universe created. (Just after earlier particles condensed and cooled into familiar atoms and photons, a glow from everywhere to everywhere was produced--the cosmic microwave background.) Its results show a flat universe, one that will expand forever rather than collapse in a Big Crunch. There is not enough mass to hold everything together, it seems. Such a universe, absent any continuing creation of new energy and/or matter, tends towards a static, cold state with no concentrations of heat or other sources of order and activity.

Sat, 29 Apr 2000 12:37:37 -0700

Submitted by: Brian Hall