That's a great way of thinking; if you actualy thought that up at all. (I'm not saying you didn't) but........ That is actualy the currently accepted model of the universe and the real inventer of the notion that the universe is a higher dimensional sphere is the same guy who said spacetime curves in the presence of gravity.....Einstein! In order to actualy prove this though, there must be an amount of matter in the universe such that the gravitational force present is strong enough to hault the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse back in on itself. Also if gravity loops space back in on itself then time is looped in on itself too because they are two manifestations of the same thing. This would insinuate a five dimensional sphere with a four dimensional "surface area", (one dimension being time). This is where dark matter comes in, because we do not see enough matter in the visible universe to actualy have a strong enough gravitational force to hault the universe at it's present rate of expansion. We believe dark matter to exist because the motions of stars around galaxies are not explained simply by the laws of gravity. By introducing dark matter to the equations of gravity, the galaxy motions would then be normal in coherence with the laws of gravity. The amount of dark matter that we need to introduce, would (if I'm not mistaking) close our universe into a giant loop. The dark matter is matter that doesn't interact with the electromagnetic field hence no light will reflect from it; therefore we could never see it (with light anyways) and it appears to be darkness. One form of matter that fits this criteria is the neutrino. This particle doesn't interact with light but does have a gravitational effect.

• Re: The Shape Of The Universe - Jimmy Of York - October 24, 1999 - 17:57 UTC