Most people are familiar with the idea that the universe started with a big bang about 15 billion years ago. But what banged? The answer is that space and time itself banged, but not in the way you may have seen illustrated in popular literature. It is not that there was an explosion and matter was thrown out from some center. Instead, space itself started expanding and all points in space started separating from each other.

1. A 2-Dimensional Example
2. Elliptic Universes
3. Flat Universes
4. Hyperbolic Universes
5. Topology
6. The 3-Torus
7. Empirical Detection of the Topology of the Universe
8. Some Previous and Upcoming Space Missions
9. Some References

(From the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubble Deep Field webpage.)

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