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2003-10-09 - 12:00 p.m. Who says I don't know anything about sports? Well, I do. I really have little knowledge of the modern sports. To me, if it's fall it's football season and I have no idea why the CNN guys are still rattling on about baseball. Baseball is a summer sport. Football is in the fall. Hockey is in the winter. So's basketball. I am aware reality differs from my perception, but of all the random trivia in my head, sports are so not a priority. And before anyone posts in the guestbook, let me say in advance - Give it up guys. Lis has been trying to teach me sports for years. When Mel was picking license plates, she figured if I could decipher the meaning at 'Pittsburg Fan', anyone on the planet could figure it out. For Mel, Pittsburgh sports is a religion. I didn't get that until I know her for three years. I walked into her apartment one day unannounced, to find her on the phone cussing a blue streak, the television playing Pittsburgh hockey. I can't even type what she said, cause, I just stood there in shock at the level of profanity. Then she stopped yelling at the refs, into the phone long enough to ask her mom how her dad was doing. I cannot imagine calling up my mom to cuss out the refs together. But, my religion isn't based in Pittsburgh. So, yes, my lack of sports knowledge is actually quite a joke. My colleagues are very impressed whenever I correctly use a sports analogy. Heck, there impressed when I even try. I was mocked on Monday for throwing the football down the hallway with no spiral at all. They patiently explained to me (like I don't write these equations for a living) how a spin makes it fly straight. These days, I try to explain that my favorite sport is 500 years out of date - which incited an impromptu tournament class over lunch one day. But I digress. I really wanted to say that I at least know what a football is shaped like, and now the world is wondering if the Universe is shaped the same way. Universe is shaped like a football, says scientist "It is a question which has been kicking about for thousands of years: is our universe infinite? Today, scientists have announced the most compelling evidence yet which suggests that, not only is it finite, but it may be the shape of a football. "Jeff Watts, a mathematician based in New York and one of the lead authors of a paper in today's Nature, said he and his team may have cracked the puzzle. "He used data from the Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe (WMAP) to conclude that the universe probably does not go on forever. "WMAP was launched by NASA two years ago to produce a map of the temperature fluctuations in the universe. "You can look at the wavelengths of these fluctuations," Mr Watts said. "In an infinite universe, you'd have these waves of all different lengths." "But in a finite universe the waves would reach a maximum length. WMAP shows that for short and medium wavelengths, everything matches cosmologists' predictions. "The longest wavelengths are what's missing," Mr Watts said. This points to a finite universe. But a finite universe does not mean there are edges. Mr Watts says the WMAP data shows that the shape of space may be based on a dodecahedron: a solid composed of 12 pentagons. If a someone were to travel out to the "edge" of this shape, they would end up coming back in through the opposite face." This should spawn a few new sci fi plots. � � Scribble to Theo previous - next �