In case anyone is wondering why I am writing this, let me try and explain, it might help me too . . I find myself wondering about what came before the Big Bang, and the whole impossibility (from our 3-dimensional viewpoint) of everything appearing from nothing. Especially when you think about what nothing really is. Because empty space is not nothing.
Early man lived outdoors, many early cultures tracked the movements of the stars and planets, the evidence of the correct shape of the solar system (and the correct shape of the earth) was there to see. Yet they did not become common knowledge till just a few hundred years ago. Understanding the basics should not need fine scientific measurements; the main tools are an open interpretation of the evidence, an agile imagination, and some simple models.
One of Arthur C Clarke's stories is of the world's telephone network being developed to the point where is has a comparable number of links and nodes as a brain, and gains intelligence which it then engages to control all the telecommunications and power infrastructure. Even with the internet and the computers it interconnects this hasn't happened yet, but maybe the people connected to those computers on that network will put their heads together and distil out a simple route to solving an impossible conundrum. It's about time this new supertool, the internet, was exploited for something grand, other than SETI.
Well, we need an objective, and the first one is to think of a simple model for the shape of the universe, which has to include its fourth dimension, time. Does it matter? Not really, it's just an interesting challenge.
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