I can’t give much background on where this is coming from, basically it’s a faint memory from something in my past…waaay back in the inner sanctum of my mind I remember a model of the universe that looked like a double helix. The memory goes like this: Someone was explaining how the galaxies clustered, how there was a pattern to the cluster and that was of a double helix…I do not remember where I heard or saw this, but I do remember hearing it.
Anyone know about this…? I know we are talking about something so big it is almost unimaginable, but then again so is our own imagination…Or have I gone completely, off my meds…Links and or illustrations would be great!
I’ve seen many cosmological models, but never this one. Not even in cheesy science fiction (of which I have read a lot). On the largest scale, the clustering of galaxies is usually described as sudzy or foamy, with many empty “bubbles” and the galaxies clustered on the walls of the bubbles.
I think it’s even less possible for the universe to be a Mobius strip (or, more accurately the multi-dimensional version of a Mobius strip) than it is for it to be a double-helix.
Life here at the Dope is a perfect background for considering the implausibility levels of multiple impossibilities.
Time travel story, probably 1960s. The Universe is in a helix in the fourth dimension, so time travel is possible between adjoining loops. The size of the loop was about seventy million years, so they did some dino spotting.
I can remember no other details, such as plot, character, or author.
No helix nor double helix, but there is one suggestion the universe may actually be saddle-shaped. I believe it is technically called a hyperbolic parboloid shape.
And then there’s my favorite shape for the universe… the doughnut. Something I learned right here on this message board. I was at a bar last week. We were talking of many deep things, like whether the ham in Green Eggs and Ham was in fact green (possibly, it seems, but not necessarily).
The shape of the universe came up. As it often does following that sixth pint of grog. The question arose: “How can the universe be flat and finite at the same time?”
So I demonstrated, as best I could with a cocktail napkin and a pen, how a toroid universe would fit the bill. The angles of a triangle would still add up to 180 degrees (I had to ask for a bit of trust on this point as I tried to bend the napkin tube around itself and ended up crumpling it instead), there’s only so much napkin, and there’s no risk of ever falling off of the edge.
“You mean,” said my friend, “that the universe is shaped like a donut?”
“Yeah. Could be.”
“Can it be a jelly donut?”
“No,” I said. “I think there has to have a hole.”
“So, Engywook… what’s in the hole at the center of the universe?”
“Green ham. That’s why the napkin demonstration didn’t work. I needed green ham.”
If you show a two-dimensional orbit (i.e. a circle) in a model where a third spatial dimension represents time, you end up with a helix, which could easily be made into a double helix by using two orbits. And of course, DNA is a double helix. Otherwise, it’s definitely nothing I’ve ever heard of.
