Posted by hexnet -

Dodecahedron I have been completely unable to find any sort of followup to this since 2003. The whole idea may have been discarded by now, I'm not sure, but considering that Plato speculated—for no particular reason modern science is aware of—that the universe was shaped like a dodecahedron nigh doz. 1,500 years ago, this is obviously a significant conjecture to put forward.

While the other four platonic solids have traditionally been associated with the four classical elements, the dodecahedron has been identified with the universe, or the aether. Did the ancients have some insight into the cosmological structure of our universe that we are only rediscovering now? Maybe! Or maybe the whole idea is crap. Who knows! But the hexagonal implications are obvious—twelve being a multiple of six, the twelve faces of the dodecahedron forming six symmetrical pairs, et cetera.

I am hopeful that eventually more data from WMAP or its successors will shed further light on this hypothesis.

[Edit 2013-05: This hypothesis continues to be mentioned, and was highlighted in a recent basic cable show on cosmology that I can't be bothered to look up right now. Suffice to say there have been no new developments, but it is taken seriously by researchers, and corroborating evidence is being actively sought.]

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