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Schematics of the Universe


It's quite impossible to draw or photograph the entire universe. Any meaningful overview of cosmology will be schematic in nature.

Drawings such as these formed an integral part of the arguments on both sides of the Ptolemy-Copernicus controversy.

This is a 1524 drawing of the Christian Aristotelian (essentialy Ptolemaic) universe

Ptolemaic System from The Galileo Project.


This 1576 drawing by Thomas Digges might be considered the first representation of the universe approximately as we now know it. The stars here are not attached to a fixed sphere, they are at various distances, extending infinitely outward.




Perfit Description of the Celestiall Orbs from As the World Turned or in Theories of the Universe, Milton K. Munitz, ed.


Modern questions about the size and shape of the universe are about the shape of space itself, not just about the shape of things in space.

This is a perspective drawing of a hyperbolic universe tiled with regular dodecahedrons. Don't try this in your Euclidean home, kids.


Low Density Inflationary Universes from Cambridge Cosmology.


Copyright © 2001, Bruce R. Mehlman
see http://www.theeel.com/~bruce/c2001