It's amazing how when enough people say the same wrong statement, it starts to become perceived as truth. Actually, it's not that amazing, it's a well-known empirical result in psychology.
Why spoil the analysis of a beautiful data set by saying the wrong statement
"The Universe is flat"
when the correct statement is that
"the *observable* Universe is *approximately* flat"
? The WMAP data do not change this situation, though 1sigma = +- 0.02 gives 3 sigma +- 0.06 which means that the curvature radius is at least 12 h^-1 Gpc instead of 9.5h^-1Gpc (for +- 0.1) in comoving units at 3sigma. It's still like saying the Earth is flat because Africa is flat. Well, the Earth *is* (nearly) flat.
- The data let you constrain cosmological parameters much more precisely
than before. In particular, the age of the Universe is 13.7 +/- 0.2 Gyr. (Not that long ago, we couldn't say more than "12 to 20 Gyr"!) The Universe is flat: Omega total is 1.02 +/- 0.02. The densities of various forms of matter and energy are pinned down quite well too.
Anyway, nice to finally see the MAP map :) It's beautiful.
boud