On Sat, 9 Feb 2002 Kengrimes123@aol.com wrote:

Could you please confirm your title and institution for the Astronomy article?

Dear Ken & Alison,

Title: Dr Institution (full name): Torun Centre for Astronomy, Nicholas Copernicus University

International linguistic trivium: The "n" in Torun should have a "grave accent" on top, i.e. a forward slanting accent, like the accent on top of "e" in "�t�" ('et'e, = "summer" in French).

Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 16:51:33 EST From: Kengrimes123@aol.com To: boud@astro.uni.torun.pl Subject: Re: favoured topology of Universe candidates

Sorry for the hiatus. We thought, 'We'll get back to Boud as soon as we've got our heads round this.' Still trying!

Did you get anywhere with this? I admit that in my case it took many years between learning about the existence of non-Euclidean geometry and developing an intuition in which I was satisfied that this was possible without needing an extra dimension. (The latter time happened to be when I attended a course on algebraic topology.) During the intervening time, I accepted that people were probably correct in their claims, but it was rather unsatisfying. My hope is that with proper explanation, the period of years could be replaced by the space of an hour or so..., or, at least, an hour or so of initial reading followed by a week of deep thought and playing with idea in one's mind...

I'm sure that playing with the games on Jeff Weeks' site that I referred you to should help. Don't be embarrassed to play games - understanding is not a matter just of cold logic, it also requires intuition via the chaotic process of a neural network. Playing games is what mathematicians do most of the time. Since you're both journalists, probably the word games that Jeff has provided would sink deepest into the cores of your minds. E.g. try the games

http://humber.northnet.org/weeks/TorusGames/html/WordSearch.html http://humber.northnet.org/weeks/TorusGames/html/Crossword.html

with Java and auto-image-load enabled (this is probably the case by default).

And try them with the "Klein bottle" setting! Try to "unlearn" what you thought you knew about physics, just have fun playing the games instead. Imagine you're really living in the WordSearch.html, like a good movie.

And then, chances are a moment will occur when, all of a sudden, you'll realise that a multiply connected flat space makes perfect sense without needing an extra dimension...

Thanks, Ken & Alison.

BTW, would you be able to run the final version of the draft text by me, at least the part of the text regarding our discussions? You would of course be free to ignore or follow my comments as you wish, but it would be good that I have the chance to at least make my suggestions.

Cheers Boud