Question: What is the shape of a universe? many scientists believe they are circles or rectangles but i dont really know

Hi nickskii,

Not sure what you’re talking about with the circles and rectangles.

Also, we only know about OUR universe at the moment — and as far as we know it is the one and only universe (though there are plenty of unconfirmed theories out there that say there could be many universes).

Physicists are working on what the “shape” of the universe is, but you have to understand “shape” in a very different way to in everyday life. There’s a subject in mathematics called ‘topology’ that deals with ‘shapes’, and it turns out that if one shape can be pulled/pushed/stretched/squeezed into another shape, then there is no important difference between the shapes.

So, for example, a circle and a rectangle are (according to topology) not really different because you can stretch/push/pull one into the other. But a hollow sphere (round ball with no inside) and the surface (outside) of a doughnut (the kind with a hole in the middle) ARE really different, because however you stretch a ball you can’t make it into a doughnut without actually breaking the surface apart.