We could be living in a small Universe where space is curved in on itself, rather like a football, say researchers.More precisely, we may inhabit a dodecahedral cosmos. It is, according to the scientists, the best way to account for the latest satellite observations. Dodecahedrons, and similar shapes, have long fascinated mankind. Plato believed that the Universe was made up of them.

Leonardo da Vinci also studied them, as did the great astronomer Kepler, who thought the structure of the Solar System was based on geometrical shapes. Further observations, especially from space probes yet to be launched, may settle the matter, and may at last reveal the hidden geometry of the Universe.

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the "echo" of the Big Bang, contains a wealth of data about the early history of the Universe, as well as its large-scale structure. If only we had precise enough observations of it to discriminate between competing ideas of what the Universe is like.

Astronomers from the US and France suggest that space itself is not big enough to support such waves. A small, cosmologically speaking, finite Universe, however, made of curved pentagons joined together into a sphere, would fit the observations. Indeed, a dodecahedral Universe, were you able to traverse it, would have some interesting properties.

If you went out to the edge of the dodecahedron, you would come back in through the opposite face. More precise observations made by WMAP and by its successor, the Planck satellite, to be launched in 2007, will tell scientists if the cosmos does have such a shape, or if it is even stranger.

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