Phil Helbig has posted the following highly interesting comment
regarding homogeneity/isotropy on Sean Carroll's blogsite.

"Third, the assumption that we can extrapolate what we observe in
the observable universe to all of the universe, namely homogeneity
and isotropy on large scales, to the entire universe, might not be
right. In that case, what we observe might tell us nothing about
whether the universe is finite or not."

I appreciate this new candor and hope to see it often.

RLO
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

PS: All-Caps is definitely shouting. Italics are indicated by
astericks before and after, as in *qed*. Hope this helps!

[[Mod. note -- I have seen different conventions for what *asterisks*,
/slash marks/, and _underscores_ denote -- all usually mean some sort of
emphasis, but which might be bold vs italics vs some other typographical
distinction may vary. Indeed, I think that over the years I myself
have used different conventions.

In any case, ASCII typography is at a minimum quite peripheral to our
newsgroup's focus (research in astronomy/astrophysics), and it could
reasonably be said to fall outside our newsgroup charter altogether.
So, let's focus on discussing astronomy/astrophysics instead.
-- jt]]