These Fellows Is Crazy!

I'll bet that what LB is referring to is the observation that clusters of galaxies within the universe are distributed in sheets and filaments, with big (really, really big) relatively empty "bubbles" in between. All this structure, big as it is, is small compared to the whole enchilada, or soccer ball, or "Poincare dodecahedral space" that is the universe.
Apparently, one can go putz around with what that "P. d. space" looks like at
I'm going there to see if it hurts my eyes, or just reminds me of an album cover from 1969, momentarily.Added by edit: you can see the articles from Nature for free by going to the links in the 8 October item here:
http://geometrygames.org/ESoS/CosmologyNews.html[This message has been edited by Coragyps, 10-21-2003]

My understanding is that the age of the universe proper is derived from its dynamics - the way it's expanding - and has nothing really to do with how white dwarfs are dated. In fact, the first star ever that can be assigned to the "first generation" of stars to form was only discovered in the last year or so - they call it a "Population III" star. The 13-by-old white dwarfs are surely Population II, the second generation, and our Sun is Population I. They tell the "generations" apart largely my how much of heavy elements, "metals" in astronomyspeak, they contain.And your campfire analogy is brilliant!