The analogy that is usually given for describing the curvature of space is to try imagine someone from a universe of flat surfaces, who had never seen a sphere, being brought to Earth. No matter how far he roamed across the planet's surface, he would never find an edge. He might eventually return to the spot where he had started, and would of course be utterly confounded to explain how that had happened. Well, we are in the same position in space as our puzzled flatlander, only we are flummoxed by a higher dimension.
This quote brings up something that I have constantly wondered about in our pursuit of life on other planets, other beings in the worlds that surround us, and our general pursuit of knowledge about the worlds that surround us. I have always wondered what our so-called 'requirements' for life on other planets is; after all, who are we to determine what the requirements to live for other beings are? It doesn't make sense to me that beings on other worlds, assuming they are out there, would have the same requirements to live that we would. If you think about it, beings on our world adapt to face different situations, so it is likely that creatures from other planets adapted to, say, a lack of air or water (like a fish in the dark sea or a camel in the desert), and thus can live without it while we search for those things as an indication of the possibility of life. Although, it is just as likely that we are only looking for places that we can go once our planet dies on us, and we need to 'abandon ship' so to speak.
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