Homepage of Hagen Kleinert

Artist's vision of a world crystal

The world crystal was proposed as a toy model
of the universe in the paper

H. Kleinert,
Gravity as Theory of Defects in a Crystal with Only Second-Gradient Elasticity
Ann. d. Physik, 44, 117 (1987) .

It is supposed to illustrate that curvature and torsion may arise from defects
and that the universe may have a short-distance structure
which may completely surprise us when we shall be able to do experiments at Planck distances.
More is explained in the fothcoming textbook

H. Kleinert, Multivalued Fields
World Scientific, Singapore 2008

The Italian artist Laura Pesce was inspired by the theory and created
three glass paintings of the world crystal.

1. One of these can be seen on the home page of the artist.

The Italian title (Mondo Cristallizzato) can be seen on this page (picture lower left corner).

2. A second picture of the world crystal can be seen here on the photo with the artist
on this page (photo on the right).