CLOSED SPACES IN COSMOLOGY

This paper deals with two aspects of relativistic cosmologies with closed spatial sections. These spacetimes are based on the theory of general relativity, and admit a foliation into space sections S(t), which are spacelike hypersurfaces satisfying the postulate of the closure of space: each S(t) is a three-dimensional closed Riemannian manifold. The topics discussed are: (i) a comparison, previously obtained, between Thurston geometries and Bianchi-Kantowski-Sachs metrics for such three-manifolds is here clarified and developed; and (ii) the implications of global inhomogeneity for locally homogeneous three-spaces of constant curvature are analyzed from an observational viewpoint.