14 DAY TRIAL // There's some new talk about the curvature of the universe. New data seems to suggest that the universe is not flat but rather has a negative curvature, or is "open."
You can imagine a two-dimensional flat universe stretched out in the shape of a saddle, to get an idea of what it looks like.
Of course, we'll never be able to see it from the outside so what's important to us is what effect the curvature of the universe has on us on the inside.
In practical terms, the curvature of the universe has no real effect on anything we do and pretty much everything we can see. The curve, if it exists, is at such a massive scale that it only starts to be noticeable at "universe-size" distances.
In fact, the latest data suggest that the curve is larger than the observable universe, so anything we see and we’ll ever be able to see behaves almost exactly like it would in a flat universe.
Still, if you want to get an idea of how curvature affects space, at a cosmic scale, you should watch the wonderful video above which provides explanations that anyone should be able to understand.