The nature of the Universe.

Seeing as how complex this is I'm understandably a little confused and overwhelmed by trying to comprehend this...

I've read in both Sagan and Hawking's work that (to my understanding) space is curved and flat. The way Sagan explains it is that the fabric of space is basically like the inside skin of an inflated ballon, expanding at an enormous speed as the skin of a ballon would do when inflated. The reason everything seems to be in red shift, ie moving away from us, is because the skin or fabric of space itself is expanding. Ok, this makes sense to me - so far I'm following.

Now, my question is, if space is basically a flat, curved "fabric" on which all matter is embedded why do we see galaxies and the like from different perspectives? Using this line of thinking the only way we should be able to see a face-on galaxy is if it is far enough away from us to be facing us on what we precieve to be the elevated or declined portion of this so-called "fabric" of space.

Am I making sense?

Pete,

YOu are making sense--the world is not. At least it does not make common sense.

After all, look around you, you will notice that except for some mountains and things, the earth really is flat, and the sun goes from one side of the sky to the other--in short, it travels around us....not what the astronomers tell us.

You are mixing metaphors to describe the universe. The balloon that Ferris and others use merely is a model to explain how the spots on the skin of a balloon move apart just as universes move apart. The model fails because the surface of a balloon is (as you point out) two dimensional. It also fails because in this model, the size of the spots actually stretch, when the relative sizes of the galaxies do not--they just move further apart.

A better model would be raisin bread rising in baking. Mix a bunch of bread, let it rise. As it rises, the raisins stay the same size, but they move further apart.

Alex