Using recent observational constraints on cosmological density parameters,
together with recent mathematical results concerning small volume hyperbolic
manifolds, we argue that, by employing pattern repetitions, the topology of
nearly flat small hyperbolic universes can be observationally undetectable.
This is important in view of the facts that quantum cosmology may favour
hyperbolic universes with small volumes, and from the expectation coming from
inflationary scenarios, that Ω0 is likely to be very close to one.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX2e. A reference and two footnotes added. To
appear in Class. Quantum Grav. 18 (2001) in the present for