  Observational evidence of dark energy that makes the Universe nearly flat at
the present epoch is very strong. We study the link between spatial continuity
and dark energy. We assume that comoving space is a compact 3-manifold of
constant curvature, described by a homogeneous
Friedman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric. We assume that spatial continuity
cannot be violated, i.e. that the global topology of the comoving section of
the Universe cannot change during post-quantum epochs. We find that if the
Universe was flat and compact during early epochs, then the presently low
values of the radiation and matter densities imply that dark energy was created
as a spatial continuity effect. Moreover, if the Universe is compact, then
Omega_tot=1 is dynamically stable, where Omega_tot is the total density
parameter in units of the critical density. Dark energy was observationally
detected as a geometrical phenomenon. It is difficult to imagine a simpler
explanation for dark energy than spatial continuity, finiteness and
homogeneity.
