Gases
and dust
“And
the earth was without form, and void…” (Gen1:2a)
Scripture suggests and science
affirms that the primeval particles of matter were in the form of gases and
dust before they bonded together to form the celestial bodies and all things
else in the universe.
In 1796, French astronomer Pierre
Laplace advanced the “nebular hypothesis” in his book Exposition of the System of the Universe. He proposed that the
stars, the sun, and the planets formed from nebulae – swirling clouds of
interstellar gases, dust, and minerals
According
to the theory, refined over the past 200 years, dynamic interactions cause a
spinning cloud to flatten into a disk as gravity pulls much of the materials
into the center, which begins to contract. The contraction raises the pressure and
temperature at the core until it develops into a “protosun.” The outer parts of
the disk, on the other hand, cool down. Mutual attraction causes solid pieces
and ice crystals to agglomerate and form asteroids, planetesimals, and rocky
inner planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, while farther out gases and
dust freeze into great ice balls that become outer gaseous planets, such as
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
“Blackbody” of space
“…and
darkness was upon the face of the deep”
(Gen1:2b).
Space,
at the outset, was simply an empty darkness. Did God create darkness? Or was darkness
the mere absence of light? The Scriptures tell us that the Creator also made
darkness: “I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isa
45:7).
Towards the end of the 1800s,
physicists observed that, at very low temperatures, efficient emitters and
absorbers of radiation appeared black. They thus called a perfect emitter or
absorber of radiation a “blackbody.”33
The rate of absorption depends on
the size of the exposed surface area – the larger the area, the greater the
absorption. The immense darkness of space therefore is the ultimate
“blackbody.”
The Spirit of God
“And the Spirit of God moved…” (Gen1:2c)
The presence of physical space
presented a medium for motion to take place in. The first recorded motion in
space is that of God’s Spirit.
What, daresay, is Spirit? The Spirit
of God moved, so It must have possessed energy. Or was It itself energy?
And what in turn is energy?
Physicists say energy can be scientifically detected, measured, and managed,
but nobody really knows what it is. Yet, everything in the universe is energy.
In fact, energy fills the entire universe. Scientists generally accept the
existence of an “energy field thought to pervade the cosmos.”34
Matter, moreover, is simply
congealed or solidified energy.
Energy
into matter.
Albert Einstein’s famous formula (E=mc2) for his theory of
relativity equates energy “E” to mass
“m” (matter). In short, energy and
matter are interchangeable. Energy can be transformed into matter, and
vice-versa. Perhaps, not too surprisingly, the psalmist knew this in spiritual
terms 3,000 years ago: “Thou sendest
forth thy spirit, they are created” (Ps 104:30). Did God’s Spirit, which is
energy, produce matter?
A
New York Times article of Aug. 21, 1990 , concurs: "According
to quantum theory… potential existence can be transformed into real existence
by the addition of energy. (Energy and matter are equivalent, since all matter
ultimately consists of packets of energy.)"35
Hawking
elaborates: “There are something like ten million million million million
million million million million million million million million million million
(1 with 85 zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can
observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory,
particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle
pairs.”36
Particles
of matter are created from energy. Or, perhaps we should say, Divine Energy?
God entered space-time?
Did God enter the space-time
domain in the form of His Spirit? How can the Infinite Nothingness be inside the
finite space-time framework?
God apparently manifested an
essence of Himself as the Spirit in the material universe. The Infinite
Nothingness, having no physical form or dimensions, would not have entered the
limitations of space-time that He had created. Doing so would have subjected
Him to the laws of nature that He Himself had set in operation.
A part, such as space-time, cannot
possibly contain the whole, in this case the Infinite Nothingness. It would
have been like trying to put a tree into its seed.
Electromagnetic properties.
Eliphaz,
Job’s friend, encountered a spirit: “Then
a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up” (Job 4:15 ). Since the passing spirit
caused the hair on the body of Eliphaz to stand, the unseen entity must have had
the effect of static electricity.
Is
an ordinary spirit similar to the Spirit of God? God is the Father of spirits: “…shall we not much rather be in subjection
unto the Father of spirits…” (Heb 12:9b). It follows, then, that the Spirit
of God, the spirits of His sons, the angels, and the spirits of men are similar
in nature -- energy with electromagnetic properties.
Water
in space
“And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen1:2c).
Water in space before the creation
of the earth? Aristotle recorded in his book, Metaphysics, that Thales, the earliest Greek philosopher, believed
that the source of all things was water.37
Elementary element.
A molecule of water (H2O),
as we learned in school, is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
Hydrogen, which means “water-maker” (hydro-gen)
in Greek, is the most abundant element in the universe. A hydrogen atom is the
lightest, simplest, and most basic of all atoms, consisting of just one proton
as the nucleus and one electron orbiting around it.
In 1948, Russian-born physicist George
Gamow, who produced the first evidences for the Big Bang with his students
Alpher and Herman, worked out the nuclear reactions that could have occurred
during the first few minutes of the explosion.38 They found that, after
about one second, protons would have formed. In the next three minutes, when
the temperature of the universe was about 300 million degrees Kelvin,39
protons and neutrons would have formed hydrogen, as well as the other light
elements -- primarily helium, and some lithium, beryllium, boron.40 The initial nucleosynthesis stopped
when there were approximately 78% hydrogen and 22% helium by weight, or 93%
hydrogen and 7% helium abundances.41
Their calculations have since been
confirmed through spectroscopic observations. “Atomic hydrogen clouds are the
most widely distributed in interstellar space and, together with molecular
hydrogen clouds, contain
most of the gaseous and particulate matter of interstellar space...”42
Hydrogen today comprises some 73% of the visible mass of the universe,43
while helium constitutes approximately 23%.44 The Sun alone burns
about 40 million tons of hydrogen per second.
Most abundant element.
How did Moses, who wrote the book
of Genesis around 3,500 years ago, know that water, or at least its main
component hydrogen, was the very first and most abundant element in the
universe? Peter reiterated this scientific fact in his general epistle about 1,500
years later: “But they deliberately
forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed
out of water and by water” (2 Peter 3:5-6, NIV).
Just as the Bible says, science
has discovered that there were “waters” (hydrogen) in space before the earth
took shape!
Curiously, this information is in
the Hebrew word for “heavens” – shamayim.
The Hebrew term for “waters” is mayim,
while sham means “there” or “in it.”
Hence, shamayim can be read as:
“there (sham) are waters (mayim) -- in the heavens (shamayim)”! Could this be a mere
coincidence?
Light
created
“And
God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen 1:3).
In
the deep darkness of the “blackbody” of space, the Creator next brought into existence…
light!
An
unimaginably brilliant flash of light must have burst forth, filling all of
primordial space. George Gamow was led to say: “One may almost quote the
Biblical statement, In the beginning there was light, and plenty of it.”45
Early
men knew the sun lighted up the world. It was inconceivable to have light in
the heavens without the sun, as well as the moon and the stars. So, even as
late as at the time of Moses, to be told that light was created before the sun must
have stretched their imaginations to the brink of incredulity; or, worse,
unbelief.
Light
from “water.”
Scientists
know all too well that hydrogen atoms are typical sources of photons -- light.
When four hydrogen atoms combine into a helium atom through the process of thermonuclear
fusion, the energy released is transformed into light and heat.
Thus,
the Sun generates radiant energy -- light – through the nuclear conversion of
hydrogen into helium. In a hydrogen bomb explosion, hydrogen atoms fuse to
produce a blinding blast of light and energy.
Science
once again confirms the truth of the Biblical account. But… just what is light?
Electromagnetic radiation.
Technically,
“light” is the generic term used for any and all kinds of electromagnetic
radiation. In waves of electric and magnetic energy consisting of elementary
particles called photons, light results when atoms gain surplus energy by
absorbing photons from other sources or by being struck by other particles. As
the atoms give up the extra energy, photons are emitted as light.46
There
are many forms of radiant energy, but seven forms are well known: radio waves, microwaves,
infrared rays, visible light, ultraviolet rays, x-rays, gamma rays. Radio waves
have the longest wavelengths, measured in meters; gamma rays shortest at
0.000000001 cm. In the color spectrum, red has the longest wavelengths at
0.000075 cm, with violet the shortest at 0.000035 cm. Regardless of their
wavelengths and frequencies (number of times waves are repeated within a given
period), all forms of electromagnetic radiation travel at the speed of light.
Gottfried
Leibniz, 17th century German philosopher-mathematician, observed that
a ray of light always chose a path that took it fastest to a destination,47
a phenomenon known as the “principle of least action.” Why do they do that when
they can just, let us say, drift? Max Planck, the eminent German physicist,
could not help saying, “Photons… behave like intelligent human beings.”48
The
speed of light.
Men
had always believed that light was instantaneous. In 1676 Danish astronomer
Olaf Roemer announced that the irregular behavior of the eclipse times of Io,
Jupiter’s inner moon, could be accounted for by a finite speed of light. The
English astronomer James Bradley independently confirmed in 1729 the finite
speed of light. In 1983, the speed of light was officially declared
a universal constant of nature at 299,792.458 kilometers (about 186,282 miles)
per second.
According
to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, the velocity of light is the
ultimate speed limit. Only objects without mass can travel at that speed. Photons,
having no mass, traverse space without any loss of energy. Changes in their
wavelengths or frequencies do not affect their velocity. At the speed of light,
time stops. Light, including all forms of electromagnetic energy, thus exists
in a timeless state. The fact that light is outside the realm of time has been
proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities.49
Light speed
decelerating? From
1929 to 1940, Raymond Birge, physics department chairman at the University of
California, Berkeley, and arbiter of atomic constants (such as the speed of
light), several times recommended decreasing the value for the speed of light.50
In 1979, an Australian college student, Barry Setterfield, charted 163
measurements of the speed of light using 16 different methods since Roemer. He
found that in general the older the observation, the faster the speed of light.51
Measurements of
the Speed of Light
Year
|
Experimenter
|
Speed
(km/s)
|
(+/-
km/s)
|
1657
|
Roemer
|
307,600
|
|
1738
|
(Not
named)
|
303,320
|
310
|
1861
|
(Not
named)
|
300,050
|
60
|
1875
|
Harvard
|
299,921
|
13
|
1880
|
Michelson
|
299,910
|
50
|
1883
|
Newcomb
|
299,860
|
30
|
1883
|
Michelson
|
299,853
|
60
|
1926
|
Michelson
|
299,796
|
4
|
1950
|
Bergstrand
|
299,792.7
|
.25
|
1952
|
Froome
|
299,792.6
|
.7
|
1967
|
Grosse
|
299,792.5
|
.050
|
1974
|
Blaney
et al.
|
299,792.459
|
.0006
|
1976
|
Woods
et al.
|
299,792.4588
|
.0002
|
1977
|
Monchalin
et al.
|
299,792.457.6
|
.00073
|
With
statistician Dr. Trevor Norman, Setterfield showed that, even with the technical
crudeness of early experiments, the speed of light was discernibly higher 100
years ago, and as much as 7% higher in the 1700s. Canadian mathematician Alan
Montgomery has published a computer analysis backing the Setterfield-Norman findings,
indicating that the decay of the speed of light “closely follows a
cosecant-squared curve, and has been asymptotic since 1958. If he is correct,
the speed of light was 10-30% faster in the time of Christ; twice as fast in
the days of Solomon; four times as fast in the days of Abraham, and perhaps
more than ten million times faster prior to 3000 B.C.” In 1987,
Russian cosmologist V.S. Troitskii calculated that the speed of light was
originally about 1010 (ten billion) times faster at time zero.52
Other
scientists have published works asserting that light speed was as much as 10 to
the 10th power faster in the early stages of the Big Bang than it is
today.53 For his part, Setterfield estimates that the speed of light
was infinite 6,000 years ago.
Light speed
accelerated! The London Sunday Times reported on June 4, 2000 : “In research
carried out in the United
States Princeton , who
transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with specially treated
cesium gas. Before the pulse had fully entered the chamber it had gone right
through it and traveled a further 60 (feet) across the laboratory. In effect it
existed in two places at once, a phenomenon that Wang explains by saying it
traveled 300 times faster than light.” In effect, light leaped forward in
time!
The
Italian National Research Council has reportedly approximated Wang’s results by
making microwaves travel 25% faster than light.54 In fine, all the
studies agree: the speed of light is not constant. Light can travel slower or
faster than the presently accepted “speed of light.”
Many
are excited over the possibilities. Others are bothered. If the findings hold
true, they would shatter Einstein’s theory of relativity, which states that the
speed of light is an inviolable universal constant.
The Big Bang
The “Big Bang” is the most widely
accepted theory of the origin of the universe. After the Hubble discovery in
1927 that all the other galaxies were speeding away from the Earth, George
Gamow proposed in the 1940s that all matter in the universe was once compressed
in an extremely hot and compact point that suddenly exploded, with the
expanding matter forming the galaxies. (The Bible depicts that event in more
unequivocal terms: "I am the LORD,
who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens…” -- Isa 44:24a, NKJV.)
In
early 2006 NASA announced the findings of a team of U.S.
Only
photons could have traveled at that incredible speed. The Big Bang was an
immense explosion of photons – light. Robert Jastrow wrote: “Now we see how the
astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The
details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical
accounts of Genesis are the same: The chain of events leading to man commenced
suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and
energy.”56
Light
into matter.
The
rapidly dispersing light (photons) transformed into matter in accordance to
Einstein’s equation (E = mc2)!
Just how did it happen?
Schroeder
points out that “as long as radiant energy (E)
is more powerful than a specific threshold needed to make a particle of
matter, that energy can change spontaneously and become a particle of nuclear
matter (m).” (“Threshold” refers to
the minimum temperature of “quark confinement,” “approximately a million
million times hotter than the current 3oK black of space,” when
quarks bond together to form protons and neutrons, converting energy into
matter.)57
Science
writer George Sim Johnston is amazed: “Twentieth-century physics… describes the
beginning of the universe in virtually the same cosmological terms as Genesis.
Space, time and matter came out of nothing in a… burst of light entirely
hospitable to carbon-based life.”58
Surprisingly, the Jews in olden
times knew this: “Mehitabut ha'orot,
nithavu hakelim” ("From the condensation of the lights, were the
vessels brought into being") – an old Jewish saying.59
Lab-created matter. The title of an article in the
1997 Encarta Yearbook is a grabber: “Scientists
Create Matter Out of Light.” It tells of experimental physicists bombarding
heavy atoms (made up of many protons and neutrons) with high-energy radiation
in the form of X-rays. Collisions between the X-ray beam and the atoms created pairs
of electron (matter) and positron (antimatter) particles.
In
other trials at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Palo Alto , California
Big
Bang problems.
The Big Bang Theory violates many
laws of physics. For instance, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) states
that all systems proceed from an orderly state to one of disorder. In short,
all things break down and deteriorate. How
could the orderly universe be the result of the Big Bang -- an explosion, which is a form of destruction?
It
was highly improbable for the rapidly expanding universe to have produced
highly concentrated and rotating bodies, as well as solar systems and clusters
of galaxies. Moreover, can fast-moving objects accompany slow-moving objects? Many
quasars with very high redshifts cluster with galaxies having low redshifts.
Apparently moving at different velocities, they should have dispersed a long,
long time ago.
In the
disorder of the Big Bang, something (or, perhaps, Someone?) introduced order so
that the universe could form.
33.Danny Faulkner, “Do
Creationists Believe in ‘Weird’ Physics?”, The
New Answers Book 2, 2008, pp. 328-329
34. Andrew Chaikin,
“Are There Other Universes?”, Science Tuesday,
05 February 2002 , Internet 35.“New Direction in
Physics: Back in Time”
36. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 1988, p. 171
37.Thales, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
38. Big Bang Theory, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004
39. Gerald Schroeder,
The Science of God, 1997, p. 190
40.Big Bang Theory, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004
41.Schroeder,
op. cit., pp. 189-190
42.Cosmos, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and
Home Edition
43.Hydrogen, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004
44.Helium, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and
Home Edition
45.Quoted by Migene
Gonzalez-Wippler, A Kabbalah for the
Modern World, 1977 edition, p. 37
46.Light, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
47.Cited by
Gonzalez-Wippler, op. cit., p. 9
48.Op. cit., p. 11
49.Schroeder, op. cit., p. 171
50.Helen D. Setterfield,
“History of the Light-Speed Debate,” Personal
Update, July 2002, p. 10
51.Chris Bennett, Speed of light slowing down?, July 31,
2004, WorldNetDaily.com
52.Chuck Missler, Cosmic Codes, revised 2004, pp. 343-345
53.Dr. Joao Magueijo of
Imperial College in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht of
the University of California at Davis, and Dr. John Moffat of the University of
Toronto
54.Jonathan Leake, London Sunday Times, June 4, 2000
55.“Astronomers detect
new clues on universe’s expansion,” The
Philippine Star, March 19, 2006
56.Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1978, p. 14
57.Schroeder, op. cit., p. 187
58.George Sim Johnston, Reader’s Digest, May 1991, p. 31
59.“Spiritual Time,
Space, Mass, Light and Energy,” A Study of the Book of Revelation, updated
8/20/00, Internet
(Excerpted from Chapter 3,
Conundrums of Creation, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets
of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)
