Man is not told how long a Day was during the Creation. I doubt very much that it was one of “our” days. But it could have been millennia or an instant.
We won’t know this until we are Resurrected when “all things will be made known” to us.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
From the article, sounds like that’s how Newton saw it as well.
The word “day” can also mean “period of time”, or era in the Hebrew iirc. Of course there is also a passage in there that talks about it was dark and then light, the first day, which implies one revolution.
I am of the mind that the Creation story is just that - a story. Revealed to man in the terms they could understand at the time. And pretty amazing how close it matches up with our theories of today (”big bang” vs. riding around on a turtle’s back). (The first use of the word “light”, I wonder if it is trying to describe energy and matter - E=MC2).
If it was just made up, I think I would have created man first (because we are “most important”), and then figured out a place to live, things to eat, etc. afterwards.
I recommend reading The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, by Leon Kass. Kass is a Jewish professor of Old Testament. In his book, he treats Genesis as literature, and tries to understand it on its own terms. In dealing with the "seven days of creation," he doesn't get wrapped around the axle on whether it means seven calendar days of 24 hours each, but asks, what was the writer tryin to get across?
He points out that the Babylonians and all other cultures of the Middle East believed that the stars, planets, sun and moon were gods. The writer of Genesis is saying they aren't gods, they are created entities. The enumeration of created things starts with separating the land (fixed) from water (not fixed). Then come the celestial objects: things that move but are not alive. Then come the plants: things that are alive but don't move. Then come the animals, birds and fish: things that are both alive and move. You can't think of anything that doesn't fit in one of those categories.
The issue, according to Kass, is not time units as such, but seven (counting the day of rest) categories of created things, which are exhaustive and include everything in the universe.
In short, Kass is not treating Genesis literally, but recognizing that it is written in poetic language, and asking, what did the writer intend to convey to his readers?
Is he right? I don't know. However, it makes a lot more sense to me than trying to shoehorn the creation of the universe into seven calendar days, especially given what we know about the Big Bang and the age of the universe.