We are traveling at about 1,000 miles/hr through "space" and would never know it. But we are really not going anywhere because we are spinning in circles, literally speaking!
In fact, the entire universe seems to be going around in circles, leaving evidence of cooling at the completion of each round!
I do accept that your view of physical reality is irreconcilably different from mine. It is not necessary that you and I must agree on all the details in order to be in Spiritual accord as brother and sister in Christ!
But, for the record, here is a presentation of my point of view:
The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles. The earth rotates once every 24 hours.
Therefore, even if you are sitting still, you are nevertheless traveling at 1,100 miles an hour (and that's not considering how fast the particles within you are traveling while you are sitting.)
The orbital length of earth traveling around the sun is 149,600,000 miles, traveled in 365.25 days. That is 67,000 miles per hour. So if you are sitting still, you are nevertheless traveling at 1,100 + 67,000 = 68,100 miles per hour.
The sun orbits the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 486,000 miles per hour. So your total speed so far is 1,100 + 67,000 + 486,000 = 554,100 miles per hour.
But that is not the whole story, because the universe itself is expanding – and not only expanding but accelerating.
The rate of expansion of the universe is exponential and is figured from this initial ratio: the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of energy. 10.9x1012 Kelvin degrees / 2.73 degrees (the temperature of the universe today.) Age of the universe
A galaxy 1 million light years away would seem to be moving away from us at a rate of 60,000 miles per hour. For every 3.26 million light years further out that we look, the galaxies seem to be moving away from us at an additional 162,000 miles per hour. Tracking the expansion rate of the universe In sum, the universe is at least 156 light years wide.
To get the picture try to imagine the Universe a million years after the Big Bang. Light travels for a year, covering one light-year. But at that time, the Universe was about a thousand times smaller than it is today meaning that one light-year has now become stretched to about a thousand light-years.
When this expansion is taken into account the Universe is bigger than it would appear to be.
Neither finite nor infinite
Because of this stretching, radiation from the early Universe cannot be said to have travelled 78 billion light-years.
What it means is that the starting point of a particle of light, a photon, reaching us today after travelling for 13.7 billion years is now 78 billion light-years away.
IOW, if He sent a message to us on a photon the instant He began creating the physical realm, we would have received that message 8 billion years later from our space/time coordinates. And because every time the universe doubles in size, the perception of time is cut in half, if He sent us a message on a photon on the beginning of the second day, we would receive it at 8 billion + 4 billion = 12 billion years later from our space/time coordinates.
So how does it work out, Scripture v science? Well, let’s see from our space/time coordinates how close it is:
The MAXIMA, BOOMERANG, and DASI collaborations, which measure minute variations in the CMB [cosmic microwave background radiation], recently reported new results at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. All three agree remarkably about what the “harmonic proportions” of the cosmos imply: not only is the universe flat, but its structure is definitely due to inflation, not to topological defects in the early universe.
The results were presented as plots of slight temperature variations in the CMB that graph sound waves in the dense early universe. These high-resolution ‘power spectra’ show not only a strong primary resonance but are consistent with two additional harmonics, or peaks.
The peaks indicate harmonics in the sound waves that filled the early, dense universe. Until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup in which sound waves (pressure waves) could vibrate. The CMB is a relic of the moment when the universe had cooled enough so that photons could “decouple” from electrons, protons, and neutrons; then atoms formed and light went on its way.
Previous observations revealed that the early universe was comprised of matter whose gravity was trying to pull it all inward and slow down its expansion. But the spreading out of the cosmos started speeding up around 5 billion to 6 billion years ago. That's when scientists believe dark energy started to win the cosmic tug of war.
Here the rocks reveal an odd twist in the story -- eventual regeneration of the greenhouse. Recall that 3 billion years ago, Earth was essentially Waterworld. There weren't any plants or animals to affect the atmosphere. Even algae hadn't evolved yet. Primitive photosynthetic microbes were around and may have played a role in the generation of methane and minor usage of carbon dioxide.
As long as rapid continental weathering continued, carbonate was deposited on the oceanic crust and subducted into what Lowe calls "a big storage facility ... that kept most of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere."
But as carbon dioxide was removed from the atmosphere and incorporated into rock, weathering slowed down -- there was less carbonic acid to erode mountains and the mountains were becoming lower. But volcanoes were still spewing into the atmosphere large amounts of carbon from recycled oceanic crust.
Day 5, ½ billion years duration - Scripture says that moving life, aquatic life followed by birds were created on the fifth day which according to this rule would be within the last 750,000,000 years. Science says that continental drift occurred 750 million years ago, followed by the formation of sponges, jellyfish, flatworms, anthropods, mullusks, fish, early vertebrates, sharks. Invertebrates moved onto land about 350 million years ago. Timeline of the Universe Science does not (yet) date birds back this far.
Day 6 – ¼ billion years duration. Scripture says that land animal life, man being last were created on the sixth day which according to this rule would be within the last 250,000,000 years. Science says that the following emerged in this period in this order: dinosaurs, mammals, birds, primates, cows, man, society. Timeline of the Universe
In sum, not only is everything in the universe moving, but space/time itself is expanding, nothing is at rest and that is why Relativity is so important and why precious few scientists embrace a geocentric model or any other model that has an object at rest in the universe.
For instance, the observed speed of gas orbiting around a black hole was measured at 2,000,000 miles per hour. The black hole itself is 39,000,000 times more massive than our Sun. Radio Astronomers Set New Standard for Accurate Cosmic Distance Measurement
We are all travelers in space/time. A “null path” is an empty path and can be visualized in special relativity as an object traveling at the speed of light. For the object, no time passes. The observers of the object will sense time passing.
More importantly, the equivalence principle – which derives from Newton’s observation that all objects fall with the same acceleration and thus how fast an object accelerates (inertial mass) and its gravitational mass are the same. Thus falling towards high gravity objects (such as black holes, the earth, etc.) and velocity are equivalent.
That is why an object near a black hole may sense a week passing in the same duration that a man on earth would experience forty years passing.
It is also the reason why, if you were traveling through space at the speed equivalent to one earth’s gravity – while for you 25.3 years would elapse, a whopping 5x1010 years would elapse on earth.
And that is why I and so many others like me view space/time as a continuum, i.e. for us time is a dimension.
We are participants in this continuum, and so to that extent we say that we are "in" time. But many have direct experiences of timelessness. So paradoxically, humans directly experience both time and timelessness. As T. S. Eliot said, human life is lived at the intersection of time and timelessness (eternity). That is the specific form of our humanity.
Thank you so much for your amazingly informative and thought-provoking essay/post, Alamo-Girl!
As impressive as cosmological theories are, they are, after all, still theories. Fifty years from now, they will be as outdated as the steady-state theory is today.
I mentioned our axial rotational speed of 1K mph as an example without going into the rotational speed around the sun, or suns rotational speed around the galaxy, or the speed with which the galaxy is closing in or receding from other galaxies.
But, your elaborate presentation is most appreciated. I do have a question regarding your statement "In sum, the universe is at least 156 light years wide." Did you forget some zeros?
Also, relativity is no different than the Ptolemaic navigational method (that, in its own right is an epitome of relativity!), which can still be used to navigate, its geocentric premises notwithstanding. But, the fact is, the same method could be applied on Mars or on a comet, with correct repetitive phenomena recorded and formulated in the same way. It would give predictable and repetitive results with a high dose of confidence, which is what science is all about, right?
But science does not give truth; it merely provides working models. And working models can have any number of "dimensions" needed for the equations to give the desired answer. In fact, if you need to account for a phenomenon, invent a new "dimension" or "element," or "particle," and plug it into an equation and you're in business!
Claudius Ptolemy conveniently introduced an "egg-shaped" orbit of Mercury, "epicycles" and "equants" that neatly completed his formulae to fit the observed phenomena! Scientists do it all the time! For instance, cosmologists conveniently "add" estimated matter "needed" to solve equations. They are all estimates, assumptions and presumptions.
What we seem to see in all of creation is that everything is going in circles. We rotate around the axis, around the sun, multiple (usually double) star systems around each other, stars around the galaxy, and galaxies belonging to a local group rotate around each other, .
The whole universe could be rotating, creating a giant 'donut' as parts closer to the common center would travel faster while peripheral parts would move slower relative to each other, thus providing the perception of expansion or contraction based on spectral shifts. But my point is that such shifts do not prove that the universe is not going around in circles, nor does it disprove that there may be more than one such universe.
Cosmology also does not explain what is this vast "space" we are traversing "through," this abyss with no beginning and no end, or where it comes from. If the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang the space is really an endless "hole," and this "hole" had to predate energy and matter!
Your elaboration and "concordance" with the Genesis and cosmology brings to mind that there are two accounts of Genesis, and that the order of creation is reversed in them, with man created before plants and animals in one and after the animals and plants in the other.
Likewise, the Big Bang theory "concordance" with the Bible would have the Bible start "And God said: 'Let there be Light!'" '[Bang!] rather than "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
But, as you say, it is not important that we disagree on which science to believe or whether the Bible is "exactly the way it happened," but whether we can find the same Spirit in our hearts. The rest is our honest journey out of love for God.