Strange Science

What do you think about when you hear someone discuss the big bang? Do you think of it as a fairy tale? Divine Act of God? Do you wretch at the idea that such a random act of chaos is responsible for the vast array of laws that govern our universe? Or do you marvel at the simplicity of our origins? Well…regardless of your idea on the subject, at least most of us agree that the universe began at some point. The question of how is subject to mountains of debate. My purpose here tonight however, is to somewhat clarify a model of the big bang theory that supposes not so much chaos, but  order. Many people today misunderstand the big bang theory. They believe that in the beginning a large cloud of matter swirled around very fast and condensed to unimaginable pressures. Once this cloud of matter became unstable, it collapsed, exploding and ejecting amazing amounts of matter into “empty space”. Almost as if space was a giant empty aquarium. Almost all physicists and cosmologists today reject this notion. Stephen Hawking, in his book “A Brief History of Space and Time” asserted that space, time, AND matter originated in the form of a type of cosmic egg. This “space” expanded into an outter area called hyperspace. It’s a little tough to understand this concept, so let me give you an illustration. Imagine you have a balloon, and an aquarium. You blow the balloon up so that it exists inside the aquarium, which also has air inside of it. The air outside of the ballon, in the aquarium is hyperspace. The balloon itself is space. Let me also say that the air INSIDE the balloon is NOT space. Merely the balloon itself is space. Now, THIS concept may also be hard to understand in itself so let me provide you with another illustration. A human being exists in three dimensions. To make this simpler, let’s break it down into two dimensions, so we are like a drawing on paper. We cannot perceive the space outside of the paper, only the paper itself. We also cannot percieve the space inside or outside of the balloon, merely the balloon itself. What I’m saying here may be profound for some of you who have realized what I’m telling you. This means that as a two dimensional being, the furthest you could travel heading one direction in space, is the space directly behind you. This is true in our universe as well, according to the most recent theory and studies. Physicists theorize that if you were to fire an object into space at an unimaginable rate of speed, it will eventually arrive where it began. This is just like if you were to begin a trip on one side of the globe, heading in one direction. You would eventually end up where you began. This idea was a rough one to swallow at first, but as I’ve continued studying and reading, I’ve become increasingly more comfortable with it. Not only that, I like the model better, being that it doesn’t offend my religious beliefs. Rather, I find that it supports the idea that some manner of order was imposed upon the universe by outside sources. After all, we can only percieve what is in our dimension of space. How can we know that there is nothing outside of it? Also, this now puts to rest my irritation with the whole “matter spinning in circles” idea. It is more likely, that this universe may have organized much earlier on, and that it didn’t spend amazing amounts of time randomly ordering itself. In fact, it is feasible to say that the universe was already organized to some extent upon origination, and that it has merely expanded since the beginning. This is an easy pill to swallow if you believe in an intelligent force outside of our dimension of space, since matter would already have arrived in neatly organized packets…or galaxies. Keep in mind that I’m not saying that matter WAS already organized, rather that it could have been. With this model I see no reason why it didn’t have to be. It’s merely speculation, but I do find it interesting. Your thoughts and comments on these ideas is appreciated. The next item on my list is ether. What is ether? Well…what is space? Einstein called the space our planet inhabits, ether. One of the key points he made in his book on the theory of relativity is that we cannot live in “empty space”. Space had to be something. The other strange thing about this “ether” is that it tends to be connected to time itself. In other words, you can bend it, stretch it, and distort it. Kind of like you can bend and stretch a piece of plastic wrap. However unlike plastic wrap, when you bend space, the rate at which time elapses changes. Take for instance, this example. If you placed an atomic clock in the southern hemisphere of the Earth at sea level, and another one at 5000 feet of elevation in the northern hemisphere, the two clocks would actually run at different rates. After a year you would see an extra five microseconds on the clock at 5000 feet. This is because the elevation distorts space and creates a “gravity well” causing time to run just a slight bit faster. Our planets, and our sun, sit in this ether, distorting it, like marbles on seran wrap. They create little dents, and distort time. When you bend or stretch space, you actually slow down time. this means that a year on Earth, takes much longer than a year in the void of space. This is the interesting thing to me…let’s say that light, which travels at roughly 670,600,000 miles per hour, is careening through space. This speed is a constant. So we know that if a point of light originated 670,600,000 miles away, it would take roughly an hour to reach our eyes here on Earth. There really isn’t a way to postulate any difference in time here because this distance is literally point blank range in the arena of space distances. Now let’s pick a distance much further away, like 300 light years. That is 176,358,900,000,000,000 miles! Now, in my mind, it is feasible that if space is bent and stretched by the matter contained within it, the actual passing of time could change such that while light is still travelling that distance in a year, the speed of the year itself can fluctuate. For instance, lets say that Earth exists in a densly populated region of space. It’s year lasts 365 days. Each day lasts 24 hours, and each minute lasts 60 seconds. Well, the same would be said for a year in a void area of space, but space is not bent so time proceeds at a much quicker rate. So if you took sixty years to age here on Earth, and sixty Earth years passed in 50 seconds in a void of space, you would do sixty years worth of aging in 50 seconds in that void area of space! Let’s take this a step further and trip ourselves out. I would imagine that you wouldn’t suddenly die while passing through this sectio of space. Rather, as you passed through, you would percieve time moving along at a normal rate. However, in this area of space, as you percieved the Earth, it would appear that Earth time is moving along at an astoundingly slow rate. You would spend sixty years in that void of space, and return to Earth to see that only a minute of time has passed! This last point may not be a reality, but it certainly makes sense, and I find the possibility astounding. In summary however, this means that depending on the characteristics of space in between our planet and the stars and celestial objects we observe, it is feasible to conclude that we may not have an accurate measurement of the age or true distances of those bodies. If space is distorted at any point along the journey that light makes to reach our eyes, it may alter the reality of our data. I propose that due to this idea, we may not be looking as far back in time as we suppose…at least not OUR time. Depending on the difference in spacetime of these distant bodies, our five minutes could be their thousands of years…wow…what a trip… …Thoughts?

Young Earth Creationists, Gap Theorists, Day-Age Theorists, Evolutionists and Theistic Evolutionists…

These are the names given by our society today, to five siblings who just cannot stop arguing. More specifically, they are the names given to five classifications of believers (not so much Christian, but faith-based). When asking any Christian, Catholic, or Jew in this day and age, about their thoughts on the creation of the Earth, you will generally hear that it was “created in six days”. Unfortunately, because of studies held in Geology and Biology, people are beginning to differ increasingly on just what that “six days” was. The question “How old is the Earth?” has been tossed back and forth by many theologians for the last couple centuries. It is no new argument, nor is it ancient. Just recently, though, the argument has been picking up considerable amounts of steam. With the “Intelligent Design” movement sweeping the United States, zealous activists no longer need to feel as though they are the minority. The reality of it is that the number of people who believe in the theory of “Intelligent Design” is increasing quite rapidly.

The original aim of the YEC movement was to introduce Creationism, or Intelligent Design into the K-12 curriculum as an alternative to evolutionary theory as an explanation for the origins of life. They have slowly changed their game plan to include discussing neither topic in school (which I agree with to some extent). The reasoning behind this is simple: If we had to present every possible theory concerning the origins of life to our children, our science books would be huge and the classes would take forever. Not only that, our Science curriculum would have to be renamed Studies in Religion and Pseudo-Philosophy 103. So the most logical solution posed by the Young Earth Creationists is this: Explain how species can vary within their own genus, but don’t extrapolate that explanation to include formation of the entire Universe. While this seems like a harmless solution to the problem, it’s not easily attainable. Evolutionists in recent days have proven to be just as zealous as Young Earth Creationists. Both sides hold that their theory is one of significant “scientific importance” and should be heard in the classroom.

I for one, think neither is really that important to the public school system curriculum. I feel that to discuss the origins of life in the classroom, would be inherently dangerous to any single belief system. This comes from the fact that Biblical testimony states “six days” and public school science curriculum says “millions of years”. The reality of the problem is that neither testimony nor scientific theory is backed by any undeniable proof. Undeniable proof is the direct spawn of eyewitness testimony. While the Biblical account claims to be that of an eyewitness, there is no one alive today that can confirm that they witnessed either the event, or its documentation. On the same token, the evolutionist explanation of the origin of life, is derived from the extrapolation of mathematical and geographical data that still holds the assumption that “it happened that way”. This theory, while understandable, must still succumb to the fact that it is not undeniably provable. Therefore, to state in any form of public textbook that the “Earth is billions of years old”, or to in any way imply that anything definitely happened “millions of years ago” would be a violation of California Education Code 60200 (c3), which states that “California Textbooks shall be factually accurate and incorporate principles of instruction reflective of current and confirmed research.” We just simply have no way of knowing for sure. So, why teach our children that we do? That responsibility should be left up to family members.

So far we have only really covered maybe three of the five classifications that were mentioned in the beginning. Concerning Day-Age Theorists and Gap Theorists, these are merely compromises with evolution and the “millions of years” found in our textbooks. More namely Geology and Biology. These two theories serve a less than noble or noble cause, depending on your views. They chiefly try to prove that the scientific theory of evolution, and the age of the Earth as viewed by science, are not in conflict with the Genesis account. Once the views from both sides are presented, they accomplish what they came to accomplish. The Day-Age Theory states that each day in the “six day creation” was a different evolutionary time period. The Gap-Theory states that there may have been a large gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, thus fitting in perfectly with Geology as taught in the classroom. These two philosophies, while they make sense, aren’t spelled out clearly enough in the Genesis account to be considered to possess empirical evidence of an eyewitness account in the Holy Bible. Plus, there are far too many references spoken from Jesus’ mouth stating a six-day creation for either of these theories to pick up overwhelming support. Ask anyone who has not been taught evolution to read Genesis and tell you how long it took to create the Earth. You will always get six days. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the point I am trying to make. All of these explanations are theories. So why not include all or teach none? They are all very plausible explanations for the origin of life. All of them, including evolution, are based on some form of assumption. Thus, they will ALL require faith and belief in some form or another. While I don’t believe faith based activities should be kept out of schools, I do believe that if any faith based principles or events, such as the origin of life and the universe, are pushed into history or science textbooks, those books should only be used in private schools or not at all. I say if we are going to teach our children about evolution in the public school classrooms, lets keep it factual…not philosophical. Keep discussions of origins out of school curriculum.

         So I have continuously tried to convince myself that this was a bad topic to bring up, but I’m done fighting it. Tonight’s blog is one I would really like an opinion on. I’m serious, even those of you who usually don’t feel the need to comment, go ahead I want to hear it!

Okay, in 2005 scientists unearthed a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil in a sandstone formation in Montana. Unfortunately during the excavation one of the bones split. This would typically be nothing more than an unfortunate accident that would ruin a perfectly good specimen. However something special was contained within this bone. There was an element of soft, spongy tissue contained within the bone made from what appeared to be cells!

Now I have previously kept my mouth shut about this…but the obviously ridiculous answer to this phenomenon seems to be far from the minds of scientists. They have been extremely skeptic about the tissue EVEN BEING that of a dead T-rex. Rather, they have suggested that it is a form of spongy decay or an element of fossilization at the molecular level. After deciding that it is a product of the animal,   they then began to say “wow, this redefines our idea of fossilization. This soft tissue survived for 70 million years!”

Now what the heck is the big deal with questioning the actual age of the animal…I mean, you don’t KNOW how old it is. You only THINK you know. Every time I read about the questioning of this specimens age, scientists get almost offended! I read a response that seriously said “Well we know this animal to be cataloged at 60-70 million years, so we know it does not possibly classify as a 6000 year old specimen, it must be much older.”

…What? Where is this catalog and who wrote it? Sorry, that’s a stupid answer in my book.

This soft tissue could NOT have survived 60,000,000 years…in fact, I think people don’t really realize JUST how much time that is…

Sixty million seconds is TWO YEARS…think about that…

Look, there is absolutely no way a bone could contained PARTIALLY UNFOSSILIZED sections and soft tissue for 60,000,000 years…

That is simply my opinion.  I know people will disagree, but that’ s okay. Look it up, tell me what you think…and I already know what the scientists rebuttals are, and I’m pretty skeptical about them. It’s sounds like a struggle to maintain a comfortable preconceived notion to me.

Hello all,

For those of you who do not know, I am a Christian. I enjoy writing, speaking, and studying topics relating to my faith. I also love science and can’t wait to get my hands on the next big challenge to our human understanding. As an element to my blog, I have chosen to include some audio blogs, as well as audio versions of articles I have written for you to enjoy and comment on. For those of you who are not religious, this article titled “Meditation: What It Means to A Christian” can be useful in terms of meditation on your own life. Whether you believe in a God or not, and no matter who you believe that God is, this article can be applied to you. Just take the principles discussed here, and use them in your own way for your own benefit. Quiet time is something I feel that people lack in this present day and age, and i feel it has specific health benefits. So listen and enjoy this article I have written, and let me know what you think.

Photo Courtesy of NASA 

In the most recent months, there has been increasing hype over the upcoming Mars mission. I find Mars to be a wonderful and interesting planet. In an article released on January 19^th by CNN there was talk of the discovery of methane content in the Martian atmosphere. This is an incredible discovery because methane is one of the more common natural elements. It is found on several planets, but in a liquid form that is extremely toxic and not conducive to life. On Mars it is in minute qualities in the form of a gas. Why is this important? Well, methane gas is given off by many life forms. This may or may not be evidence of these past life forms, but it is still intriguing. I have some questions about this possibility however…

Our planet exists in an orbit that is oriented perfectly within what some would call the “habitable zone”, or a zone in which temperatures under the right conditions could sustain water in a liquid form. Mars is far outside this “habitable zone” which is why much of its water exists in a state of permafrost. It is unable to reach a temperature that can melt the water into a liquid form. Do you think water ever existed on Mars in a liquid form? Do you believe there were past life forms on Mars? Do you think that in the past this “habitable zone” was wider, further out, or oriented differently? Do you think that even with its distance from the sun, terra forming would be a sufficient condition for creating a livable environment on Mars?

I personally believe that Mars research is an outstanding endeavor. However at this moment I think that we should divert more resources towards protection from large space debris.

What are your thoughts?

I just finished listening to George Noory bring up this asteroid. Apparently an asteroid whizzed by our planet today, missing us by only 40,000 to 72,000 kilometers. It amazes me how often we come close to big rocks like this one. Sometimes I wonder about the odds, and just how “lucky” we often are. According to newscientist.com the asteroid passed by at only 1/5 the distance to the moon and was estimated to be nearly 20 - 50 meters across. However I guess there are some variations on the size. Playing the video gives me chills. It’s pretty hard to notice by just looking at it, but if you focus, you will see a dot moving across your screen from right to left. This is the asteroid. Now what I want to know is this…Do you think we should allocate more resources towards detecting these kinds of asteroids and developing systems to protect ourselves from them? Do you think NASA should be doing more to attempt to protect us? What are your thoughts on this?

Check out newscientist.com for the full article.

Oh no! Somebody better call Obama and tell him to add a section to the stimulus plan that will  install traffic signals that can be seen by low flying alien spacecraft so we can protect our green energy…

 Okay I’m sorry folks, I’ll stop . I’m just having some fun. On a less political note, I want to know your take on this. This wind farm “pinwheel” as I like to call them in the UK got clobbered by a low flying…something. I’m not sure what it was. I’m still thinking it was probably some form of missle test but who knows. Do any of you know what could knock a 65 foot metal wing off of one of these things and completely bend another? Heck, the blade that got knocked off also completely disappeared! Try that one on for size? This just amazes me because of the pure size and strength of the object that was hit. I don’t know what to think, but I definitely wouldn’t rule out the UFO possibility.

So today is the day I write my first blog post for Today.com. I usually have plenty to write about and have no trouble relaying information to my readers of my other blog sites. However today was strangely different. I couldn’t find anything of interest to write about. I don’t know why.  I’d imagine it was because all of the cake and food I ate at my girlfriend’s grandmothers 80^th birthday shifted me into hibernation mode. In any case, I’ve decided to give a broad introduction to the things you will be reading about while visiting my little corner of cyberspace. Have you ever flipped on the radio at 2:00am in the morning and turned it to one of those late night talk shows? You know…the ones that talk about the aliens and never seem to have a shortage of callers? I’m going to bring up many of the topics they discuss as well as a few of my own. This way, those of you who are not completely nocturnal can get a dose of our midnight craziness. I’m completely open to any comments or questions on any of the topics I bring up. We’ll be talking about aliens, conspiracies, strange discoveries, controversies and much more. The blog is titled “Strange Science” because much of we will discuss will be related (if somewhat loosely) to the field of science. However it doesn’t have to be nor will all of it be. I may just come up with something completely off topic and quirky to talk about. I also welcome submissions from my readers. If you have a suggestion about something you would like me to blog about, fire away! I will look around, find some articles, do some research, and tickle your eyeballs with whatever weird and wacky thing you want me to blast off about. A lot of my blogs will also have to do with the spirit realm and God, so religion will be part of the family as well. Just to give my readers a heads up, I do in fact believe that religion and science can coexist peacefully. I will cover the controversial issues of religion vs. science often, so I do expect some backlash. I love both topics very much, and if you are reading my blogs, my assumption is that you do as well. I ask that if you disagree with any part of what I blog about in any manner, that instead of leaving, lets discuss it! Not everyone agrees with everything everyone says, that is just a part of life. The fact that you are even visiting my page and reading about my thoughts and ideas, gives me enough respect for you to value your opinion, so make it known! I want to know what is on your mind, and I want to develop a community of people who love to share ideas about what not all people may be open to talking about. So let me ask you, are you a UFO junkie? Are you a religious nut? Do you eat, sleep, and breathe some form of science? Are you a conspiracy theorist? Is Armageddon coming? Is that particle collider they built in Europe going to create a tiny black hole and swallow us all? Did big foot break into your back yard and make off with your dog? If you are a person with any of these qualities I want to make this a place where you can all come share your ideas and not have to worry about what people will think, because remember…they don’t know the truth.