The size of the nucleus is
about a thousandth of that. As we proceed to smaller and smaller scales
nothing interesting seems to be happening until we get to a scale of about
10-33 cm. At that size, called a Planck length, fascinating things happen;
for it is there that we truly hit the fabric of space. To appreciate just how
small a Planck length is, note that it is as much smaller compared to man
than man is to 100,000,000 universes laid side-by-side!
The Firmament
At a scale of the order of 10-33 centimeters we find that the warp and
woof of heaven comes into focus. Physics attempts to derive relationships
between the different properties of objects. Such relationships typically
involve certain constants: values which are generally assumed not to
change over time. The speed of light is such a constant. So is the
gravitational constant. It turns out that there are relationships among the
constants themselves, and those relationships all express themselves at
the Planck length. For example, the Planck length itself, L*, relates
Planck's constant (a unit of angular momentum or spin-energy), h, the
speed of light, c, and the gravitational constant, G via the equation:
L* = Ö(hG/c3) = 1.616x10-33 cm. (1)
By the same token, the constants give us a fundamental unit of mass,
called the Planck Mass, which is:
M* = Ö(hc/G) = 2.177x10-5 gm. (2)
The basic unit of time is:
t* = Ö(hG/c5) = 5.391x10-44 sec. (3)
Lastly, the fundamental unit of temperature can be derived using
Boltzmann's constant, k, as:
T* = Ö(hc5/G)/k = 1.417x1032 °K. (4)
Modern science is not certain as to the meaning of these numbers, but
the most popular explanation at present is that they signify particles
which pop into existence, exist for about 10-44 second, and then pop out
of existence again. These particles, called Planck particles, form the
basis for various cosmological theories such as strings, superstrings, 10-
dimensional space and so on.
One of the interesting properties of the Planck particles is that they
have the same size as both their deBroglie wavelength as well as the
black-hole (Schwartschild) radius for their mass. For most of this century
it has been known that particles do not move in straight lines. Instead,
particles such as protons and electrons move in waves. Those waves,
called deBroglie waves, vary inversely with mass. That is, the lighter the
particle the longer its wavelength. Hence an electron is “larger” than a
proton, although the latter is much more massive. This is attested to by
the observation that the electron “orbits” or “surrounds” the proton when
the two are combined in the form an atom. The deBroglie wavelength for
a particle of mass M* is L*. As for the black hole radius, if matter is
squeezed into a smaller and smaller volume eventually its gravitational
field is so packed that light cannot escape from it. Hence the term “black
hole,” as one cannot see it. The size to which a mass M* has to be compacted
before becoming a black hole is L*.
So it seems that we are engulfed in a sea of Planck particles. The particles
can be viewed as constituting a pervasive medium which acts like
an ideal fluid. The density, R, of that fluid is an astounding 3.6x1093
gm/cm3. To appreciate how dense that is let us return to our sugar cube
model. Recall that if the sugar cube was filled with nuclear matter that
then it would weigh 200,000,000 tons. Let us try to envision such a cube
made up of Planck particles. The numbers are incomprehensible. For
example, the mass of the entire universe is estimated to be about 2x1054
gm. Packing everything in the universe into the cube would only give us
a density of 2x1054 gm/cm3, far short of the Planck medium's 3.6x1093
gm/cm3. One would have to pack 2x1039 (that's
2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) universes into
the cube to arrive at the appropriate density! If this doesn't qualify for
the name of “firmament” then what does?
Properties of the Firmament
A medium of such a high density as the firmament has some interesting
properties. One would think, for example, that it would be impossible
to move in such a medium, just as one could not move if encased in
iron—even if one were made of iron! Normally this is true, but the
deBroglie wavelengths of nuclear particles are so long by comparison
that the firmament is transparent to them. This is somewhat related to
why light can travel through a “dense” medium such as glass instead of
being stopped cold on impact. So we have our first prediction of the fir
mament model: motion through the firmament will be effortless as long
as we are not dealing with nuclear particles approaching a mass of M* or,
more particularly, energies of M*c2. The firmament will not allow
elementary particles to approach that energy without absorbing them.
Has such been observed? Not yet; for physics labs have not come
anywhere near creating particles that massive. Should they ever succeed,
however, we can expect the particle to disappear in t* seconds. Incidentally,
the temperature of the firmament is T*, far hotter than anything
known in the universe.
The End of the Second Day
The firmament which God created on the second day is thus an extremely
massive structure. Its properties are manifold and in a very real
sense it determines the very physics of the universe. It was either superimposed
on already created atoms or else the atoms were created
throughout it as it was formed. In either case, the elements had yet to be
consolidated into celestial bodies. That did not occur until the fourth day.
We shall look more into the nature of the creation of the elements on our
discussion of the fourth day.
According to the Biblical account,
the rotation period of thefirmament is one day.
With the waters thus removed, the light
now was suspended in the firmament which carried it about the earth
once a day. The firmament itself dictated the frame of reference for the
light and all the particles in the universe. The speed of light was thus and
still is defined with respect to the firmament.
The Third Day
On the third day of the creation according to Genesis 1, the waters
and earth below the firmament were separated. This is the time when the
earth received its form. The simple reading of the scripture says that the
land mass was all in one place. Evolutionists call this place Pangea, and
it is apparent that the Bible records the splitting of Pangea during the
days of Peleg a couple of hundred years after the flood. It is possible that
flood waters turned to superheated steam by the extreme pressure in the
earth could have caused the continents to slide apart, but such speculation
is beyond the scope of this paper.
Grass and other plants were formed on the third day. Significantly,
this was before the creation of the sun. That is a knotty problem for
theistic evolutionists who would have to conclude that hundreds of millions
of years—if not billions of years—of evolution would have to occur
in total darkness at temperatures of hundreds of degrees below zero.
Again, detailed discussion of such is beyond the scope of this paper.
The Fourth Day
The events of the fourth day of creation are recorded in Genesis
1:14-19 with these words:
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the
heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to
give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the
day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light
upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the
light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
To begin with we need to emphasize three points. Firstly, the lights are
”in the firmament,” not above it; secondly, there was no clear division between
day and night before this time and thirdly, the lights in the firmament
are generally acknowledged to be the sun, moon, stars and planets.
Historically there has been a tendency to read more into the word
”great” than is there; namely, some insist that the word must mean that
the sun and moon are the brightest lights in the universe. Calling the sun
and moon “great” in verse 16 does not necessarily mean that these are
intrinsically the brightest objects in the universe. Instead, the word
”great” refers to their respective roles, the purpose for which each was
created. We are told that the sun and moon were created “for signs and
for seasons” as well as “to give light upon the earth.” If the brightness of
the sun and moon is to be included in the word “great,” then it can mean
no more than the amount of light each gives to the earth. As for “signs,”
we find that throughout the Bible the sun is a type of Christ and the moon
is a type of the believer. That the moon shines by reflected light is consistent
with the typology that the believer shines by reflecting the glory of
Christ. Hence the term “great” when applied to these bodies.
There are several possible scenarios for the fourth day, each of which
is consistent with scripture. Here I shall present the one I deem most
likely.
Given the aforementioned stability of the firmament, it seems most
probable that the firmament was created with all of the material needed to
make the universe inside it. For reasons which will become evident
shortly, we shall assume that the matter in the universe is initially all
hydrogen (except for the earth and its heaven). The hydrogen need not
have been uniformly distributed throughout the universe. It may have
been clumped into amorphous blobs.
Now suppose that when God made the sun, moon and stars, he
formed them from the inside out, and that he fused the hydrogen into the
heavier elements as he went along. Generally such a reaction creates a
tremendous amount of heat, high-energy neutrinos and gamma-rays.
However, if that heat were distributed evenly throughout space (if it were
thermalized) then the resulting temperature of the universe is about 3°K, a
value which matches the observed temperature. It is for this reason that
we assume in-situ formation of the elements.
When it comes to the planets it is anyone's guess how long it took to
cool them during the creation week. Some last-minute formation of
neutrons from the fusion of electrons and protons could rapidly have
cooled the planets, assuming that most of the radiant heat went out into
space which is not at all an unreasonable assumption if the formation occurred
from the inside out. Such rapid cooling would have frozen any
”boiling” features at the planet's surface. In effect this means that craters
could be the last gasp of a boiling surface, just before it was “blast-
frozen” by the final neutron fusion. (That fusion would involve roughly
one percent of the energy released by the creation of the planet.) The
boiling may have been so rapid that large drops splattered away from the
surface of the planet, solidified on the way, and most would have fallen
back to the surface causing impact craters.
There are additional factors which may have entered into the formation
of the sun, moon and planets. A different value for the speed of light
would have facilitated the reaction rates as well as the final thermalization
of the heat released by the fusion of the elements. It is common
knowledge among cosmologists that the speed of light is tied to the expansion
rate of the universe.4 A rapid expansion in the creation week
would have resulted in a high value for the speed of light. In particular,
as was first noted by Barry Setterfield,5 expansion of the universe to its
present size within the first week would not only “age” the stars, but also
the rocks of the earth.
Summary
In this paper we have looked at a creationist scenario for the first four
days of creation. Because of constraints on both space and time, the
presentation is necessarily sketchy, especially for the fourth day.
We find that the firmament (commonly called the Planck medium) is
a real, solid object which to the material universe appears to have all the
properties of a plenum. We have noted some of the physical characteristics
of the firmament and others have been presented in greater detail
elsewhere.
The scenario presented for the formation of the sun, moon, and
planets assumes that these bodies were created from the inside out, that
the elements comprising them were fused in place, and that the formation
times (of the order of a day) were short enough to allow the fusion heat to
escape into space where by some mechanism, possibly a much higher
speed of light or increased neutrino interactions in an expanding shell just
above the formation level, the radiation was thermalized to produce the
observed temperature of the universe of 3° Kelvin. The mechanism accounts
for the presence of craters, both impact and non-impact, and predicts
that craters should be present on all astronomical bodies whose surfaces
could sustain them for 6,000 years or more, even small ones which
should not have survived a crater-forming impact. It also predicts that
non-impact craters will be found to be much more prevalent on the moon
and other cratered bodies than is heretofore believed.
All-in-all we find that the Biblical account of the creation week is not
only compatible with scientific fact but it is also subject to scientific
modeling principles, at least in part.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1
For the remainder of the article, the reader who has no sense of the
size of a centimeter can either bear in mind that a centimeter is a bit
under half an inch. Given that the nature of the calculations and the
uncertainties in the mass of the universe and its size, in what follows
that reader might even read “inch” instead of “centimeter.”
2
Bouw, G. D., 1997. “Massive Superstrings and the Firmament,” ABA
Techical Paper No. 2. A copy of the paper may be viewed at ABA's
home page on the internet (http://www2.baldwinw.edu/~gbouw/aba).
Members will receive a copy with the Spring 1997 issue of the Biblical
Astronomer. Non-members may purchase a copy of it or of the
first technical paper (”The Gravitational Analog of a Rolling Ball on
an Elastic Membrane” by Prof. James N. Hanson) for $4 postpaid
from the Association.
3
Bouw, G. D., 1987. “A New Look at the AEther,” in J. P. Wesley,
editor, Progress in Space-Time Physics, (Blumberg: Benjamin
Wesley), pp. 104-108. Also see Bouw, 1987. “The Firmament,” Bulletin
of the Tychonian Society, no. 43:11-20.
4
For example, see J. B. Barbour & B. Bertotti, 1977. “Gravitation and
Inertia in a Machian Framework,” Il Nuovo Cimento, 38(1):1.
5
Setterfield, B., 1983. The Velocity of Light and the Age of the
Universe, (Adelaide, Australia: Creation Science Assoc. Inc.)