The Beginning - Part Two

One of the features of this 34-year investigation is the uncanny way some act or event, random and in-the-moment,has a bearing on some future even to which the first act seems totally unrelated. Here I encountered one that directly bore on the problem presented by the disparities of Genesis, chapters 5 and 11. There could only be one reasonable explanation for the diminishing life spans of Shem's generation: the length of the year.
Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630)is noted for his three Laws of Planetary Motion, the third having to do with the periodic orbits of planets. This law states that the periodic rotation of a planet is related to that planet's distance from the Sun: the closer to the Sun the shorter the year. Could the Earth have been closer to the Sun in these earlier Biblical times? There is every reason to believe so.
Consider that if the Sun were the size of a 6-foot weather baloon, the Earth would be the size of a dime 140 yards away. Pluto, at its farthest distance from the Sun would be more than three miles away. Now, with greatly improved observational gear we have detected planets even farther out! And all these bodies are held in thrall of the Sun's mighty gravitation. Where else could the planets have come from?
If the Earth was at one time closer to the Sun than at present it would mean that it emerged from the Sun, and with the other terrestrial planets moved away from the star. One only need consider how this could have happened.
The Sun appears yellow in the sky but is truly white-hot, possibly a White Dwarf remnant of a nova, and is very hot. The hotter a star, the more unstable it is. We are well-aware that there are solar storms that spew hot gases hundreds of thousands of miles into space; could such an eruption been so violent that a gout of these superhot gases were blown far enough away to achieve orbit? Possible, but not the only cause. Maybe there was a collision.
Galaxies often collide with one another: there's no impact as the bodies in both are so far apart that these galaxies simply move through each other. During these moves they very likely exchange components. If a planet in Galaxy B wanders too close to a star in Galaxy A, it will be captured by that star. There is evidence that this actually happened, and to understand this more fully we will have to consider how a star is formed. It takes billions of years.
There are tiny particles of matter everywhere in the universe and they are constantly colliding with one another. When two of the particles combine their gravitational forces also combine and a chain reaction ensues. Higher gravitation attracts more particles, which further increase the gravitational force, which attracts even more particles, and so on. Stars form more quickly on the outskirts of a galaxy than at or near the center of the system. Near the center of our own Milky Way there are super-giant stars that could contain a million suns!
The reason for this is that a particle accumulation on the way to becoming a star encounters some pretty heavy competition from its neighboring giants. The forming mass is trying to pull matter into itself, while the other stars are trying to pull it away. Thus it takes hundreds of billions of years for one of these stars closer to the center of the galaxy to form.
Not so out here in the "boonies". Out here a star may form rather more quickly owing to the absence of competition. And if two galaxies are colliding edge-on, then something pretty dramatic is possible.
Imagine two systems, disks rotating counter-clockwise, coming together edge-on. Our Sun would be in one system and in the other, a forming star much smaller and earlier in its genesis: a cold, dark body. If this smaller body were captured by the Sun's gravitation the two bodies would approach one another at closing speed. Absent any colateral resistance, the smaller body would be attracted directly toward the Sun. If it passed close enough the smaller body could ignite and drag a stream of gas in its wake. This stream of gases could very well extend far enough out to orbit the Sun. How could this happen?
Newton's Third Law of Motion states that a body in mition tends to remain in motion, in a straight line, until acted upon by a force capable of stopping or altering that motion. The italicized phrase is one that is often omittied in the statement of this law, but it is vitally important to our understanding.
If the stream of gases, having extended out many millions of miles into space, turns back to the Sun it will be accelerating rapidly. The Sun moves, so it's eminently possible that the stream of gases moving at ever-higher degrees of acceleration and, so, moving in an ever straighter line, would pass behind the Sun on its way out into deep space. The Sun, of course, would pull the stream back and thus would begin an orbiting function in which the stream of gases would gradually expand away from the Sun. To understand this process, let us consider this as happening on a clock face.
Imagine that this stream of hot gases is orbiting the Sun in a counter-clockwise direction while the Sun is moving toward 12 o'clock. In the 12- and 6 o'clock positions the stream would be either croosing in front or behind the Sun. At the 3 o'clock position it would be moving in the same direction as the Sun, and opposite at the 9 o'clock point. One more fact and we'll be ready to run our model.
This fact is: No material body can store energy beyond that which gives it its physical properties; shape, density, texture, etc.. Any additional energy imparted to a material object must be thrown off. When a golfer tees off, the head of the driver comes into violent contact with the ball. The ball, unable to store this excess energy translates this energy into velocity as it takes off down the fairway. From the moment it begins its flight until it comes to rest, the ball is reacting to the energy of the driver. This example bears on the model we are considering in that an enormous energy would have been generated in the collision between the Sun and the captured body - this would have to be dissipated, but it would be an extremely long process owing to the enormous masses involved.
Returning to our clock model, when the stream of gases is at the nine o'clock position it is moving in the opposite direction as the Sun. The gravitational influence of the Sun would be fully engaged in drawing the revolving mass closer to itself: this is the Winter Solstice, when Earth and Sun are closest together. From that point it would continue in the six o'clock direction, trying to maintain a straight-line path, until overcome by the retreating Sun's gravitational force. This force would mount, acting upon the escaping mass in the manner of an elastic band stretched to its limit; then it would snap back! The gaseous stream would the be thrown out by the phenomenon that has come to be known as the " slingshot effect " and would describe a huge semi-circle winding around to the three o'clock position. That would account for Spring and Summer, when the Earth and Sun are farthest apart. Now imagine this taking place over the course of billions of years. As the gasses moved farther from the Sun they would cool and resolve themselves into spheres in accord with the Fundamental Law of the Universe. This law exists, though it has been ignored by the scientific community, or perhaps its been overlooked because it is so simple. No complicated, convoluted equatins necessary.
The Fundamental Law of the Universe is: Energy is all there is; everything is energy, and it is present in an infinite supply. There are also two corollaries to this law; that the Universe ( one of many ) constantly tries to achieve two states that it can never realize: Equilibrium and Uniformity.
The non-uniformity of energy has some areas of the cosmos more densely energetic than others. In the case of our model, as the gases condensed into solid form, these forming bodies would gather the remaining " loose " energy unto themselves, and planets would form. These bodies would continue migrating away from the Sun as long as the energy from the intial collision remained unjettisoned. This would account for the discovery of traces of organic life on Mars.
Returning to Kepler, as the minor planets moved away from the Sun they would experience longer periods of rotation ( years ), and this would account for the longevity of the generations of Adam, and later the Generation of Shem. But obviously these would not be close-ordered descendancies: Shem would have come much later. As to the indications of life on Mars, it could very well be the case that the Red Planet once occupied the ecosphere, the region of space currently occupied by the earth. Creation could then have commenced in the seas that were certainly present on Mars, continuing to the point when Mars flew farther out of this friendly region and into the colder regions of the Solar System. Then the process would have stopped, the atmosphere would have dissipated, the water would have frozen, and for all intents and purposes the planet would have died. This would also explain the Asteroid Belt as being the " splatter " from the explosion: loose material that was too distant to be drawn into the spheres of any of the planets. Only oe question remains; what was this object that collided with the Sun? The answer: Our other star!
Jupiter is a star, though not a very spectacular one. This body owes its credential to the fact that it emits half-again as much energy as it receives from the Sun.
With its twelve ( or more ) satellites, Jupiter is that center of a small solar system of its own, and it is this system that provided the key to understanding Genesis. This is the seemingly unrelated event mentioned earlier.
The mansion in which I was living in 1974 was located on a hillside in Upstate New York. It had a fire escape that led up to a platform at roof level. At the time I had a reflecting telescope with a six-inch mirror which I set up on the platform and aimed at Jupiter. There were other objects in the sky that I briefly observed, but I kept being drawn back to Jupiter.
Jupiter has four " moons " that are visible from the Earth using a small telescope. It is rare to see all four at the same time, but at least one is always visible. At one point, when I was observing the system there were two satellites showing. I went indoors for a short time, and when I returned, a third satellite had appeared. When I saw this the thought flashed through my mind, "Let there be light!"

To be continued.