If we start by guessing some numbers and do a little calculating on the
back of an envelope we get the following: It seems reasonable that
incoming asteriods arrive at something in excess of the escape velocity of
the earth, maybe 30 000 meters per second. If a million kilograms of space
rock fell to earth, the earth would need to absorb 2E16 Joules of kinetic
energy (20 million billion Joules). (Probably alot more space debris that
one million kilograms could be imagined by the asteriod bombardment being
suggested.) With a rough consideration of the specific heat and heat of
vaporization of H2O maybe 2E13 liters could be vaporized by that energy.
It would be some time before the earth's radiant energy budget would get
back into equilibrium with space, especially considering the transparency
of the atmosphere could be changed by all the new particulates, etc.
possibly pushing the earth to a new equilibrium point.
Whether it is fortunate or not, we seemed to be closed in to being
speculative about early mechanisms. Genesis one refreshes my spirit, but
it is not alot of help in describing the particulars of the beginning.
More like a short postcard from a tourist for writing a history of China.
I imagine playing (in reverse) a video tape that has been recorded since
the beginning. The flow of events for the last half century would be
fairly conherent from my perspective. I do not think there would be any
sudden discontiuities like houses appearing that had not been built or
crops that had not been planted. Even miracles that I have been close to
would not look discontinuous. A friend recently had had a massive heart
attack. The doctors lost him. His family and a group of 15 at the
hospital were allowed into the OR to pray. He revived and was in church
the next Sunday. The hospital staff want to know about the gospel, but
this event on the tape of history would not look discontinuous. The only
thing that would appear on the tape would be a lot of people rejoicing as
Bob woke up.
Would we see discontinuities around Joan of Arc or other events? I don't
know. Phillip disappearing on the Gaza road and appearing in Azotus would
appear discontinuous on the tape. The first century in Israel would have
alot of places where the continuity of the tape was corrupted.
Physicists say that the tape would rewind for 20 billion years without
discontinuity, every frame a logical extension of the proceeding one. Such
theorizing is quite exhaustively reasonable and conherent, but I do not
feel that the tape must play that way. Axes would float and fires burn
from nothing. Other things would tear at the fabric of the tape's
continuity. (Yet, I would not expect to see a wave of asteroids striking
the earth in a period of months during the last 5 or 6 millenium.) I talk
with Physicists and read quite a bit, yet can offer them nothing to improve
on their theories.
ON TO A TANGENT
I think we are incurably ignorant, yet amazing in our failings. All that
we have been able to do by dancing electrons around, and yet we do not know
them. A particle, (well, not a particle, a localized wave packet). It has
charge (what is that??) You can make a pair of such with opposite charge
from pure energy. So they, electrons and positrons, are some kind of
condensed energy. That almost says something, but what is energy???
Stuff that you take account (a count) of and it is always there.
Physically, we are the complex interplay of the electrical forces
contributed by multitudes of electrons in the chemistry of body, including
brain. We are packed with organization and information that cannot have
arisen from random mixing of primordial hydrogen atoms. Not in my
imagination.
Must run
Douglas Franks
Christopher Dock Mennonite High School
1000 Forty Foot Rd
Lansdale, PA 19446
dfranks@principia.edu
215 362 2675 wk
215 362 2943 fax
215 721 4324 hm
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