God’s Miraculous Shot

It is remarkable to realize that for the vastness that can only be described today as infinity, how incredible this tiny little dot in the universe our planet Earth truly is.

The perfect blue of a sky on a warm spring day. The warmth of the sun in a cool breeze. The green of the grass, soft on the ground to cushion a bare foot.

All the pieces so perfectly crafted.

Even in a barren dessert there is the beauty of the reds and browns of the sands sculpted by the wind and baked by the sun.

Even in the middle of the vastest of oceans, the shades of the blues and rhythm of the waves dictated by the Moon some 238,860 miles above.

The caps of the world, more barren than the desserts comprised only of ice and snow, are beautiful in their lights and shadows.

Masterfully designed, perfectly crafted, brilliant in their inception, and flawless in execution.

The physicist will tell you that all of this is a result of extreme luck – the laws of motion and gravity and probability all calculated in one big bang 13.8 billion years ago.

The spiritualist will tell you that it is all God in every second of every flutter of a butterfly's wing. That this was all done for man, for man's benefit, and that the world did not even exist before man was here to experience it.

If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

"The vibration of the force of the fall would impact the atoms of the matter in the surrounding objects to cause an effect" would state the physicist.

"If it wasn't heard, then what does it matter?" would state the cleric.

Me? I think the answer lies someplace in the middle.

I think there is an intelligent creator, responsible for all that we know now.

But not sitting right above us, not involved in every nuance of every action.

Think of a very skilled billiards player, one who can sink all the balls on the table before missing.

His break is very important as he shoots the cue ball into the mass of balls on the other side of the table.

Yet he knows where to aim and how hard to hit and what type of spin to use to achieve the result – precisely planned but seemingly chaotic movement of the mass of balls all reacting to each other as they bump off each other and the rails of the table - to finally rest in a position.

Where the billiards player can now pick the right order to easily make each shot.

And he makes it look so easy.

The balls all go where he wants – but his impact is only the split second that the tip of his cue – a cue shaped and chalked to his design – hit's the white cue ball. Everything else results from that precise strike.

Think a golfer who needs to sink his golf ball in the hole that more than five football fields away, and he needs to do so striking that ball only three times to score an eagle.

Like the billiard player, the golfer only controls the result at that precise moment he strikes the ball. After that, the laws of physics take over.

And so, in that same fashion, it seems to me to be completely viable – that a grand intelligence – a deity if you wish – God by any name you choose – made the most miraculous shot when triggering that big bang – patient for the resulting billions of years – to see how that shot would work out – and is still playing out.

God looked at the Sun and said, "That's a beauty"

God looked at the Earth and said to himself "Nice shot. And I got the moon just right too".

God looked at Mars and maybe he said "crap, I overshot all the water to Earth".

Remember, all the balls are still in motion from that one shot almost 14 billion years before.

The result we will never know.

The original intention and target of that shot, we will never know.

But we have and will continue to derive answers that for now satisfy our desire to know a truth.

Maybe there is still a big asteroid that was set in motion in that same shot that is out there still spinning it's way around the gravity pulls of other planets and suns in other surrounding solar systems not yet on the final swing towards striking Earth – and resulting in that miraculous shot where some of the oxygen and water and particles that would comprise life – would then also wind up on Mars afterward.

And then God, who had been waiting 14 billion years to see his result – would give a little shriek of joy and high five himself, and confirm to himself yet again ...

"I love this game".

 

 

The Time Before This Time

Scientists estimate that the big bang – the cosmic event that scientists speculate marks the beginning of our universe – happened some 13.7 billion years ago.

When considering values in the billions – I find the need to exact to the additional seven tenths of a billion quite pretentious.

But regardless, the question remains – in a universe that is supposedly endless – what existed before the big bang occurred?


My understanding – one of only a very simple and uneducated layman to be sure – is that everything that existed in the universe was sucked in by an unimaginable force of gravity into the space that a pea would occupy, and then at its ultimate limit – exploded everything encapsulated in that small space all across the universe – in a gaseous molten form that when it finally came to cool enough to form shapes filled our universe with the orb like masses that we see today.

So the theory goes anyway.

But what was that final period like of the prior universe? When everything was being sucked in? If things were spread as far and wide today – it must have taken at least a million years to collapse?

Think of today – light from neighboring stars taking thousands of years to reach Earth. At the speed of light. To suggest that the collapse happened quickly would mean that the speed of light is not the fastest speed there is.

Or perhaps it's that speed which slows down time, like Einstein postulated. So the million year collapse seemed to happen in an instant.

Seemed like an instant? To who?

These ideas are as staggering to conceptualize in our limited human brains as the concept that the universe is endless.

Perhaps it was not the entire universe that was sucked in – perhaps it was only a galaxy. A collection of solar systems – much like we have today. Could the universe before the big bang at first glance really be that much different than this one that exists in this universal collection of time?

If there was an after, then there had to be a before. Right?

And where did all that stuff come from that exploded into the universe?

That piece of rock, lying there in your garden, where did it really come from. Originally?

And then what about all the pieces of life? This consciousness that has to exist to experience what there is? Did all these pieces, the DNAs of life that are needed to spark an existence – did they all arrive here with all the other matter that congealed into this blob of matter that spun itself around our sun to become earth?

Did they exist before us? Before the bang? Snuffed out as the universe collapsed? Gathered up as part of that gigantic collection of matter that compressed and exploded all over again? If so, then these pieces of life should be all over the universe – planted - tossed out from the big bang like a gardener tossing wildflower seeds into the loose soil in hopes some of it will catch and grow?

The truth is that all we can truly do is speculate on all these things and try, using mathematic and scientific laws that may not even have been applicable before or during that bang.

'We' of course meaning people much smarter than me.

But we are all free to consider, to speculate, to hypothesize.

That big bang was like a reboot of all existence.

A natural cosmic cycle of happenings that occur over and over and over again?

Like searching through the square root of pie looking for the sequence in decimal places to finally start recurring, albeit we haven't found it yet. But it's there. And then we will start looking for the place where it started again after sequence is defined.

Maybe the square root of pie is simply a clue left behind.

Because if you stop and think about it – everything really stems from a circle. Repeating, rotating, orbiting, and spinning start and finish that even though it repeats it never starts or ends.

If this is the case – then the same must be true of our universe, it simply goes round and round inside the blob-ish sphere-ish orb that is our universal boundary?

But of that's the case, what exists on the other side of that boundary?

Perpetually Perplexing

Another year has come and gone.


With Christmas now in our rear view mirror, the sights are re-set to the road ahead – to the new year we will call 2012.

Time continues to march forward. The world continues to spin, the sun rising and setting continuing to march forward – never stopping – effortlessly plodding on.

The spin of the Earth – as with all the other planets in our local solar system – continue to their relentless path around the sun.

The ultimate perpetual motion machine.

Seemingly never slowing. Seemingly holding each component’s position perfectly.

Yet we believe that creating a perpetual motion machine here on our big blue marble to be impossible. The friction created by passing through the air, and the constant force of gravity created by the spinning of this planet we live on its axis and the pull from the planets around it – the very perpetual motion machine that makes life on Earth possible – is the reason we cannot reproduce perpetual motion of our own.

Or maybe we are just not smart enough yet?

We can remove the impact of air on such a machine by simply building the machine in a vacuum. But we don’t know how to turn gravity off in a given location.

We could build the machine in outer space?

“Why do you want to build a perpetual motion machine?”

Well, it’s the holy grail of engineering. Such a machine – one provided the right amount of energy to get started, would regenerate that same amount of energy with the completion of a cycle, an engine that would only need to be started that would run forever.

Learn how to make such a machine, and all our needs for energy would be answered.

“But we have solar panels now, and wind turbines powered by the slightest breeze, and water turbines that are powered by the energy of the oceans?”

Yes we do. But they are still very inefficient. They do not yet produce enough energy to account for the human races tremendous thirst for power.

But the good news is we are getting there. A perpetual motion machine would take us to that next level that could allow us to end our dependency on fossil fuels – and nuclear power.

“But wasn’t the universe created by nuclear power?”

The big bang? Yes I guess that’s likely true.

The universe appears to have harnessed that power tremendously efficiently, little if any wasted as our own Sun as an exhibit proves – continuing to burn for eons yet to come.

We as mankind are so arrogant to think how intelligent we are. But in comparison to the bang that God set off that one single bang those billions of years ago? We hook a couple of pistons and gears together and dig out the fossil fuels from the earth from life that lived here a millennium before us, and we make a big explosion to make the stuff move, only to have to make another explosion milliseconds later to keep it moving – to drive to the store to get milk.

What we have been able to accomplish however is to provide the means for all of humanity to connect their collective thoughts – ideas – dreams – concepts – stuff in our heads – headstuffing – so that we can collaborate on these next steps forward.

But in our most inefficient way – we squander this technology on menial sentiments – telling the world that we just had a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast – or that we are out walking the dog.

I am no better, do not get me wrong and think that I am spouting off here in some superior voice to say the rest of man is fat and lazy. I am a prime example of the epitome of inefficiency.

I take more than I give. I use more than I make. I am like a termite consistently eating away at the very resources – in my own gluttonous pace – until all are exhausted.

We need that perpetual motion machine.

We need that divine revelation – that inspiration that removes our dependency on fossil fuels. We need to be smarter.

I am not that smart.

Nor likely are you.

But if we put our collective minds together – and push full steam ahead to brainstorm on a singular common goal … we need to overcome ourselves.

We need to overcome what we have become.

And we had better hurry. Because the Earth continues to spin, and the sun continues to rise and set, the moon continues to circle us, as days to into months then into years.

Because time, as relative a concept as physicists insist it to be, time waits for no one. But while time is limitless – our quantity of time is not.

We expire.

And time will continue on without us.

Seemingly perpetually.