Cosmic Reflections
Brahma Breathes
by Dick Bain
In Hindu theology, when Brahma breathes out, the universe appears; when he breathes in, the universe disappears. The Urantia Book has a similar concept called space respiration. The authors provide a verbal picture of this phenomenon, but there is much that we are not told. What additional details can we deduce from the information in the book?
What is Space Respiration?
The Urantia Book devotes a section of Paper 11 to space respiration. In this section, we are told that a vertical cross section of the master universe resembles a Maltese cross. The authors inform us that the master universe and space reservoirs engage in a two billion yearlong cycle consisting of an expansion followed by a contraction. We are further told that the master universe is half way through the portion of the cycle in which it expands and the space reservoirs contract. Figure. 1 illustrates a vertical cross section of the Master Universe and the expansion/contraction cycles. The authors also inform us that the material universes participate in the expansion and that it is uniform expansion. (134)
In a uniform expansion, all bodies are moving away from one another at the same rate. An analogy of this used by astronomer George Gamow and others is that of raisins in a raisin muffin. As the muffin cooks, it expands and the raisins all move away from each other. Figure. 2 depicts a horizontal cross section of the Master Universe looking down on upper Paradise depicting the expansion phase of the universe. Small circles representing galaxies are placed on each of the large concentric rings to show how galaxies move away from one another as the universe expands. It is important to note that the further away from the center the galaxies are, the faster they must move to keep the spacing equal between the rings. This in fact is the way that astronomers believe that the universe expands due to the postulated Big Bang.
Information Supplied and not Supplied
The authors give us only a few pieces of numerical information about the universe. One piece informs us that an entire expansion/contraction cycle takes two billion years. (134) A second point is that we are half way through the expansion phase. Another suggests that the thickness of the first outer space level is about 50 million light years. (129) A forth implies that the superuniverse level is about 500,000 light years thick. (359) A light year is the distance that light travels in a year, which is about six trillion miles.
Finally, the authors inform us that the red shift we observe in the light from distant galaxies is not due to them flying away from us. (134) Note however, that since the universe is supposedly expanding, there will be some red shift caused by this expansion. Several of the things they do not tell us are: How far does the Master Universe expand or contract and what sort of expansion/contraction curve does space respiration follow? There are several other pieces of information that would be useful. What is the average radius of Havona? What is the apparent radius of Paradise in our time space universe? Although Paradise is outside of time and space, the entrance or portal to it must have some size in space. The portal could well be the same physical diameter as Paradise. The authors also do not tell us how much of the red shift we observe in the light from distant galaxies is due to the passage of light through space, and how much is due to the present expansion of the Master Universe.
Space Respiration Expansion Curve
What sort of curve of velocity versus time might space respiration follow? Consider this: Material bodies cannot instantly go from rest to some high speed; they must accelerate to that speed at a reasonable rate. As an example, consider the problems associated with sending a rocket ship to land on a planet circling a distant star. If we start out with the ship motionless in space, we must accelerate gradually to reach a given speed. The speed increases at a rate dependent on the acceleration caused by the force exerted by the rocket motor on the spacecraft.
Acceleration is limited by the fact that we human beings can't handle many G's of acceleration over a long period of time. ("G" is the force of gravity at the earth's surface.) If we accelerated until we got halfway to the distant planet, then we'd have to turn the ship around and decelerate the rest of the way to get down to landing speed. In a similar fashion, the expansion of the universe could not go from 0 to full speed instantly; there needs to be a period of acceleration at the beginning. Likewise, unless God chooses to fiddle with the laws of physics, there needs to be a period of deceleration at the end of both the expansion and contraction phases.
The upper curve of Figure 3 shows how the size of the universe changes throughout the space respiration cycle. Smax and Smin are the maximum and minimum sizes of the master universe. The lower curve of Figure 3 shows how the velocity curve might change during the expansion/contraction cycles. Vmax and Vmin are the maximum and minimum velocities at any given point in the master universe. This shape is known as a sine wave curve. Each
|
