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140 The Bible According to Einstein The eleventh book of Chronicles, called
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The New Testament 141
It was 1916. And Einstein published the general theory of relativity, in which it was postulated that gravitation was not a mechanical force but the consequence of the curvature of spacetime created by the presence of mass. And his theory explained for the first time an irregularity in the motion of the planet Mercury, namely that the ellipse, which Mercury follows in its orbit about the Sun, should rotate with time by an extra amount equal to forty-three seconds of arc per century. And his theory predicted that light should bend around massive bodies like the Sun. And it implied the existence of gravity waves and black holes. And it predicted that light moving away from surface of the Earth should lose energy and undergo a red-shift; its wavelength should get longer.144 And this effect was called the gravitational energy red-shift. Likewise, the theory predicted that a clock near a very massive object such as a neutron star where gravity is strong, should run slower than a clock far from such a massive object where gravity is weak. And this was called the gravitational red-shift time-dilation. God may not, but Nature does. And Einstein devoted the second half of his life in quest of a unified theory he was searching for the Uni-Law. But the Uni-Law was too subtle even for the mind of Einstein. God may not be, but Nature sometimes is. And on April 18, 1955, did Einstein not wake up from a deep sleep. And the spirit and intelligence of Einstein escaped his body, rose up and was placed among the stars. And the ghosts of many other scientists rose with him the fathers of electromagnetism, the discoverers of quantum theory, the physicists who had uncovered the fundamental subatomic interactions. And the ideas of Einstein and other scientific prophets were written in the textbooks and embedded in the minds of men and women.
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144 When its wavelength is lengthened, light becomes redder. This is discussed in the fifth, sixth and eighth Books of Physics. |
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142 The Bible According to Einstein
Chapter II: The Prophecies of Einstein I spent my whole life trying to understand Albert Einstein Now a few years had passed since the appearance of Einstein’s paper on gravity it was May 29, 1919. A solar eclipse was taking place. And astronomers directed their telescopes and waited. But it was a cloudy day. And the astronomers were quite dismayed until suddenly the clouds broke open and there was light. And moments later, the sky grew dark, and stars near the Sun were visible. And the positions of the stars were measured. Now the positions were different from those when the Sun was elsewhere in the sky starlight was being bent around the Sun. Hence through gravity, a massive object, such as the Sun, attracted light just as it attracted a body with a mass. Furthermore, the measured bending of starlight agreed with calculations from Einstein’s gravitation theory. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.
____________________ 146 Spectra are discussed in Chapter VI of the New Testament Book of Atomic Physics. |
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The New Testament 143
And the fractional rate at which the Universe expanded was assigned a name. The Hubble constant was that name. And the rate at which the Universe had expanded in the past likewise was called the Hubble constant. But the Hubble constant was not constant, for earlier the Universe expanded percentage-wise more quickly. Each time the Universe’s age has doubled, the expansion rate has dropped in half.
____________________ 147 Einstein’s gravity theory is known as the general theory of relativity. It is discussed in the New Testament’s sixth Book of Physics. |
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144 The Bible According to Einstein
And similar measurements were made using extraterrestrial sources: Light that originated in the strong gravitational region at the surface of white-dwarf stars was carefully observed. And a gravitational energy red-shift was seen once more.
____________________ 148 From the signal information the following was deduced. The two neutron stars were separated by an average distance of two-million kilometers. They moved at several hundred kilometers per second in an ellipse. And they went around each other once every eight hours. In 1993, Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor Jr. were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of 1913+16. |
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The New Testament 145
Now Einstein’s gravity theory predicted that the binary pulsar system should undergo the analog of the Mercury irregularity.149 But since the gravity in the binary pulsar system was much stronger, the effect should be much bigger. Calculations predicted that the ellipse should rotate four degrees per year. And astronomers listened to the pulsar and "saw" the ellipse rotate by four degrees per year. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.
____________________ 149 See Chapter I of this book. |
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146 The Bible According to Einstein
It was 1979. A powerful telescope observed two quasars almost on top of one another. Never before had two quasars been seen so close to one another. And further observations showed that the two quasars were travelling at the same speed. And when the spectral lines of these two quasars were observed, they too were the same. Now such a coincidence could not be an accident. And scientists came to realize that the two quasars were not two they were two images of one. And the situation was as a man who "crosses" his two eyes and sees in double. Now a telescope has but one "eye." How could a telescope "cross" its "eye?" Why was a double image seen? And a large array of radio dishes was directed at the strange exotic object. And it too revealed an extra image. Apparently the doubling did occur for radio waves as well as light. Now Einstein’s theory of gravity predicted that a very heavy object should act as a gravitation lens. If a massive galaxy existed between the quasar and the Earth, then the bending of electromagnetic waves by the galaxy would make a multiple of images. And astronomers directed their most sensitive telescopes to the region of the quasar. And one night when the atmosphere of Earth was calm and the sky was particularly clear, a faint galaxy between the quasar images was observed. And the distance to the galaxy was measured the galaxy was halfway between the quasar and the Earth. Spiritual prophets allow one to see the light.
____________________ 150 This effect is called gravitational lensing. |
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