Einstein reveals God’s mechanism for bringing the creation into existence

In Genesis 1:3 we read, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light” – and

out of this light the matter that makes up our universe was created. We now stand on the edge of seeing this event being recreated in miniature in a laboratory.

John 1:1-4 tells us that Jesus is the creator-God who is responsible for the

existence of this universe. We also read the same claim in Colossians 1:15-17.

John 1:1-4 (NIV) “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.3

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that

has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men”

We remember also from the earlier chapters Paul’s words in Romans 1:20 “……For since the creation of the world His (God’s) invisible attributes are clearly

seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal

power and Godhead …….” This must mean that God has inbuilt into the creation the

very mechanism that He used to bring it into existence. If this is true – as it must be – then science should be able to discover that “creation machine” and reveal it to the world.

And if mankind can reveal the fundamental process of how God created the universe,

then the Biblical description of the creation should also mirror what science has

discovered about our origins. As we will see, the Bible does indeed reflect what science

now knows about how our universe came into existence.

In the last chapter we very briefly mentioned that Einstein’s thought experiments led him

to the discovery that matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. This section will briefly look at the process of changing energy into matter and vice versa as this

phenomenon is the basis of the first five verses of Genesis.

The mechanism revealed

Most people are aware of Einstein’s most famous equation shown below.

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EE=mcc

Where: E = energy (joules)

m = mass (kg)

c = speed of light (m/second)

and its inverse m=

However, few people understand how it also describes the events of the first five verses of the Bible. To understand why this is true we need to examine what the equation is

talking about.

The equation is simply saying that energy and mass are the same thing. In other words, mass is simply energy that has been compressed into a very small and extremely dense

package. The speed of light squared is the scaling factor that describes just how much energy there is in a certain amount of mass.

Energy

The concept of energy is a bit slippery as it’s not possible to pick up a packet of “pure

energy” by itself. The best way of looking at energy is to use the common definition that it’s the capacity that a system or object has to perform work – where work is defined as

exerting a given force over a certain distance. The unit of energy measurement is called a

joule and is easiest to demonstrate in the mechanical world. A joule in mechanics is the

energy that is transferred to an object by moving it a distance of one meter against a

resisting force of one newton.

Energy exists in many different forms. Some examples are: the kinetic energy of a moving object, the elastic energy stored in a compressed spring, the chemical energy

stored in the bonds of various chemicals and which can be released by burning, the heat stored in an object that raises it temperature. There are many other forms as well.

All the many forms of energy share certain common aspects. The main fact being that energy cannot be created or destroyed – it can only be transformed from one type to

another. As an example, you can release the chemical energy in coal by burning it to

produce heat. This heat is then transferred to water to raise its temperature and convert

it to steam. The steam is then used to transfer this energy into a mechanical form which drive the pistons in a steam train engine against the forces resisting the movement of the

train and its carriages. The train then accelerates and converts this mechanical energy

into kinetic energy as the train picks up speed. Some of the original energy would also be

converted into other forms such as light and sound as result of the different processes it

goes through. But the essential point is that when you add up all these forms of energy they would be exactly equal to the original amount of energy in the piece of coal. In other

words, energy is conserved.

Because energy cannot be created or destroyed, then all the energy (and hence matter) that exists today must have been present at the instant of the birth of the universe. This

point will become significant as we progress in our investigation of God and the creation.

Mass

Mass is a fundamental property of matter. It is defined in physics as the property of matter that resists acceleration – e.g. its inertial mass which is measured in kilograms.

Another slightly less rigorous way of thinking about mass is to consider it as the total

amount of material present in an object. This way of thinking is not strictly true when you

consider mass in relativistic terms – but it’s commonly used for “everyday” applications.

Mass however must not be confused with the weight of the material which is also

measured in kilograms. The weight of an object is the force it exerts on the surface on which it’s resting. This force is determined by the mass of the object multiplied by the

local acceleration of gravity (w = m*g). As an example, consider an object with a mass of

one kg on earth. It would then weigh (exert a force) of 1 * 9.81 m/s2 = 9.81 Newton (the

SI unit of force). If you took that same object to the moon it would still have an (inertial) mass of one kilogram – but it would only weigh (e.g. exert a force of) about one sixth as

much as on earth due to the moon’s much lower gravity.

Understanding the equation

Taken at face value, Einstein’s equation seems to be saying that mass can be destroyed by converting it to energy and vice versa – where matter and energy seem to be two

different things. If this were true, his equation would seem to violate two well established

concepts in physics – the laws of conservation of mass and the conservation of energy.

The Law of Conservation of Mass says that mass is always conserved in any reaction. We

have already adopted the idea that mass is simply the amount of material in an object. So if we took a piece of wood and burnt it, then the Law tells us that we should end up

with the same amount of material after it has been consumed by the fire as we started

with. And this is indeed what we find if we gather up all the ash, the smoke particles,

water vapour and other volatile substances given off during the burning process and

weigh them.

The Law of Conservation of Energy tells us that we should have the same amount of

energy in the original piece of wood as we release by burning it. Initially the energy in the wood is stored in the chemical bonds between the molecules and atoms that make up the

fuel. During the burning process, this chemical energy is converted to the exact same

total amount of heat, light and sound energy. No energy has been created or destroyed –

it has simply changed form.

Einstein’s equation tells us that both the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Conservation of energy still hold because energy and mass are simply two manifestations of the same

thing. Put more clearly, his equation tells us that while matter can be transformed

directly into energy (and vice versa) the total amount of mass/energy in a given “packet of material” will be conserved. As an example, only a portion of the mass (or energy) in

“the package” may be converted into the other form. But the total of the two forms will

still be exactly equal to the original mass/energy “package”.

This interchangeability of mass and energy is the mechanism the Bible describes in the first five verse of Genesis. We now absolutely know this because of what the Bible says in

Genesis 1:4 (NIV) "God saw that the light was good, ------ and he separated

the light from the darkness." But more on this in a later chapter.

How much energy is contained in a kilogram of matter?

To close this section we briefly look at just how much energy is actually contained in matter. Getting a feel for the stupendously large numbers involved will bring a sense of

awe when we look at the first five verses of Genesis. This sense of wonder will be

heightened when we consider the source of the energy needed to bring all the matter/energy of the universe into existence in the next chapter.

To calculate how much energy is contained in just one kilogram of matter, we multiply one kilogram times the speed of light squared. For convenience we generally round the

speed of light up from 299,792,458 to 300 million meters per second. The calculation

then becomes:

1 (kg) * 300 million (m/s) * 300 million (m/s) = 916 joules of energy (that’s a 9 followed

by 16 zeros.

That is a staggering amount of energy. So large in fact that you really can’t imagine it. In order to get some idea of just how much energy is involved we need to look at a much

smaller amount of mass.

A kilogram has 1000 grams. However a gram is still too large to really comprehend the amount of energy it takes to make up matter. We will go smaller still and use just one

millionth of one gram as our example. The calculation then is:

0.000,000,001 (kg) * 300 million * 300 million = 90,000,000 joules (90 million = 90

megajoules)

This is still a huge amount of energy contained in just one millionth of one gram of matter. To get some idea of just how large it is we can think about the kinetic energy in a

mass of ten tonnes (10,000 kg) dropped from a height of 917 meters. An object dropped from this height will be moving at 134 meters per second as it hits the earth. A 10 tonne

block moving at that velocity has a kinetic energy of 90 million joules at the point of

impact. Imagine the damage it would do a building if it hit it.

Another way of thinking about it is to realize that it’s the equivalent of 20 kg of TNT (a high explosive) which will also yield 90 megajoules when it explodes.

Real world examples of the creation mechanism in action

To illustrate the reality of how matter and energy are interchangeable, we are going to take a brief look at both types of transformation in this section. These examples will set

the scene for the later chapter on Genesis

Matter into energy

Its most famous destructive application has been the atomic bomb. The idea for a nuclear bomb arose out of the work of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and his work on

radioactivity. He was awarded the Noble Prize for Physics in 1938 for his discoveries of

new radioactive elements that had been produced by neutron irradiation of various

materials. He also discovered various nuclear reactions that were initiated by bombarding

certain materials with slow-moving neutrons". He was 37 years old at the time.

His work was built upon by many others. The end result was the discovery of nuclear fission which led directly to the first atomic bombs.

There are two basic types of nuclear weapons. Those which depend on splitting atoms apart – known as fission bombs. These were the first type that were built. Newer

developments have produced the fusion type bombs that work by fusing atoms together.

Fission type bombs are easier to understand and for that reason we will briefly look only at how they work.

Some types of atoms are more unstable than others. One such material is the isotope of Uranium known as Urainium-235. The nucleus of each U-25 atom is made from 143

neutrons and 92 protons. This nuclear configuration is unstable and occasionally a single

nucleus will spontaneously break apart in the process known as fission. The nucleus that

splits then generally forms two lighter nuclei as well as emitting some neutrons. The lighter nuclei are also normally unstable and radioactive.

The neutrons that are emitted may hit another nucleus and cause that to also undergo

fission – which then releases more neutrons, which may also hit more nuclei and cause what is known as a chain reaction. However, the probability of that happening under

normal circumstances is fairly low. For a sustained chain reaction to occur, the uranium

must have what is known as a critical mass. The critical mass of a material that can

undergo fission depends on a number of factors such as its density, its purity and also its shape. The reason being that the free neutrons have to be able to hit a certain minimum

number of nuclei before they exit the mass of the material in order to sustain a chain

reaction.

A self-sustaining chain reaction releases a huge amount of energy that takes many different forms. The principal types are heat, light, kinetic energy (as in the high velocity

of the blast wave) as well as lots of radiation.

An example of the energy released in an atomic explosion is the Uranium based bomb

known as “Little Boy” that was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. It was designed to explode at an altitude of 580 meters above the city to produce

the maximum destructive effect. It contained 64 kg of highly enriched U-235. However,

less than one kilogram of the uranium underwent fission. This small amount of U-235

that was actually consumed released the equivalent explosive power of somewhere

between 13 thousand and 15 thousand tons of TNT being detonated.

The blast destroyed nearly everything within 1.6 kilometres (1.0 mile) of the point

directly under the explosion. The only things left standing in that area were about 50 heavily strengthened, earthquake-resistant concrete buildings. However, all that

remained of them were parts of their empty shells. Heavy damage occurred up to 5 km

(3 miles) from the blast center and less serious damage extended out for several more

kilometres. Glass was broken at distances up to about 19 kilometres (12 miles).

The toll of the dead and injured will never be accurately known. However, it’s estimated

that the blast killed and injured up to about 135,000 in Hiroshima.

Fig. 12 Image of matter transformed directly into energy

Energy into matter

The previous section has shown in graphic detail the tremendous amount of energy that

is contained in less than one kilogram of matter – in this case U-235. From this we can get some idea of just how much energy is required to bring even miniscule amounts of

matter into existence. With humanity’s current state of development we are not capable

of effectively “running an atomic bomb in reverse” and creating a kilogram of matter. In

fact we still don’t have the means to create one gram of matter out of pure energy.

But we do have the means at this time to create very small amounts of matter in the

form of sub-atomic particles. In so-doing we can now demonstrate – in a very small way – the mechanism that God used (according to the first 5 verses of Genesis) to bring this

creation into being.

The very first time that this process of energy transmuting into matter was observed was in a cloud chamber experiment in 1934. The observation was made by Patrick M.S.

Blackett, an English experimental physicist. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948,

"for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his

discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation".

A cloud chamber is also known as a Wilson chamber after the Scottish physicist, Charles Wilson, who is generally credited with inventing the device in 1911. They were used

extensively up until they were superseded by the bubble chamber which was invented by an American, Donald Glaser, in 1952. Bubble chambers have in turn been superseded by

newer types of particle detectors with the advent of the modern particle accelerators now

in use – such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva on the French Swiss

border.

Cloud chambers were used to study subatomic particles that produce ionizing radiation. Ions are atoms or molecules that are no longer electrically neutral due to having gained

or lost one or more electrons.

In its simplest form, a cloud chamber is a sealed vessel that contains either

supersaturated water or alcohol vapour. A charged particle passing through this vapour interacts with it and leaves a trail of ions along its path. These ions act as nuclei around

which the supersaturated vapour condenses and forms a fog at those points. This trail of

mist then shows the path of the particle through the chamber.

Most cloud chambers are also fitted with powerful magnets that produce a uniform magnetic field across the cavity. Any charged particles that pass through this magnetic

field with be deflected. Positively charged particles will curve in one direction and

negatively charged particles will curve in the opposite direction.

Different particles have different electrical charges and masses. Accordingly, they will follow different paths through the magnetic field. Heavier particles will not be deflected as

much as lighter ones. And of course the electric charge on the particle will determine in

which direction it is deflected. The length of the path is determined by the time the particle exists, or decays into further particles. These many and various paths and their

lengths through the chamber along with the interactions between the particles allows

physicists to determine the properties of each particle. It’s from the study of these tracks

that we know what happens down at the subatomic level.

With this background we are now in a position to understand what we are looking at in

the picture below.

Fig. 13 Image showing energy transforming directly into matter

The image above is showing a gamma ray – which is a very high energy form of photon (massless) – being converted into an electron and a positron pair which are particles that

have mass. The electron-positron pair have the same mass but opposite charges. This

causes them to curl away from each other in opposite directions after their creation. The

tracks of the electron-positron pair have been coloured red and yellow to make it easier

to see them.

The very high energy of the gamma ray allowed it to interact with an atom in the cloud

chamber and transmute into the two matter particles – the electron-positron pair. Lower energy photons don’t undergo this transformation from energy to matter.

The reason that you don’t see the entry path of the gamma ray before it transforms into the electron-positron pair is simple. Gamma rays are a very energetic form of

electromagnetic wave. Because of this they have no charge and as a result do not leave

any track in a cloud chamber. However, in this case it’s easy to plot the general entry

direction of the gamma ray photon as it enters from the bottom of the circular chamber. We see this because the electron-positron pair diverge equally away from their point of

creation as they are deflected by the uniform magnetic field across the chamber.

The picture above shows a high energy gamma ray transmuting into matter when it interacts directly with an atom of already existing matter. But in the process described in

Genesis we start out with no matter for the light spoken of (Genesis 1:2-4) to interact

with in order to transform itself into matter.

To validate the view of Genesis 1:1-5 as describing the transformation of light (energy) into matter, we have to be able to show that light can interact directly with itself and

transform into matter.

The first step in achieving this came in 1997 by physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre. The process they used was first suggested by the Russian born

American physicist Gregory Breit and the American physicist, John A. Wheeler. Their inspiration in turn had come from the work of Patrick Blackett’s demonstration of gamma

ray transformation described above. They first published their ideas in the journal

Physical Review under the title, "Collision of Two Light Quanta" on December 15,

1934. It involved colliding two photons together to create an electron (matter) and its

antimatter partner, a positron.

The process they described was believed to happen naturally in space. But because of the

difficulty in getting two high energy gamma ray photons to collide head-on, Breit and Wheeler never expected that anyone in their lifetime would be able to carry out the

experiment in a laboratory.

The Stanford accelerator experiment consisted of firing a very powerful and focussed electron beam into an oncoming stream of high energy photons that had been created by

a laser. Some of the impacts caused the photons to change course and collide with

another photon that was travelling in the same direction. In a few rare cases the collision had sufficient energy to produce an electron-positron pair.

Since then, an international team of scientists led by Professor Steven Rose of Imperial

College in Britain along with Oliver Pike, the lead researcher, have proposed a new method of making a true photon-photon collider. The proposal was published in the

journal, Nature Photonics under the title, “A photon–photon collider in a vacuum

hohlraum” on May 18, 2014

The process they are looking at recreating – in a very small way – is identical to that which prevailed during the first 100 seconds of the universe and which is described in

Genesis 1:3 where we read, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was

light”. It was out of this light that the matter that makes up our universe was created.

We now stand on the edge of seeing this event being recreated in miniature in a

laboratory.

The new experiment is designed to produce two streams of high energy photons that are

travelling in opposite directions to each other where they will collide and produce matter particles. The process involves two steps.

The first step uses a device known as Free-electron laser to generate a stream of high energy electrons travelling at very close to the speed of light. This beam is fired into a

thin slab of pure gold. The electrons react with the gold and eject a beam of extremely

high energy photons from the opposite surface of the gold slab.

The second step requires the use of a very small hollow gold cylinder called a hohlraum – which is German for a hollow cavity. These devices are used to focus and control

radiation. Their main use until now has been in certain types of nuclear applications. In the proposed experiment a high powered laser is fired at the inner surface of the

hohlraum to create a very even and intense radiation field of photons inside the cylinder.

The beam of photons from the first stage is then directed through the center of the hohlraum so causing photons from the beam and the hohlraum to collide and create a

cloud of electrons and positrons. These matter particles can then be detected as they

leave the inside of the hohlraum cylinder.

There are a number of laboratories that have the equipment necessary to be able to perform the experiment. As at the time of writing, efforts are underway by various teams

to set up the experiment and be the first to recreate the events described in the first five verse of Genesis.

It’s hoped that within the next year or two at least one of these teams will be able to demonstrate the reality of light turning into matter using the simplest of the now known

reactions. Calculations show that at higher energies, such as occurs in stars and other

interstellar processes, other matter particles can be produced.

But this first step is the most important because for the first time mankind will have

recreated the first step in the creation process of the universe. Truly this demonstrates that the Bible was true when it said:

Gen 1:26-28 (NIV) 26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image,

in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the

creatures that move along the ground."27 So God created man in his

own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he

created them.28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and

increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the

sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on

the ground."

It must be noted that “made in the image of God” only means that we have some of the attributes of God – such as intelligence and creativity. It doesn’t mean that we will ever

be God. But it does give some clue to what the Bible is referring to when it says:

1 Corinthians 2:9 (NKJV) 9 But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God

has prepared for those who love Him."

It is clear to those who think about the future, that mankind will follow in the creative footsteps of God and we will also create life forms and maybe new universes as well.

With this mind-set we are now almost ready to begin to critically look at Genesis chapter one and see how the description there mirrors the topics we have looked at up till now in

this book.

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