Geosynchronous, The Days the Earth Stood Still

Geosynchronous

The Days the Earth Stood Still

I sat sunning my feet, hands, and face in the back yard for fifteen minutes today.  The idea was that naturally produced vitamin D will bring healing and health to my old body, especially my diseased feet.  The sun was too bright to read.  The only possibly activities were to sit and think; occasionally wiggling my toes, which a few days ago, were swelled up like little sausages, overcooked in the microwave, almost ready to explode and split wide open.

The tree was dancing in the blustery Oklahoma wind, as if it was gyrating to the sounds of an unseen rock band: it was flexible; it did not break because of the violence of the invisible wind.  A week ago there was frost on the ground; but summer has arrived suddenly, unexpectedly: so, now the tree is fully clothed in new, bright-green leaves, as though the nakedness of winter were never here.

Far overhead the scattered wispy clouds stood motionless in the sky; they did not shift their position during the fifteen minutes of sitting and pondering.  Isn’t that strange?  Then I realized the great mystery of geosynchronous orbit: for the clouds were not still at all.  Rather, they were hurting through space and time at a speed proportional, coordinated in direction also, with the surface speed of earth in its rotation, its angular spin vector.  So, the angular revolution vector of the clouds, and the wind bearing those clouds along, was, for a time, identical to the angular spin vector of earth.  The only difference was the great distance between clouds and earth: so, of course the clouds were moving much faster than I was: for the same reason that the cracker on a whip is moving much faster than its handle.

Bam!  It struck me!  On “the day that the earth stood still for Joshua”[i], the sun and moon did not really stand still for about twenty-four hours.  Something astronomical happened to bring the sun and moon into seemingly geosynchronous orbit with the surface of earth.  It might have been some minor, unidentified perturbation in earth’s orbit: seemingly, little more than an earthquake.  It could have been a peculiarity in the earth’s precession, which gradually takes place in about every 26,000 years.  The slightest angular change would send both sun and moon hurtling off into space.  Thus, Joshua’s long day would arrive and vanish as mysteriously and briefly as a solar eclipse.

A very similar thing happened to Hezekiah; except, instead of perfectly geosynchronous orbit, the sun and moon seemed slightly retrograde.[ii]  This mysterious behavior has all the same potential causes, and more.

We must not quickly dismiss the possibly miraculous in this.  We pride ourselves in the delusion that man is able to describe every astronomical phenomenon with the correct mathematical model; our mathematical models get better every year: it is only a matter of time, a very long time, before man solves all the astronomical, astrophysical mysteries of the universe.  Such an idealistic opinion is, of course, illusory, a common conceit of humanity; mankind is just not that smart: hence, the need for great humility in science.

But, even if true, this would mean that God created the universe in such a way that it would behave according to a precise mathematical plan, knowing in advance the exact days that Joshua would be thrust into battle of his own will and determination[iii], and that Hezekiah would become deathly ill.[iv]  We can only describe such a precision design, if that is, in fact, what happened, as a miracle of creation… the Providence of God by miraculous Creation.

Whatever happened on these days, it is impossible to dismiss the miraculous.

The clouds stood still in the sky for the space of fifteen minutes or more.  I went inside the house to cool my heels

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[i] Joshua 10:13

[ii] Isaiah 38:1-22

[iii] Joshua did not attack; he was attacked by his adversaries; at most, Joshua’s actions can be seen as a counterattack, or a somewhat statistically controllable excursion.  The attack of Joshua’s adversaries was a function of their own independent wills, and planning strategies.  Joshua’s counterattack was a function of his independent will in tactics, and maneuvers.

[iv] We are compelled to believe that illness, as far as man is concerned, is totally an act of random chance.  Only God, who has explicit, infinite knowledge of the seemingly random behavior of every microbe, and molecule, can see through the maze of random chance and know the outcome in advance, without causing it.  There can be no note of determinism here: not in the science, not in the theology.

The butterfly that flaps its wings on Okinawa, may precipitate a tornado in Oklahoma.  Man cannot fathom how or why?  If this truly happened, God would know and understand every detail, including the will of the butterfly to flap, if butterflies, indeed, have independent wills.