Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On

Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On
Witnessing Tools
Tuesday, July 05, 2016
Wendy Wippel

In the old days (i.e, 1980s) the prevailing view was that our universe was made up of particles, like protons and electrons.  Particle physics, however, has since been replaced by String Theory, in which the universe is comprised of one-dimensional strings. Funny . Science has brought us right back to where the Bible’s always been, waiting for us to catch up. Again.

String Theory had its origin in the 60s as a possible answer to a more limited issue in particle physics, but researchers quickly realized that it may have wider application.  The concept has now been applied to the physics of black holes, the beginning of the universe, and nuclear physics, with success.  Moreover, because string theory seems to have the potential to solve unresolved problems related to both gravity and particle physics, it is also seen as a possible stepping stone to the Holy Grail of Physics—The Theory of Everything, meaning that one, all-encompassing, final authoritative understanding of our universe and how it works.

Nerd Nirvana, in other words.
So how, exactly, do these one-dimensional strings account for everything we see in the universe?
For the physicists, apparently, the move from Particle Physics to String Theory was, shall we say…universe shattering.  A Huge Step of Scientific Progress.
A Really Big Deal.

For us laymen? Not so much. Particle physics, to put it simply, said that the foundation of our universe was particles. String Theory says that vibrations on the strings create the particles.
That’s the big difference.  (Yawn.)

According to String Theory, however, the frequency of the vibration determines what specific type of particle is created, just like which string plucked on a guitar determines what note is produced.

The String theorists really like the guitar string analogy.  They fall back on that a lot as a way to explain what is a fairly confusing bit of science.   
But there’s String Theory (obviously ubersimplified) in a nutshell.

So why are we talking about this?  Because String Theory, when you start to get into it, sounds amazingly like Scripture when it talks about the foundation of our universe.
Namely the book of Genesis. Chapter 1. Verse 1. Which goes like this:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was^[a] on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
 
 We’ve all read this a thousand times, but let’s unpack it piece by piece.  
‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Translation: The heavens and the earth (all there is) had a beginning. They were not eternal. Despite the fact that human science believed so from Plato until 1992, when science proved otherwise.

So no, the universe was not eternal. It was created.
By God.

Next verse:   
 ² The earth was without form, and void.
What does this verse mean? If you check out the word meanings in a Hebrew lexicon, The Hebrew word used for “without form” (tohu) means unreal, or empty. And the Hebrew word for void (Bohu) means just that—a void, an empty space.
In other words, the earth was not yet in existence.  Duh. As implied in verse one, God created the heavens first.

Next verse:  darkness was^[a] on the face of the deep.
Translation: There wasn’t any light.  Duh. Light—the first thing that was created, isn’t created until verse three. Science, by the way, also says that light—which exists in packets of energy called photons-- was the first thing created.

Next verse: Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 
Which is a really interesting verse because "waters”, in many versions, is translated “the deep”, and the Hebrew root word (huwm) translated as either “deep” or “waters”  means to make noise, to murmur, to be in a stir, to hum.

Which is awfully similar to the scientific description of the plasma, a seething, mass of energy that existed right at the very beginning of the universe’s creation. (Scientific estimates are that this stage of the universe occurred about .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second after the universe began.)  
And that mass of energy murmured. It hummed.  It made noise.  Sounds made by that energy, in fact, have been recently recorded, still emanating from ancient stars.

So apparently the Spirit of God was hovering over the murmuring, humming  mass of energy created -by processes God set in place--at the beginning of time.
But this is where it gets really interesting.  If you look at the Hebrew word for hovering in this passage, it is the word rachaph, which is defined as meaning to flutter, to shake.
To vibrate.

The Holy Spirit fluttered, it vibrated over the deep. That initial mass of seething energy called a plasma, from which all subatomic particles, then atomic particles, then atoms, then matter (according to science) came into being. Vibration on the initial material of the universe created the particles. And the particles (first subatomic) combined to form atoms, and atoms formed matter, and matter is what now makes up every bit of what we see.

Science says vibration on whatever constituted the earliest makeup of the universe created particles, and the Bible says the Holy Spirit vibrated over that same material at the earliest stages as well.

God said the Holy Spirit’s role in Creation was to vibrate, and Science said that it’s those vibrations that created everything we see.

You may wonder, as I certainly did, if the what the strings themselves are made of, as they are one dimensional (essentially meaning the tiniest of tiny points in space).
What the heck does that even mean?

So I did some more research. And after several pages of one String Theory expert going back and forth with someone online who had asked the same question, what the experts’ answer ended up being was: “well, really, it is just a mathematical abstraction.”
Meaning that the strings are not something that exist in our material world.
Which kind of makes it all the more likely that it was the Holy Spirit pulling those strings, doesn’t it?

Isn’t Bible study fun?  And again, it just don’t get no better then this!!!.
Until we see Him face to face, anyway.

God hasten that day. 
About Wendy Wippel