Forget the Mayan Long Calendar, Friedmann has come up with a formula that converts “Bible time” to years as we know them in calculating the age of the universe, the sun, and life on Earth. The surprise? Friedmann’s calculations consistently match scientific estimates derived from the study of fossil timelines, the solar system and the cosmos.

In his book The Genesis One Code (www.genesisonecode.com), the CEO of the aerospace company known for building the space station’s robotic arm, describes how he developed the formula – 1,000 X 365 X 7,000 –from references in religious texts.

“The formula is simple,” Friedmann says. “The Bible tells us in Psalms that one day for God is 1,000 years for us. We know that 365 days is our solar year, and from other studies of the scriptures we can conclude that one creation day in Genesis equals 7,000 God years.”

“Multiply those numbers and you find that in years as we know them, each creation dayis an epoch of 2.56 billion years,” Friedmann says. The age of the universe, when calculated using the formula, is 13.74 billion years. Science puts it at 13.75 billion, plus or minus 0.13 billion.

Friedmann’s formula produced 20 other Bible/science matches for events described in Genesis, They include:

• According to the Bible, the sun appeared to mark days, seasons and years on Day 4 of creation. Calculating from the end of the fourth day, Friedmann puts the “creation time age” at just under 4.79 billion years ago. Science says the sun is 4.57 billion years old, plus or minus 0.11 billion years.

• Science has determined the simplest form of life first appeared on Earth 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. Using Friedmann’s formula, calculating from the beginning of Day 5, life appeared 3.52 billion years ago.

• Complex life – most of the major animal phyla – appeared in a fairly rapid “Cambrian explosion” about 530 million years ago, give or take 5 million years, according to fossil records. That was four hours into Day 6, according to Friedmann, 532 million years ago.

• Day 6 was when “God planted the garden in Eden,” according to the Bible. Friedmann calculates plant life appearing a little later in the “day,” starting 426 million years ago and concluding 106 million years ago. The fossil record indicates that the first primitive macroscopic plants appeared about 420 million years ago, with seed plants and conifers diversifying 280 million years ago and flowering plants showing up 130 million years ago.

The creation text, Friedmann points out, comes from books in the Bible whose existence are acknowledged by all three of the Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The polarizing debate has been between the world of science, with its numbers derived from scientific observation; and religion, with the Genesis creation narrative that appears to contradict scientific evidence.

“I focused on the ‘what’ and ‘when’ because those questions can be addressed with a detached, scientific perspective,” Friedmann says.

“Now the debate can focus on the ‘how’ and ‘why.’”

About Daniel Friedmann

Daniel Friedmann is CEO of MDA Corp. aerospace company in Canada, specializing in robotics used on the international space station. He has a master’s in engineering physics and 30 years’ experience in the space industry. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific papers on space industry topics. He is also a longtime student of cosmology and religion.

“Drivers license and proof of insurance, please,” is the way it often begins. Specular glints of sunlight carom from mirrored sunglasses. Busted for speeding, think it can’t happen to you? It supposedly happened to muon neutrinos, proceeding from Switzerland to Italy. In my Italian travels, speed-demons seemed to be of little interest to authorities. But the cognocenti recognized that never before had the implications of the exhibition of speed — superluminal speed — been so profound. Alas, last week heads rolled, OPERA collaboration heads. Antonio Ereditato stepped down as chief of the OPERA experiment along with Dario Autiero, after their findings were debunked and following a vote of no-confidence by leaders of groups within the collaboration.

A Night at OPERA
You may recall that seven hundred thirty two kilometers (454 miles) from CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics research epicenter, there exists an Italian nuclear physics Institute possessing an enormous neutrino detector called OPERA. Traveling at the velocity of light, designated ‘c’ and equal to 2.99792 x108 meters per second (186,282 miles per second), the time of flight from CERN to OPERA is 0.00244 seconds, about the length of time a tennis ball when struck forcibly resides on a racquet’s strings. Both the Special and General formulations of Einstein’s Relativity Theory require that nothing surpass the velocity of light traveling in a vacuum, much less traveling under the Swiss and Italian Alps down into an Italian cave— So imagine the surprise of OPERA scientists when neutrinos appeared to arrive a whopping 6×10-8 seconds (0.00000006 seconds) faster than would have photons, quanta of light!

Gentlemen, Synchronize Your Watches
Until recently, there was a furor over the possibility that Einstein’s Relativity Theory may need an upgrade (Relativity 2.0?) or need to be scrapped altogether. After all, why is it called relativity? Is it because it describes a set of transformations between bodies in relative motion? Maybe because the transformations demonstrate that when bodies are in relative motion, space varies, time varies, space-time varies, seemingly everything varies relative to the magnitude of c and the fact that it is the ultimate speed limit for our observable universe. After the controversial measurements were disclosed, a kerfuffle raged with eminent physicists, the blogosphere, and metaphysicians all weighing in on why the results demonstrating superluminal speed were (un)true. The physics establishment, composed mostly of the former, enumerated all of the potential sources of error in the measurements, and they were legion: neutrino production detection delay, absolute accuracy of the measurement of the distance from CERN to OPERA, and more. Apparently, clocks at the two labs that were not truly synchronized were the culprits.

Beam Me Up, Hendrik
The possibilities were that neutrinos travel below, exactly equal to, or above c. Should the first two possibilities have prevailed, go back to sleep, physics, and by extension our understanding of the physical world, would remain unchanged. But, had the neutrino’s speed exceeded c, that would have been interesting. In that case, all of the solutions to the Hendrik Lorentz transformations, which have been verified to describe our physical reality, would be physically incomprehensible.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth … Einstein
Pray thee, why so mum, CERN scientists? Few comments were uttered by the experimenters, regarding the cosmic implications of their neutrino velocity measurements. We know they can talk, holding forth endlessly on the grandeur of quantifying the God Particle, almost— The metaphysicians, in stark contrast, had much to say: Here is mathematical, Einsteinian proof, in the form of undeniable imaginary roots to the Lorentz transformations, of the possibilities for transcending the mundane physical world sold to us by stodgy scientists. Possibilities for time travel through wormholes, astral projection, and, yes, teletransportation, to name a few, were proclaimed by avant-garde thinkers. Extraphotonic velocities do not invalidate Einstein’s Relativity Theory, they claimed, but enable it to embrace a space much larger than the physical one we know. Had they been correct, some of us would have considered trading in our credentials as quantum mechanics for dilithium crystal expertise.

About Dr. Michael T. Gamble: Dr. Gamble is a former staff member of the physics division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was also a senior manager within the Gammas, Electrons, and Muons detector collaboration at the Superconducting Super Collider. Gamble holds degrees in nuclear and mechanical engineering, and was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of the high-tech thriller Zeroscape.

Americans are increasingly fascinated by recent advances in science that physicists promise will answer our biggest questions about the universe – or multiverse: How was it (or they) created? From what? Why?

With the Large Hadron Collider closing in on the “God particle,” physics has become water cooler talk in distinctly non-scientific workplaces. One doesn’t have to be a physicist to be excited by the possibilities. When scientists can determine the mass of Higgs boson, the hypothetical tiny particle on which the Standard Model of particle physics is built, we’ll be that much closer to developing a Theory of Everything. That could happen in the next 20 years – well, about 18 percent of physicists thought so when polled by PhysicsWorld.com.

“These advances get people thinking seriously about our universe and suddenly, anything’s possible,” says Eli Just (http://tinyurl.com/85xu4lo), author of The Eddy, a “supernatural physics” novel that explores those very possibilities.

“That’s why TV shows like ‘Lost’ and ‘Fringe’ developed such big followings. We no longer take for granted the world as we see it; alternate or parallel universes may well exist – and science may discover them in our lifetimes.”

Just says coming closer to answering those questions inspires even more questions, particularly about science and its relationship to religion.  If scientists can tell us how the universe was created, does that mean there’s no God and that physics created the world, as physicist Stephen Hawking said in 2010?

Or does it prove there is a God – the master scientist?

Just notes that a Pew Research Foundation survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that 51 percent of scientists believe in God or a higher power. That’s compared to 95 percent of the general public.

With so many fewer believers among scientists, they’re also much less likely than the general public to be affiliated with a particular religion. Almost half the scientists said they were atheist, agnostic or had no particular religion. Only 17 percent of all Americans describe themselves the same way.

In 2007, Just says, a group of physicists met in the United Kingdom for a discussion called “God and physics.” They debated whether science helps prove or disprove the existence of a single grand creator.

In a Physics World magazine article about the meeting, former physicist and Church of England priest John Polkinghorne argued in favor of a God.

“Polkinghorne pointed out that mathematics has an enduring ability to accurately describe the physical world and that our brains have a capacity to comprehend abstract concepts – such as quantum superposition – that he maintains could not have arisen in response to evolutionary pressures,” according to the article by Edwin Cartlidge.

“This profound intelligibility, he argued, is itself comprehensible if a rational God has created the world and made humans in his own image.”

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive, Just says, and the more science discovers about our universe the more we may learn about its creator.

About Eli Just

Eli Just is the author of several books including The Eddy and the popular Manny Jones series of supernatural thrillers. He has a master’s in history from Southeastern Louisiana University and is a self-taught student of physics, which he taught at the high school level. As a Christian, Just enjoys exploring themes involving physics and its relationship to religion. He lives in the mountains of northern Georgia.

If you would like to run the above article, please feel free to do so. I am able to provide images if you would like some to accompany it. If you’re interested in interviewing Eli Just for a feature/Q&A or having them write an exclusive article for you, let me know and I’ll gladly work out details. Lastly, please let me know if you’d be interested in receiving a copy of his book, The Eddy, for possible review.

So much sound and fury over the Higgs Boson, signifying what? A complete understanding of the fundamental constituents of the world in which we live? Of the universe of which we are an integral part? No … and yes.

High-energy physicists at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, announced this week they are closer than ever to detecting the apparently hallowed boson — or possibly it is called God Particle merely for mass consumption. Its quantification would at once provide breathtaking insights into the infinitesimal domain affecting Earthly life and to the composition of the entire universe, a broad range, indeed.

Rewards of Basic Science

This is basic science at its best, the unraveling of the underpinnings of the thing, matter, in this case. The payoff is understanding the whys and wherefores of how particles come to be endowed with mass. And when mass teams up with gravity, watch out, literally. An apple falls to Earth because gravity, a force centrally directed toward the Earth’s core, acts on mass, and on mass alone. We all owe a great debt to mass. In hydroelectric power plants, gravity acts on the mass of water spilling over the dam and pulls it downward, turning the turbines.

Humans don’t float away into space, as in Frank in Kubric’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”, because the Earth’s gravity acts on our body mass. Yes, mass is directly proportional to weight, the product of mass multiplied times the Earth’s gravitational acceleration. Cheer up, on Mars you would weigh about 60 percent less!

Standard Model Confirmation and Extensions

The best description of the nature of matter and how it interacts with itself that scientists have devised is codified in the so-called standard model (SM) of particle physics. The Higgs Boson is encompassed by the SM and would fit perfectly, once detected, as it is the sole remaining undetected/unquantified particle prophesized by SM devotees.

Of greater import than completing the equivalent of a prestigious stamp collection for high-energy physicists, quantifying the Higgs Field, the modality via which mass is apportioned, would enable more of the principal forces observed in nature to be unified, mutually describable in a set of complete equations.

Electricity and magnetism have long been codified in the Maxwell equations. Quantification of the Higgs Field would enable a separate phenomenon, nuclear beta decay, also called the nuclear weak force, to be unified with the forces of electricity and magnetism and elaborated in electro-weak equations.

While the Higgs Boson remains unquantified, narrowing the range of its mass to between 114.4 GeV and 131 GeV, according to CERN scientists, is meaningful news. Some years ago the Higgs was thought to be as massive as 500+ GeV, an energy regime unreachable by the LHC, whose peak energy is closer to 450 GeV.

It appears that it is only a matter of time to determining the mass of the God Particle. And although Einstein’s grand unification vision, a single set of equations describing all of the fundamental forces including gravity, will still be unrealized, I, for one, will celebrate by eating ice cream. When talking mass, every kilogram counts.

 About Dr. Michael T. Gamble: Dr. Gamble is a former staff member of the physics division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he researched directed-energy devices such as terawatt laser systems. He was also a senior manager within the Gammas, Electrons, and Muons detector collaboration at the Superconducting Super Collider. Gamble is the author of “Zeroscape,” a high-tech thriller. He holds degrees in nuclear and mechanical engineering, and was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Washington, D.C.—-Due to increasing costs of production, a slowed demand for electricity, and fresh memories of disaster in Japan, production of nuclear power fell in 2011, according to the latest Vital Signs Online (VSO) report from the Worldwatch Institute (www.Worldwatch.org). Despite reaching record levels the previous year, global installed nuclear capacity—-the potential power generation from all existing plants—-declined to 366.5 gigawatts (GW) in 2011, from 375.5 GW at the end of 2010.

Not surprisingly, this drop in installed capacity corresponds with a decline in global consumption of nuclear energy. Nuclear’s share of world commercial primary energy usage fell to around 5 percent in 2010, having peaked at about 6 percent in 2001 and 2002. Only four countries—-the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom—-increased their share of nuclear power by over 1 percentage point between 2009 and 2010.

Much of the decline in installed capacity is the result of halted reactor construction around the world. Although construction on 16 new reactors began in 2010—-the highest number in over two decades—-that number fell to just two in 2011, with India and Pakistan each starting construction on a plant. In addition to this dramatically slowed rate of construction, the first 10 months of 2011 saw the closing of 13 nuclear reactors, reducing the total number of reactors in operation around the world from 441 at the beginning of the year to 433.

“It’s too early to conclude that nuclear energy is beginning a long-term decline, but these numbers can hardly encourage the industry,” said Worldwatch President Robert Engelman.  “The high cost of nuclear electricity generation and the widespread public perceptions that it poses unacceptable safety risks make it unlikely this form of power will help slow human-caused climate change or offer an attractive alternative to rising fossil-fuel prices any time soon.”

China is an exception to the global slump in nuclear electricity generation, in terms of both the number of plants being built and installment capacity levels. The country accounted for 10 of the 16 reactor construction starts in 2010, and that year it initiated the installment of nearly 10 GW of capacity, representing 62 percent of capacity construction worldwide. China currently is home to 27 reactors and has some 27 GW of capacity under construction. “Overall, the likelihood of China significantly reducing its aggressive growth in nuclear generation remains low as the country seeks to meet its rapidly growing energy demand and ambitious carbon dioxide reduction targets,”says Worldwatch MAP Fellow Matt Lucky, the author of the VSO report.

The United States, too, does not appear to be abandoning nuclear power just yet. In 2010, the Obama administration approved $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for construction of nuclear reactors; in February of 2011, the administration’s budget proposal upped that amount by an additional $36 billion.

The current global decline in installed nuclear power capacity stands in stark contrast to nuclear’s surge in popularity throughout the 2000s. Although many factors are behind the decline, it is largely the result of high costs, slowed electricity demand, and lower natural gas prices in recent months. The reactor meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima plant seven months ago also likely added to the severity of the decline. Only 10 of Japan’s 54 reactors are currently connected to the grid, China froze construction on 25 reactors immediately after the Fukushima explosions, and both Germany and Switzerland announced plans to phase out nuclear power following the disaster.

“Whereas renewable energy sources are growing at rates of up to 70 percent and more on an annual basis, nuclear energy is the only major energy technology experiencing negative growth,” says Alexander Ochs, Director of Worldwatch’s Climate and Energy program. “Not only is nuclear too risky from a health and security point of view, it’s also just too expensive.”

Although nuclear power remains an important energy source for many countries, including Russia and France, it is likely that its prominence will continue to decrease. To maintain current generation levels, the world would need to install an additional 18 GW by 2015 and another 175 GW by 2025. In the aftermath of Fukushima and in the context of a fragile global economy, an increase that sharp is improbable.

Further highlights from the report:

• Together, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Korea have contributed around 5 GW of new installed capacity since the beginning of 2010. During this same period, nearly 11.5 GW of installed capacity has been shut down in France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
• Germany alone has taken around 8 GW of installed nuclear capacity offline this year.
• Currently, 65 reactors are under construction around the world; however, 20 of these have been under construction for more than 20 years.
• Construction on the first nuclear power plant to be built in France in 15 years has been delayed until 2016, and its projected cost has grown from €3.3 billion (Approximately USD 4.4 billion) to €6 billion (Approximately USD 8 billion).
• The average age of decommissioned reactors worldwide has risen to 23 years.
• In 2009, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission received 26 nuclear reactor permit applications, but only four of those sites have plans for construction.

The public backlash to ill-spent tax dollars could hurt a vital emerging industry – one that is very much key to future U.S. jobs.

“Cheap energy would enable little Silicon Valley businesses to develop phenomenal things because they’re not hampered by the increased cost of doing business,” says Gamble, a former scientist at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico and author of Zeroscape (www.zeroscape-thebook.com), a high-tech thriller. “Work with certain technologies, like high-energy lasers, requires large amounts of energy. A little photonics company could be a future Apple.”

Apple Inc., he notes, had 46,600 full-time employees in September 2010, up a third from the previous year. That was job growth during the throes of economic recession.

Gamble says the public perception of the alternative energy industry as a worthy recipient of taxpayer dollars may be tainted by what were essentially business failures exacerbated by the falling cost of solar-grade silicon. Perhaps they were poor choices for Energy Department loan guarantees.

“Solyndra was never even close to manufacturing cost-effective, competitive solar panels,” he says. “Their cost was $3 to $6 per watt.”

However, there are companies, and even government research, worth investing in, Gamble says.

• A robust photovoltaic company that’s close to achieving competitive pricing is Nanosolar of San Jose, Calif. Its thin-film, printable solar collection panels use copper, indium, gallium, selenium and nanoparticle inks as opposed to the widely used silicon panels, a lower-cost strategy. When combined with the savings from minimal installation labor, Nanosolar’s panels are on course to produce energy for 60 cents per watt and achieve production efficiencies comparable to silicon panels within the next few years.

• Of the regional options for renewable energy – tidal on the coasts, geothermal in the West, and wind in myriad locations – the latter is ripe for harvest. In 2010, China replaced the United States as the world leader in wind energy production, adding 16.5 gigawatts – comparable to the maximum electricity generated by 16 large nuclear power plants. It now surpasses the United States by 2 gigawatts. The U.S. lag was due, in part, to the expiration of the Obama administration’s Recovery Act, a one-time tax incentive for deployment of renewable energy installations.

• Free as they are, sun and wind may be overpowered by success of the most high-tech energy source sought: nuclear fusion. Different from the nuclear fission employed by nuclear reactors, fusion is environmentally friendly, much less risky for humans, and uses fuel derived from water. It produces lots of energy; helium is the byproduct. The Lawrence Livermore National Lab near San Francisco has built a laser fusion device called the National Ignition Facility (NIF), capable of delivering 500 terawatts to a BB-size target while liberating clean energy. “Now that NIF is operational,” Gamble says, “its budget must be directed principally toward its mission as the groundbreaking American device closest to realizing a fantastic renewable energy source.”

About Dr. Michael T. Gamble Dr. Gamble is a former staff member of the physics division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he researched directed-energy devices such as terawatt laser systems. He is a former Vice President of Manufacturing Technology for Nanovation Technologies, Inc. and a founding partner of Fidelys, LLC, a California investment banking and corporate advisory firm. Gamble holds degrees in nuclear and mechanical engineering, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.