Sunday, December 4, 2016

The Astronomy of the Restoration By Brandt Neider


The Astronomy that came through the Restoration was well ahead of its time. The science of that day understood the Milky Way Galaxy to be the entire universe. The Big Bang and theory of relativity were still nearly a hundred years away and the total number of planets that existed was 7 since Neptune and Pluto (which is no longer considered a planet) had yet to be discovered.

The universe we know today, filled with countless stars, planets, and galaxies wouldn't begin to be realized until the turn of the century when scientists like Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble would turn everything we thought we knew about the universe upside down. It was during this time of limited knowledge that the prophet Joseph Smith was making some very conclusive statements about the Cosmos and even claiming these ideas came from God. With all that we know about our universe today, how does the astronomy of Joseph Smith stack up against today's science?


Worlds Without Number…. in 1830?


In this age consisting of a single galaxy and only seven planets the Lord revealed to the prophet Joseph Smith:

“worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them.”   Moses 1:33

and...

That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.”   Doctrine and Covenants 76:24

Again, the idea of innumerable worlds makes sense in our day but not in a time of one galaxy and seven planets and the prophet isn’t just claiming that there are countless other worlds out there but countless inhabitable worlds home to other sons and daughters of God. It wouldn’t be until 1993 that the first exoplanet (planet outside our solar system) would be discovered and to date, we’ve found 3500+ more. Based on what we’ve seen it’s quite probable that every star we see has at least one planet in its orbit and according to a study from 2015 billions of stars, just in our galaxy, likely have 1 to 3 planets in the “habitable zone,” meaning an environment that could support liquid water and potentially life. If we take these findings and apply them on a universal scale the total number of planets estimated to exist is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and a large portion of those could be home to life. These discoveries have led to statements such as the following from NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan:

"I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years." 


Planetary Migration 


Another revelation that would prove to be prophetic was the concept of planetary migration. In 1874 Brigham Young taught:

“when man fell, the earth fell into space, and took up its abode in this planetary system, and the sun became our light.”   Journal of Discourses 17:143

This idea of a planet traveling from one orbit to another was also not supported by the science of the day and it would be 121 years before astronomy would finally catch up.

In 1995 the first “hot Jupiter,” 51 Pegasi b, was discovered and it turned the world of astronomy upside down. The following taken from "How the Universe Works: Jupiter, Savior or Destroyer" explains why this planet is so strange:

“At the time, the presence of a huge world so close to its star was not compatible with theories of planet formation and was considered an anomaly. However, since then, numerous other 'hot Jupiters' have been discovered (see 55 Cancri and τ Boötis, for example), and astronomers are revising their theories of planet formation to account for them by studying orbital migration.”

and just like that, an unbelievable concept uttered by a Mormon prophet in 1874 became sound science 121 years later.

Seas of Glass and Diamond? 


One of the most criticized revelations to come through Joseph Smith was Doctrine and Covenants 130:6-9 which says:

“The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth;

But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord."

Again, going back to the astronomy of the 1800’s the only planets they were aware of (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus) were made mostly of either rock or gas. A planet like a sea of glass and fire would have been pure science fiction. Fast forward to 2011 with the discovery of the planet 55 Cancri e. This planet is twice the size of Earth, with 8 times more mass, and because of the extreme levels of carbon it is literally a giant diamond (worth 26.9 nonillion dollars.) Another interesting planet is HD189733b. Due to its close proximity to its star daytime temperatures reach 1700 degrees Fahrenheit which causes this planet to literally rain glass. One last example is the planet HAT-P-1 discovered in 2006. What’s interesting about this planet that is about half the size of Jupiter and made mostly of hydrogen and helium is that it weighs about the same as a ball of cork and would float in water if given the chance. Again, today Joseph’s description of a planet being as a sea of glass and fire isn’t so strange but in the 19th century, strange would have been an extreme understatement.

One Eternal Now


The last example comes from the statement of the prophet Joseph Smith:

“The past, the present, and the future were and are, with [Jehovah], one eternal ‘now.’" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 220.) 

The scientific world would never have considered an idea like this until after Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, completed in 1915,  and how our understanding of the laws of physics fall apart inside the event horizon of a black hole. Because time and space are interwoven, according to Einstein’s theory, objects with an extreme amount of mass distort the fabric of space to such an extent that the behavior of time and space completely changes. Because black holes are the most massive objects in the universe some very strange things happen to time inside them. Theoretically, inside the event horizon of a black hole light from future events travels back to you and light from the past travels forward. The result being that you would see two separate images of everything, one being from the past and the other from the future, although both would be occurring in your present. Sara Slater, a cosmologist, and particle physicist at Harvard University explained it the following way:

“Also we see that everyone inside the event horizon is a psychic. This happens because light can travel to you from events in the future, so you can quite literally see them… If you look away from the center, though, you see two images of everything--one from T hours in the past and one from T hours in the future. For nearby objects, these two images will look just the same, since T will be very small due to the large speed of light. For faraway objects, though, they could be completely different. For instance, if both you and Tolstoy were in a black hole and were separated by 3 light years, you could be watching him start and finish War and Peace at once.”

The late Elder Neal A. Maxwell couldn’t have been more right when he said:

“Brothers and sisters, God is giving away the spiritual secrets of the universe, but are we listening?"

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