"Heaven, Hell and Quantum Physics"
Joel Barker
Sunday, January 5th, 2003
copyright 2003, Joel A. Barker

An exploration of how the laws of physics allow a heaven and a hell in our universe

• Good morning, fellow Joan of Arc’ers
• This is my 12th homily
• I started in 1978 by talking about paradigms
• I wrap up with heaven and hell
• I’m going to put them all into a book

• The Science/Region dilemma in our time
  • Miracles don’t make scientific sense
  • So we talk about the “myths” of the Bible
  • Heaven and Hell, in particular, are troublesome scientifically
  • My favorite cartoon: “a miracle occurs here”
  • Yet, over the past five years, I have seen increasing amount of evidence that suggest that Heaven and Hell could well be as physical and real as the chair you are sitting on
  • So I am going to build my case using three discoveries from physics-one discovered 134 years ago but ignored until recently, one almost 100 years old, the last one very recent…within the last 20 years.
• Discovery #1: the Speed of Light and Time
  • Einstein worked this out one century ago
  • Speed of light is 186,000 miles per SECOND: or 300,000 kilometers a second for the rest of the world
  • Nothing goes faster than the speed of light
  • Here’s the most interesting thing about the speed of light: time stops for whatever is moving at that speed
  • So, anything that travels at the speed of light escapes the tick-tock of time.
  • By the way, all radiation moves at the speed of light, too. So X rays move at the speed of light and infrared radiation, the whole electro-magnetic spectrum moves at the speed of light
  • This is old news for anyone interested in physics and space travel.
• Discovery #2: Black Holes
  • A hypothesis that was dubious until just recently
  • A British clergyman named John Michell conceived Black Holes in 1783 but the British are a little daft, anyway, so no one thought much of his idea.
  • We have now found amble evidence for Black Holes
  • Dr. Josh Grindlay, Harvard University
  • Several interesting aspects:
    • They are stellar objects have such enormous density that a teaspoon of black hole matter would weigh in excess of the Planet Earth!
    • This density creates a gravitational force so great that even light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, isn’t fast enough to escape its pull
    • Ergo, “Black Hole”
    • One more detail that is extremely relevant: at a certain close proximity to a Black Hole, within the Event Horizon, time stops.
  • Quick summary here: only two places in the real universe where time stops: the speed of light; a Black Hole
  • Quick test: in religion what do we call time stopped? Answer: eternity. And that’s where God lives.
• Discovery #3: Solitons
  • This word is derived from “solitary” but for the purposes of this homily, I am going to use its secondary pronunciation: Soul-i-ton
  • A soliton is a special kind of wave that does not break up, spread out, or lose strength over distance
  • It was discovered by John Scott Russell, a Scottish scientist, in 1834, by watching a wave race down a barge canal near Edinburgh. but only in the past 20 years has it become important
  • Solitons have been spotted by satellites crossing the entire Pacific Ocean without breaking up or slowing
  • Solitons keep their integrity and form
  • We now can create solitons with electricity with sound, and with light
  • And we can pack these solitary waves with huge amounts of information
  • If you want an image, think of photon torpedoes from the Starship Enterprise, “Fire the Photon Torpedoes, Scotty!” “Ay, ay, Captain Kirk.”
  • But instead of being used as a weapon, think of that ball of photons, that luminous soliton, as carrying gigantic amounts of information stored in the arrangement of photons traveling at the speed of light
• Now We are Ready for Heaven and Hell
  • Let us suppose, for a moment, that something very special happens when we die.
    • In an instance so quick that we who are alive and never been able to notice, all your memories, your personality, your character and your DNA pattern bursts from you in the form of a Soul-i-ton. (don’t you just love the pun!)
    • Oh, I have to stop here to quell the scientific “tsh, tsh, tsh,” going on…Some scientists don’t like such assumptions. “We have never seen this so this is highly dubious.”-Check, they think.
    • A quote from the February 2003 Discovery magazine: Astrophysicist John Feng of the University of California is suggesting that the missing dark matter of the universe may exist outside the standard three dimensions of our universe: “These extra dimensions are very small, so you can’t see the particles zinging around in that direction…”-Check yourself!
    • So, our soul-I-ton leaves our bodies at the speed of light and as it exits the atmosphere, it is met by creatures of light whom we call….?
    • Since the Angels are made of light, and your soul-i-ton is made of a wave of radiation, what speed are you all moving at?
    • And at that speed what has happened to time?
  • Heaven
    • If you have been good in your life, and sought forgiveness for your sins, etc., etc., the Angels welcome you to heaven-
      • the moon and mars and Jupiter and Saturn just for starters
      • Then there’s the 100 billion stars in our galaxy with all sorts of miracles of creation
      • and then there’s the 100’s of millions of galaxies
      • you have the universe to visit with “all the time in the world” to see God’s miracles.
    • And, of course, you also have all that time, because you have all-time or no-time to visit with Einstein and Aristotle and your great-great grandmother…well you get the picture
    • And here is what is really cool: any “time” someone important is coming over, you always have “time” to get back to welcome them as they come through the tunnel of light!
    • For how many of you does this sound like a heaven that you could live with?
  • But we also have to deal with Hell
    • The bad guys also meet up with the Angels but this time the message is very different:
    • You have failed to live a life worthy of Heaven’s access: you did horrible things to those around you.
    • You were too proud to ask forgiveness
    • You chose not to believe in the divinity of God and try to follow the Tenets laid down by God’s prophets and his son
    • You are taken, at the speed of light to a black hole and cast into its gravitational field
    • What happens to time near a black hole? It stops
    • So, how long will you be there? Eternity
  • And so we have it
    • A timeless heaven where you can exist as a conscious, coherent ball of energy with your person-ness intact and the speed and the “time” to visit all of God’s creations
    • I can think of nothing better!
    • A timeless hell where you are captured so that you will see nothing of heaven and be separated from the grace of God
    • I can think of nothing worse.
• Conclusion:
  • I told you this was going to be a little goofy
  • And, I must admit, I always thought God was going to forgive everyone, so black holes look pretty bad
  • So, I will leave you with one more piece of research from the Great Steven Hawkings, one of the other great thinkers about Black Holes
  • Based on Hawkings’ computations, he believes that Black Holes leak
  • Something escapes-slowly but steadily-so that, over 100’s of billions of years, black holes evaporate-and all that was captured is released.
  • And that’s the God I believe in-tough love, but love nonetheless.
• There it is, a heaven and hell within the physical boundaries of the universe “as we know it today.”
• I leave you with this quote from Freeman Dyson, one of the few mathematicians to extend Einstein’s work

“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”

Sounds right, doesn’t it?

Reading references:

• “And Then There Was Light” by Richard Panek, Natural History magazine, November, 2002, pp 46-51
• “Getting Warped” by Peter Weiss, Science News, December 21, 2002, pp 394-395
• “Digits and Fidgets” by Michael Shermer, Scientific American, January 2003, p 35
• “Dark Destroyers” by Hazel Muir, New Scientist, October 19, 2002, Inside science special section
• “Astronomers Search for Dimension X” Discover magazine, February, 2003, p 12
• “John Scott Russell’s Soliton Wave Re-created” http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/solitons/press.html November 15, 2002
• “Super X-Ray Vision”, National Geographic, December, 2002, pp. 42-53