Our Impossible Earth and Moon by Fred Cameron (2009).pdf

Our Impossible Earth and Moon

by Fred Cameron

We live in an amazing part of the universe. In fact, it’s a little too amazing to have been created by

random clouds of swirling gasses, gravity and molten rock, which is the current scientific theory of how

our solar system came into being 4.5 billion years ago. But if we look closer it’s hard to avoid the

conclusion that, at least, the Sun, Moon and Earth were constructed as they are for our benefit. What’s

more, they constitute a message to us that the universe is not what it seems to be, and therefore by

extension, we are not what we seem to be either.

The part of the universe closest to us—the Sun, our own planet Earth and the Moon—appear to

have been constructed or engineered. Simple observations, which we will run through, show that our

local corner of the universe didn’t just randomly get the way it is. It was purposely adjusted and tweaked

to be the way it is. But this is not all. Our bodies have also been “tuned” to our local solar environment

as if to say that we ourselves are part of some message and are caught up in it.

If a message has been arranged for us to find, then some agency had to have left it. The first

question that arises—Who are/were they?—turns out to not be as important as: What does the message

mean for us, to whom it has been sent? These questions will have to wait until we have read the message

and then understand what it says.

The message consists of a small set of numerical measurements. These numbers require no more

than high school algebra to find, and indeed most of them are well-known; others are not. But they are

hardly of interest to professional scientists who feel there are much more important problems worthy of

their attention, so they just sit in books and Wikis waiting for someone to notice them and put them

together, which is what I propose to do here. Data first—nothing too complicated—speculations on

what it all might mean at the end.

The first part of the message, and the biggest, stares us in the face every night.

Moonstruck

The most amazing astronomical fact known to us is visible in the sky nearly every period of twenty-four

hours, but especially during total solar eclipses: from our vantage point on Earth, the Sun and Moon

appear to be exactly the same size. During an eclipse, the Moon exactly covers the disk of the Sun.

The graphic above shows the Earth and Moon to scale, both to size and distance. This unusual

picture can give us a bit more of a visceral feel for sizes and distances than can the more usual diagrams

which are rarely drawn to scale. During a solar eclipse, the Sun would be far to the right (about 230 feet

away), directly in line with the Moon, and would cast the Moon’s long, thin shadow directly toward

Earth, where it would cover a spot approximately a hundred miles across on the surface at any instant. If

you were standing within that area the apparent sizes of the Sun and Moon would be the same.

What explains this? The Sun is (exactly, to two decimal places) 400 times the size of the Moon, yet

is 400 times farther away, so their apparent sizes are the same. In the eighteenth century, the meaning of

this fact was widely debated by astronomers, but today if it is mentioned to astronomy students at all it’s

Our Impossible Earth and Moon

just called coincidental. Are there more apparent “coincidences” regarding the Earth and the Moon?

Indeed there are. And when these are stacked up beside one another, the chance they could be

coincidental becomes remote—so remote as to be impossible. Let’s go through some of them.

Three Dancing Partners

If we compare the size of the Moon with the size of the Earth, we find that the Earth is 3.66 times as

big as the Moon. Taking the reciprocal, the Moon is .273 times as large as the Earth. We will find these

two numbers—sometimes with the decimal point in different places—repeated over and over in the

message, sometimes in the sky, but sometimes here on Earth and in our own bodies. In information

theory, it is the repetition of a pattern or a

number that changes it from mere noise into

information.

Next item. If we take that 3.66 as 366 we

find that this is the number of full rotations of the

Earth in one sidereal Earth year. Which may need

an explanation, since we know one year has only

365¼ days. The explanation lies in how the day is

defined. We measure one day, technically called

one mean solar day, to be the time between when

the Sun is at its zenith (i.e. at its highest point in

the sky) on two consecutive days. This day has

exactly 24 hours and is used to measure common

civil time. 365¼ mean solar days make one year.

Another type of day, one which is useful in astronomy, is the sidereal day, which is defined as the time

between two successive appearances of a bright star in the same position overhead. In other words, a full

turn measured against the fixed background stars. This day is only 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds

long—236 seconds shorter than a mean solar day. The movement of the Earth around the Sun accounts

for the difference; the Earth has to turn farther to point again at the Sun than it does to point again at

the same star, which makes the solar day a bit longer than the sidereal day. By the time the Earth has

returned to the same position in its orbit around the Sun—one year, these 236 seconds per day have

added up to one additional full day, making 366 full turnings in one year: 366 sunrises and 366 sunsets.

So we can say there are 366 actual days in a year and the Earth is 3.66 times the size of the Moon.

There is no reason why this should be so; it just is. If this was all, it probably wouldn’t mean anything.

But we’re attempting to show that there is a set of numerical relationships among the Sun, the Moon

and the Earth that just shouldn’t be if the Solar System evolved in a natural, random way. And we’re

just getting started.

Next, we observe that the Moon rotates around the Earth once every 27.32 days. This is called the

sidereal period of the Moon, and is the amount of time it takes the Moon to return to the same place in

the heavens as measured against the background of the fixed stars. (This is a different measure than the

period from Full Moon to Full Moon, which is longer, 29.5 days, called the Moon’s synodic period.)

One sidereal lunar month is 27.32 Earth days long. And the Moon is 27.3% the size of the Earth.

Well, that’s interesting, but it could be another coincidence. The Earth is 3.66 times the size of the

Moon and rotates on its axis 366 times a year.

Let’s look closer at the Moon. 27.32 Earth days is one lunar day from the point of view of the

Moon. One lunar day is the time between two successive passages of the Sun directly overhead at a

point on the Moon’s surface. The lunar day and lunar month are the same, since the Moon keeps the

same face towards Earth in its orbit. The Moon rotates once on its axis every 27.32 days: therefore, one

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Our Impossible Earth and Moon

lunar day is also 27.32 Earth days. If we then add 366 lunar days together they equal 10,000 Earth

days. (366 x 27.32 = 10,000.) This is a consequence of 3.66 and .2732 being reciprocal numbers, but it

sets up a “construction” constant of 10,000 that we will see again later on.

Are there more apparent “coincidences” regarding the Earth and the Moon? Indeed there are, and

many of them, apparently, have nothing to do with planets and moons. As they begin to accumulate, we

may begin to wonder if there really is some meaning to them. Perhaps they should not be treated as

coincidences at all. It’s best to start lining them up before we start speculating about what significance

they might carry. They’re not all in the sky, so let’s look more closely at the environment that surrounds

us right here on Earth. We’ll start with water and how its temperature is measured.

The Temperature of Nothing

The temperature scale used in physics (and in most of Europe) is the Centigrade or Celsius scale, named

after the nineteenth century Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius who invented it. 0°C was defined as the

ice point of water, the temperature where water freezes. 100°C was defined as the boiling point of

water—the point where liquid water turns to steam. (The corresponding range in the Fahrenheit scale

used in the United States is 32° to 212°.) One hundred Centigrade degrees therefore define the three

conditions or states of water: solid ice, liquid water and gaseous steam. Therefore the Centigrade

temperature scale implicitly carries within it an echo of the properties of water.

Temperature itself is defined as the statistical average kinetic energy (which

is just the energy of movement due to heat) of molecules in a substance. This

measures how fast the molecules are moving. For example, “room

temperature” refers to the average energy of movement of the air molecules in

a room that is at a temperature comfortable to humans. Now there exists a

certain very low temperature, found by experiment, at which all such random

thermal movement ceases. This is called absolute zero and is numerically equal

to -273.2°C. This number expresses a quantitative relationship between the

energy points of the three states of water and the energy point where no

molecular motion exists in any substance. Note the digits in this number:

273.2.

There is a temperature scale used by physicists that takes -273.2°C as its

own zero mark; this is the Kelvin temperature scale, named after William

Thompson, known as Lord Kelvin, a physicist at the turn of the nineteenth

century. On the Kelvin scale, the freezing point of water is +273.2°K; this is just another way of saying

0° Centigrade. This scale is useful for very low temperatures such as those found in certain laboratory

experiments; it is also used by astrophysicists to express the temperature of stars.

Can this have anything to do with the Moon? Or with the fact that the Moon is 27.3% the size of

the Earth? These are just numbers.

Pure coincidence, you say, that the freezing (or melting) point of water, 273.2°K, could be in any

way related to the sidereal period of the Moon, 27.32 days. They don’t measure the same thing; they

aren’t even the same number – one is ten times the other, disregarding the units, which are incompatible

in any event.

But all right. We have 273.2°K and 27.32 days in a sidereal month. Suppose we take ten lunar

months to get 273.2 days so that both numbers match numerically. What might 273.2 days signify?

Mothers and Babies

273 days is the average human gestation period from conception to birth. This corresponds very closely

to nine calendar months, usually taken as 273 or 274 days. Our bodies are 80% water, but the womb is

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Our Impossible Earth and Moon

its own watery domain, and in many cultures, the Moon has been a feminine symbol. Using our lateral

thinking abilities we can easily connect ten lunar sidereal months or nine calendar months, with the time

a woman carries her child to term. (In addition, 27+ days, of course, is very close to the average female

menstrual cycle.)

We have a circle of ideas here: the sidereal period of the Moon, the human female gestation period,

the womb as a watery domain, water itself, the freezing temperature of water, and back to the sidereal

period of the Moon. There is something rational about this. It shouldn’t mean anything, yet it does

somewhere inside us. But why should it revolve around the seemingly arbitrary number, 237.2? Let’s go

on and try to expand this circle of ideas and connections to see if we can find out why.

It’s a Gas!

Next item. According to experiments done by the Frenchman Gay-Lussac in 1802, if the quantity and

pressure of a gas are held constant, then the volume of the gas increases linearly as its temperature rises.

This physical law was named after him; it was later called the ideal gas law. If you imagine this gas in a

very light container that can easily expand in size, you have the picture. As the temperature of the gas

goes up, the molecules move faster (their kinetic energy increases) and they whack the sides of the

container harder, making it expand. What interests us is that gasses expand or contract by 1/273.2 of

their volume for every Centigrade degree of heating or cooling. This is either meaningless or mind-

blowing.

In the ideal gas law we have all wrapped up in one the ideas of absolute zero, the freezing and

boiling points of water, the size of the Moon compared to Earth and the Moon’s sidereal period. So far.

Now, water in the form of steam could be the gas in question, but so could any other gas.

But those dag gone 273.2’s just keep rolling in. There is no obvious reason why another one should

appear here; there doesn’t seem to be any connection. It just does.

Cosmic Rays, Baby

Next item. An important observation made in the last few decades is the presence of a cosmic radiation

that comes uniformly from all directions in space. This radiation was once thought to be the remnant of

the so-called Big Bang, but the nature of this radiation as observed does not fit the requirements of the

Big Bang theory, and is one of the reasons this theory is currently in decline. The radiation exists,

nevertheless, and is thought to have a different source having to do with magnetic fields in plasmas,

which are huge concentrations of charged particles that exist throughout space.

In measuring the characteristics of radiation of this nature, it is customary in physics to use a

temperature scale, and the Kelvin scale is best suited for this task. The temperature of the background

microwave radiation is 2.73°K. We have that same number, now in a different context. What is

interesting is that the same numerical value has occurred once again.

March Madness!

Let’s bring the Sun into the picture. Consider the Sun as one gigantic gymnasium. You can line up

109¼ Earth-sized basketballs across the diameter of the Sun.

Now consider the orbit of the Earth as an even larger gym, with the Sun exactly at mid-court. You

can line up exactly 109¼ Sun-sized basketballs from mid-court to the edge of the court.

In the first case, 109¼ Earths fit side-by-side inside the Sun. In the second case, 109¼ Suns fit in

the Earth’s orbital radius. (Heh, heh. We’ll connect .237 and 109¼ in a minute.)

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Our Impossible Earth and Moon

The Sun doesn’t have to be the size it is. The Earth doesn’t have to be the size it is, either. It doesn’t

have to be the distance from the Sun that it is. But there you are. Look up the numbers and get out

your pocket calculator.

On the other hand, maybe the Sun, Earth and Moon are the sizes and distances they are for a

reason. As we search for such a reason, we might even be able to fashion it into a message.

Squares and Circles

There is one more fundamental appearance of the digits 2732 we need to note. Consider a square of

two units length on each side as in the diagram below. Draw a circle inside the square; the circle will

have a radius of 1 unit. The area of the square is 4 and the area of the circle is πr 2 which equals just π or

3.1416 since r = 1. What is the difference in area between the square and the circle? It is 4 – π. This is

represented by the shaded area in the diagram. Finally we ask what fraction of the area of the circle is

this shaded area? It would be the shaded area (4 - π) divided by the area of the circle, π. Using a

calculator to solve the expression (4 - π) / π we get 0.2732 to four decimal places. Here are the same

digits we have already seen many times. The same exact digits we have seen above now appear as a pure,

dimensionless number. This diagram doesn’t appear to be connected to the Moon, the Earth, water or

babies; it is more abstract and probably more fundamental.

Organic chemist Peter Plichta in his book God’s Secret Formula 1 says that the number 0.2732 must

be a new mathematical constant, never before discovered. But we have seen the same sequence of digits

describe temperature based on the properties of water, the sidereal period of the Moon and the human

gestation period. Are these phenomena related to the same mathematical constant? What sort of

undiscovered universal “constant” would govern the human gestation period? Are there some

construction parameters that govern the orbital period of the Moon? Could these same parameters

govern the properties of water and a temperature of absolute zero?

This all must be some kind of trick! Where did all these 2732s come from, never mind the decimal

point? The Earth. The Moon. The Sun. Solar eclipses. Temperature relative to the properties of water.

The human gestation period. The ratio of the area of a square to an inscribed circle – simple geometry.

Numerical and visual “coincidences,” all mediated by the digits 2732 or its inverse, 366.

Notice that none of the numbers we have used depend on the units the numbers are expressed in,

except for the Earth day. Even the temperatures we used only depend on dividing the difference

between the freezing and boiling points of water into 100 equal units. There is no explanation why

these things should be so. We could write one or two of them off to coincidence, but not all of them.

1 Plichta, Peter, God’s Secret Formula , Element Books, Shaftsbury, Dorset, England, 1997, p. 138.

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