Jeg fikk se "manuset" til hvordan de har undervist i jordens tilblivelse på skolen vår, og tenker at når man nå VET så mye som man gjør om hvordan universet ble til (og enda har mye mer igjen å utforske!
), og vet hvilken fantastisk historie det er, så har man virkelig verdens beste skapelsesberetning! Drama! Ekstreme forhold og hendelser! Uendelighet!Fortellingen under er kanskje i overkant "lyrisk" i formen for mange av dere, men den kler den som i dette tilfellet er fortelleren, syns jeg.
Se:
God who has no hands
- Introductory part
- At first there was chaos and darkness. An immensity of space with no beginning and no end, indescribably dark and cold
- When we think of the dark, we think of night, but our night would be like brilliant sunshine compared to that darkness.
- When we think of cold, we think of ice, but ice is hot if you compare it with the coldness of space.
- Experiment1: colder than ice.
- In this measureless void of cold and darkness light was created. There appeared a vast fiery cloud which included all the stars in the sky, the whole universe was in that cloud, and among the tiniest of stars was our own world. But they were not stars then, there was light and heat, so intense was the heat that substances we know, like iron, earth, rocks and water, existed as gases, as insubstantial as air. They were fused together in one vast, flaming intensity of light and heat, heat which would make our sun today feels like a piece of ice.
- As this cloud of light and heat moved through space, little drops fell from it. Like when you swing some water out of a glass; some of it holds together and the rest breaks up in little drops. Stars are like these little drops, only instead of falling, they are moving around in space, in such a way that they can never meet, millions of miles away from each other.
- They are so far way that it takes the light of some of them millions of years to reach us. Do you know how fast light travels? 300 000 km, not per hour, but per second. In one second it can travel 7 times around the whole world! And do you know how big the world is? 40 200 km around. If we were to drive at 80km an hour continuously, all day and all night long, without stopping, it would take us more than 20 days to cover that distance. And yet light covers it 7 times in one second. You do “click” with your fingertips, and it has gone around the earth 7 times already.
- So, can you imagine how far some of these stars are, that it takes their light 1 million years to reach us?
- There are so many stars that if each of them were a grain of sand, they would cover up the whole of Norway to a height of about 200 meters. And one of these grains of sand is our sun. 1 millionth part of this grain is our earth.
- When we look at the sun, it doesn’t look so big. But that is because it is so far away. The light from it takes about 8 minutes to reach us. If we were to travel the distance at 80 km pr hour it would take us a little more than 212 years to reach the sun. In fact, the sun is 1 million times bigger than the earth, so big that its flames can obtain 22 earths.
- Chart: How big the sun is.
- Every part of the universe, every speck which we might think to tiny to matter, was given a set of laws to follow. The law the little particles, which are like smoke, got were to come closer together and become smaller when they become cold. And so, as they cooled down, they moved more and more slowly, clinging closer and closer together, occupying less and less space. The particles came in different states; solid, liquid and gas, depending on how hot or how cold it was.
- Experiment 2: 3 states of matter.
- The tiny little particles was also given laws, some was given a special love for certain particles and a special dislike for certain others. Just like human beings, they like some and refuse to have anything to do with others. In this way they combined and formed themselves into different groups.
- Experiment 3: Power of attraction.
- The liquids were given a law of holding together, but no so very closely, having no shape of its own and roll over each other. The water was told to flow and spread, filling every hollow, pushing downwards and sideways, but never upwards.
- Experiment 4: Characteristic movement of liquid.
- The law the gases got was that they can move freely in all directions, not cling together at all. But the particles did not become solid or liquid or gas at the same time; at a certain temperature some remained solid, others became liquid and others became gaseous.
- Experiment 5: state of matter and heat.
- The little drop of nothingness that was to become our world, went on spinning, spinning around itself and the sun in the tremendous cold of space. As time went on, the particles that were at the outermost edge became cold and shrank, huddling together they hurried to the earth, but as soon they approached the hotter part, they became hot and went up again. Like little angels they carried a bucket of hot, burning coal into space and returned with some ice.
- Chart 3a: Dance of the elements.
- For hundreds, thousands, millions of years this dance went on. Finally the particles settled down, like tired dancers, and one after another, they became liquid, and then solid and forming new substances. The heavier ones went nearer the heart of the earth and the lighter ones floated above them like oil floating on water.
- Experiment 6: liquids settle according to weight.
- A thin scum was formed, like the skin that forms on milk when it is boiled and left to cool. The earth had taken some shape. But the elements inside were still very hot, they felt trapped, and wanted to get out. They expand and burst out, and broke the skin, and it was like a terrible fight.
- The water that was formed on the surface turned immediately into vapour and went up as the hot stuff came out from inside the earth. There were also ashes, a veil of cloud was drawn to cover the earth so that nobody could see what was going on. The sun was ashamed.
- Chart: 4a, the time of the volcanoes.
- Experiment 7: The volcano.
- Eventually the fight stopped. As everybody cooled down, more and more gases became liquids and more and more liquids became solids. The earth shrank and became wrinkled like an old apple that has been left in a cupboard.
- The wrinkles are the mountains and the hollows are the oceans. For, as soon as the rocks had cooled down, water was able to return to the earth, and it rained and rained and rained. And the water, being liquid, filled every hollow and crevice it found in its path. Thus the oceans were formed. Above them was air, the air that we breathe. The cloud had disappeared, the veil was gone and the sun could once again smile upon its beautiful little daughter, the earth.
- Chart 5.
- Rocks, water, air; solids, liquids and gases. Today as it was yesterday and millions of years ago; the laws are obeyed in the same way. The world spins round itself and round and round the sun. And today, as it was millions of years ago, the earth and all the elements and compounds it is made of, follow the same laws.
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