Dennis-Exciting-Times

The key to understanding the structure of the universe comes from understanding how gravity works. It has taken two books to cover the topic so a blog page is only able to give the barest of brief descriptions. Gravity is the force that holds the whole universe together. There are four forces in all, two nuclear forces that only act inside the atom, electromagnetic force that binds atoms together into molecules and various compounds but this comes in both positive and negative and is more or less in balance. Then there is gravity, the weakest but most far reaching of all the forces it draws matter together to form planets and stars and even giant galaxies. Newton’s laws of gravity state, “Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle. With a force whose direction is that of the joining of the two, and whose magnitude is directly proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance from each other”. Because gravitational force ...

That life even exists on Earth is a miracle; in previous blogs I have written about the fine tuning of nature that makes existence possible. We can extend that further in that each of us represents a chain of miracles that add up to whom we are, and to have been created from the countless ancestors who have each contributed to the DNA sequence that makes us a unique individual being. The chances of an individual living long enough to become a parent is reasonably good in many societies today, but that has not always been the case. Throughout history the chances of not being killed by hunger, a predator or disease as a child has been greater than the chance of surviving. Added to this; as recently as Greek and Roman times unwanted children were simply killed or discarded to the “gods”. In some societies today it is not regarded as a crime to do away with children or those of whom we do not approve. Even in some so called civilised countries “honour killings” are still an accepted way of...

A major purpose of the Prophecyline Website is to establish the true nature of time partly by demonstrating that predicting the future is possible. It is only possible for this to occur if the universe exists in a unitary entity of spacetime as described by Einstein and Minkowski (also known as a block universe). In reading what many others have had to say about predictions it is amazing how many different interpretations there are of each prediction. No doubt the large number of fanciful notions and concepts that have been promoted has done more to turn people away from examining the possibilities than even the most avid atheist or any scientific hypothesis. Atheists have long promoted Darwin’s theory as proof that there is no Creator and that the Bible is little more than a collection of myths and legends. In modern Western Society it is probable that a majority of people hold this view, and consider the Bible as simply an ancient moral story rather than the actual word of a living h...

There has been dispute over the Jewish homeland since Joseph brought his Father Jacob and his brothers with their families to Egypt. When the tribes had lived in Egypt for nearly three centuries and been enslaved Moses came on the scene to bring them back to the land that had been promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In order to claim the land back they had to evict the peoples who had occupied it during their time in Egypt. Eventually the descendants of Abraham were able to restore the land and take up residence and the nation of Israel began। It consisted of separate states for each tribe and eventually the people united under one king and when David became king he claimed Jerusalem as the capital city. The nation of Israel was a major force in the ancient world until many drifted away from the strict theocratic rule becoming secular and dividing the kingdom. Without a unifying belief the land fell to invaders one after another; tribes were separated and dispersed with only the tri...

There are only four forces by which atomic particles react one to another, these are the strong and weak nuclear forces, which only occur inside the nucleus of atoms. Gravity and electromagnetic force both of which are long range forces whose effects can be felt or detected at a great distance, but their strength declines as distance from the source increases. The entire universe is held together by these forces which are finely tuned to ensure that it does not simply fly apart or collapse instantly before any life could evolve. The more we discover about the nature of these forces and the way in which particles exist the more physicists and cosmologists raise the question as to whether there is an overseeing force that ensures this balance is maintained so that life can exist. This theory is called the “Anthropic Principle” and it suggests that the universe itself may be cognisant, aware of its own existence. This is remarkably similar to many religious concepts of a supreme being. In...

We have all heard of the traditional four leaf clover and how lucky you are to find one well here is a five leaf clover. Because it is different to all the other clovers that once surrounded it I noticed it and picked it just for being special. It occurred to me at the time that we might walk past a patch of clover and not even notice that one of them has four or even five leaves and is special. We sometimes do the same thing with people we do not notice how special they might be, not that they could have five leaves but they may be different to us in other ways that make them unique. In a world of turmoil and distrust we should all take a moment and reflect on this and think that although we are all different in some ways we all have needs that are similar we all need to feel safe and free from worry about the actions of others. To consider doing harm to another human being (no matter what your justification) is wrong. Once when our society believed in religion and reading the Bible ...

Conjecture about an “end time” scenario has raged for many years, our early ancestors just accepted that it would come one day but as none of the predicted warning signs had occurred they could happily assume that it was well in the future. In the 1800s in America there began several new religions among them the Mormon and the Adventist movements. The Adventists were particularly concerned with the end time and examined various Biblical segments in an effort to predict when and how this end time would happen. It is their predictions that have greatly influenced modern thinking on this subject. A major sign of the coming of the end times was the prediction that the Jewish people would be returned to the Promised Land before Judgement Day. Jews had become scattered throughout the world and only small numbers remained in the region of Judea which had been under the control of different regimes such as the Ottoman Empire until WW1 and then the British following the Turkish defeat in that w...