The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

imagine the 4 th space direction similarly. In practice, the way to imagine the 4 th dimension is by an analogy : eliminate one of the three space directions you can see, and replace it with the 4 th direction. For example, call the east-west direction x , the north-south direction y , and the up-down direction z . Now, imagine everything as being compressed in the z -direction down to a flat sheet, the x-y plane. Now tack a vertical axis onto the x-y plane and call it w . That’s the extra direction, the 4 th dimension. The plane is very thin in the w -direction. You and I are embedded in that plane, so we also are very thin in the w -direction. The total number of space coordinates describing the real world would be four ( w , x , y , z ), but to visualize things we only show three ( w , x , y ), making the world into a “flatland” as a model. If you noticed, that is what I depicted in Fig. 5. Edwin A. Abbot’s entertaining nineteenth-century novel, Flatland , shows the usefulness of this method for imagining the 4 th dimension (Abbot, 1884). SUCCESS OF THE 4-D FABRIC MODEL It may be helpful to see that the 4-dimensional fabric-of-space model explained above leads to a simple physical picture of how gravity works. In my gravity paper (Humphreys, 2014, plus answers to reader questions below the web version), I presented Biblical evidence for two additional ideas about the fabric of space, that (a) it is under tension , and (b) it is being greatly accelerated in the 4 th direction. I showed how these ideas, along with the two ideas in the previous sections, lead directly to Newton’s gravity equations. Furthermore, they yield an additional term that depends on time, resulting in a moderate-field approximation of the most important of Einstein’s sixteen gravitational field equations. That suggests that this model can lead to the exact Einstein equations (Landau and Lifshitz, 1975), a derivation I hope to publish soon. This model solves four long-standing mysteries about gravity, explaining: (1) Einstein’s equivalence principle , the initial assumption on which he based general relativity. (2) Why mass should deform spacetime. (3) Why deformed spacetime should affect particles with mass. (4) The cosmological constant problem, the huge discrepancy between general relativity and quantum field theory. See the paper for more details (Humphreys, 2014, p. 111). In addition, the model leads directly to an alternative explanation (to the one offered by the Big Bang theory) for the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). This explanation accounts more easily for the remarkable uniformity of the CMB (Humphreys, 2014, p. 112.) OPTICS OF THE FABRIC OF SPACE As I remarked in the gravity paper (Humphreys, 2014, p. 112), the fabric of space has to be very transparent in the x , y , and z directions, because we can see through it for billions of light-years, over a wide range of wavelengths. The invisible particles bound in this medium must have very low cross-sections for absorption and scattering, meaning that the forces binding those particles together must be very strong. That is what we would expect from the very high tension in the fabric, 5.386 × 10 39 megabars (1 Bar is about 14.7 pounds per square inch) as calculated from the model (Humphreys, 2014, p. 112, Sect. 5, eq. 16 and text below it, as corrected in the web version). In section 3 of the gravity paper (Humphreys, p. 110), I suggested that we do not perceive the 4 th direction from our position within the fabric because (a) the fabric is very thin in that direction, and (b) “we usually see light coming at us only from within the fabric, not from outside it.” That is, something must constrain light emitted by objects in the fabric to travel only within it, and also prevent us from seeing light from hyperspace. I referred to end note 27 in the paper (Humphreys, 2014, p. 114), which said: One reason for the confinement of light to within the fabric of our space could be that the speed of light in hyperspace is very much greater than in the fabric of our space. Thus, almost all light emitted from within our space would suffer total internal reflection, as in an optical fiber. Or, the two boundaries of the fabric in the w direction could reflect photons for some other reason. The same kind of constraint might be what prevents matter in the membrane from leaving it. In either case, light would effectively propagate only in the x , y , and z directions, not in the w direction. The blocking of light would also apply to light coming from hyperspace toward us … That light can traverse hyperspace is suggestedby several Scriptures, such as “… light from heaven …” (Acts 9:3). If hyperspace is filled with a light-bearing medium, then the higher speed of light in it might be due to that medium having considerably less mass density than the fabric of our own space (Humphreys, 2014, eqs. 9 and 15). Fig. 6 shows our space under normal conditions, with total internal reflection constraining light from objects within it to travel purely in the x , y , and z directions. An example of total internal reflection occurs when we are underwater looking up at the surface. Light from above the surface can come to us only within a cone of acceptance determined by a critical angle θ c (see Fig. 7). The speed of light c in air (about the same as in vacuum) and the slower speed of light u in water determine the critical angle (Jenkins and White, 1950): For water, u is about ¾ of c , and the critical angle is about 48.6°. Outside the acceptance cone the surface looks like a mirror, and light beams hitting the surface from below at greater angles will be Humphreys ◀ Accelerated cooling ▶ 2018 ICC 734 Figure 6. Reflection ordinarily constrains light to travel entirely within the fabric of space. The fabric is very thin in the w -direction, probably thinner than the 3-D size of a proton, about 10 −15 meter.