Page 173 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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152 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
a stream, a river also appears in waveform, and exhibit wavelike proper-
ties, as are all streams of water.
• “Its path is determined by the curvature of space in which it travels.”
Explanation: The path of a river is curved according to the landscape in
which it passes. Thus, a river flowing near a mountain would tend to

change its course, adapting it in accordance with the “space curvature ”
created by the mountain.
• “It carries energy.” Explanation: Water in a river carries with it kinetic
energy, which can be converted into useful work—for example, in the
form of electric energy produced by hydraulic power plants.

Light (according to modern physics)
• “It displays a dual behavior of both wave and a stream of particles.”
Light is known to exhibit properties of waves. Newton, in particu-

lar, was among the first scientists to learn the properties of light and
its wavelike behavior. However, it is only with modern physics (from
the beginning of the twentieth century) that the behavior of light, as a
stream of massless but energy-carrying particles, has been thoroughly
studied. These massless particles of energy are called photons , and they
are affected by curvature created in space by gravitation , just like any
object that does have defined mass (this phenomenon results from

Einstein’s general relativity, and will be addressed in the next paragraph ).
The particle-like properties of photons were finally confirmed by Arthur

Compton in 1923 via a series of experiments involving the elastic scat-
tering of electrons and protons. On the dual particle-like and wavelike
properties of photons, refer, for example, to Greene (2004, 85–86, 90).
• “Its path is determined by the curvature of space in which it travels.”
Curvature in space , produced by a gravitation field, may divert the

course of light. This was one of the earliest predictions of Einstein’s gen-

eral theory of relativity. That prediction was first verified in a dramatic
way by a delegation, headed by Arthur Eddington —who, on May 29,
1919, at the time of a total eclipse of the sun, measured the deflection

of light from stars near the sun’s corona (the stars were still visible at the
time of the eclipse). These measurements were found to be consistent
with Einstein’s prediction (within the known measurement error). For

the first time, it was experimentally established that deflection of light is

caused by gravity (in this case, gravity of the sun) and, furthermore, that

gravity itself causes space to be curved. Einstein’s general relativity has