The Perplexing "Fine Structure Constant" and Genesis 3:7 ?
In physics there are many constants and finding one for the first time is often a gateway for many subsequent breakthroughs in an area of study. But the Deeds of God website has discovered that a good number of physics values and constants seem to relate in strangely specific ways to passages of the Bible. You can look at many instances of this by going to our search bar and entering "Physics". Yet, could this following article be about another such instance of a Physic constant relating to the Word, the Word through which the Universe was originally Created as the First Chapter of the Gospel of John assures us?
Do you remember learning in school about "the natural number"...denoted by 'e'? Our instructors would talk about how it shows up in so many places in nature? It was integral to so many of the construction formulas and patterns in the Creation. Somehow there is a great 'relatedness' of these most fundamental Math and Physics fundamentals. Take Euler's Identity as a quick side note: it says that e (the 'natural number') raised to the power of i x Pii, + 1 = 0 Now that is a strange but interesting example of how connected everything is!
There is another number, another constant referred to as the Fine Structure Constant that seems to appear in several branches of Physics study, straight up or in multiples of the value. It is a fractional value: It is usually listed as 1 / 137 though there is a small remainder. But it seems to be integrally linked with the function of particle level Physics interactions and certain other Physics areas of study. If you delve around on the subject you will sometimes read that it is one of the great remaining mysteries of Physics...what is the importance of this value that it shows up throughout the cosmos? Physicists have looked at it in great detail and still are not certain, it appears. A genuine mystery!
But Physicists are not always religious people, and not always familiar with Judeo-Christian scripture. So, we who do believe in God could consider this as a possible connector: from the time that Adam and Eve first sinned the sin of eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden the universe experienced corruption, and has been groaning every since in expectation for the 'righting of this wrong', so to speak. This is one thing that scripture says, around Romans 8:22 for instance:
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
End Quote
And so, according to scripture, the actual creation that we live in was harmed and rendered 'not quite right' by the sins of mankind, and it 'groans' as it awaits the restoration that will one day come to completion through Christ. That is a most significant instance of damage to our 'Environment', surpassing all others, I would suppose.
So back to the Fine Structure Constant. Scripture tells us we have structurally damaged the Creation through our sinning. It still functions, but it is damaged. And the value is 1/137 for this constant. Would it surprise anyone to learn that the number 1 is thought by some to denote God the Father? After all, to what entity could the first of all numbers more rightly apply, more rightly belong than to the unquestioned most powerful being in existence? And then there is the 137. If you go to Book 1 of the Bible, you are in Genesis. If you go to chapter 3 and verse 7 (so that is a 137 of sorts) you are at the precise place in scripture where it describes Adam and Eve finding themselves naked after committing that very first sin that originally altered and harmed the perfection of God's Creation.
Genesis 3 partial, including verse 7 :
The Fall
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
End Quote
In Genesis 1, chapter 3, verse 7 you are at the very exact spot in The Holy Word of God Himself where this most fundamental transformational wrong doing occurred. There are supposedly over 31,100 verses in the scripture of a Protestant Bible, even more in a Catholic, but you are looking at the very exact verse where the fall of man is described.
Looking at the fraction again, 1/137 , you first have a number associated with God the Father. Then you have a dividing bar...a separation of sorts...and below that you have a number, 137, that can, if you wish, be very specifically related to fallen mankind. And for some reason this seminal number is 'baked into the cake' of the Creation, or the Universe as non-believers prefer to think of it. And though it may be wholly coincident, that is never the less pretty amazing. I certainly don't claim that God told me there is a connection. I never heard His voice on the matter. I've never heard His voice, his out-loud spoken voice, on any matter for certain. I heard a voice only one time in my waking life, in fact, and it did not identify itself as God, and it only repeated a certain name two times. So I am just a believer taking note of something I noticed. But I think it a provocative possibility and believe that the odds are very against such a thing occurring by accident. So...it's food for thought, right? With God, are there any limits to His greatness? I know of none.