Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new series, Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey, will premier this Sunday night, March 9th on Fox network, and again the following night on the National Geographic Channel, http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/10/the-new-cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey/.
&nnbsp; Tyson would probably find much of what The Urantia Book (The UB) says about the physical universe to be unbelievably ridiculous. He tends to speak out sometimes overly simplistically about science, like a remark he made on Bill Maher’s show, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it," or about religions, “Any time scientists disagree, it’s because we have insufficient data. Then we can agree on what kind of data to get; we get the data; and the data solves the problem. Either I’m right or you’re right or we’re both wrong. And we move on. That kind of conflict resolution does not exist in politics or religion.” Such comments go “viral” on the internet and Facebook, offending some religionists, delighting some atheists. Recognizing that many scientists are religious, Tyson is usually respectful of that fact.
In his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, he said, “96 percent of what's driving this universe [is] in the form of dark matter and dark energy … You can make all manner of measurements and not know what's causing it. We measure this thing we're calling dark matter.”
The terms dark matter and dark energy don’t appear in The UB. In paper 15:6.11 (pg. 173) we read about “The Dark Islands of Space. These are the dead suns and other large aggregations of matter devoid of light and heat. The dark islands are sometimes enormous in mass and exert a powerful influence in universe equilibrium and energy manipulation. The density of some of these large masses is well-nigh unbelievable. And this great concentration of mass enables these dark islands to function as powerful balance wheels, holding large neighboring systems in effective leash. They hold the gravity balance of power in many constellations; many physical systems which would otherwise speedily dive to destruction in near-by suns are held securely in the gravity grasp of these guardian dark islands. It is because of this function that we can locate them accurately. We have measured the gravity pull of the luminous bodies, and we can therefore calculate the exact size and location of the dark islands of space which so effectively function to hold a given system steady in its course.”
DeGrasse Tyson talked about our measurements of both dark matter and dark energy: “We measure this phenomenon dark energy that's forcing the universe to accelerate. When you add up what we know with those two things about which we don't know what's driving it, we only know 4 percent of what's driving the universe.”
Here is a speculation he made while talking to Bill Moyers. “One of the more intriguing accounts I've heard is if you have multiple universes, it turns out gravity can spill out of one universe and be felt by another. And if we have another universe adjacent to ours, it could be that these sites where we see extra gravity is ordinary gravity in a parallel universe. And here we are, looking at it mysteriously like, "What is this?" It's like the blind man touching the elephant. … Maybe the elephant is ordinary gravity in another universe and we're feeling it and we're making stuff up just to account for it.”
“The universal circuits of Paradise do actually pervade the realms of the seven superuniverses. These presence circuits are: the personality gravity of the Universal Father, the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son, the mind gravity of the Conjoint Actor, and the material gravity of the eternal Isle.” (The UB, 15:9.1, pg. 176)
The UB gives us a picture of seven universes which exist in a “parallel” sense perhaps different from what Tyson means. Although sometimes science writers of all kinds have speculated that a parallel universe exists in another time dimension, deGrasse Tyson’s use of the word adjacent indicates that he must mean a physical location.
The UB describes the elliptical motion and direction of the “parallel universes,” in some detail, for example, “We have long since discovered that the seven superuniverses traverse a great ellipse, a gigantic and elongated circle,” (15:1.2, pg. 165) and “Your local universe of Nebadon belongs to Orvonton, the seventh superuniverse, which swings on between superuniverses one and six, having not long since (as we reckon time) turned the southeastern bend of the superuniverse space level.” (15:1.5)
Another phenomenon described in The UB probably also has something to do with our perplexing observations: “… The dark gravity bodies encircling Havona … and their drawing power discloses both forms of physical gravity, linear and absolute,” (11:8.7) but this exceeds my capacity to understand the physical cosmos. Perhaps some of the physicists and scientists reading this article can share what they know with us.
