Chapter 9 – The True Nature of the Stars

It is often stated in MSS that the Earth is an insignificant planet orbiting an insignificant star in an insignificant galaxy in an insignificant Universe. This is, in fact, the limitless space paradigm in a nutshell. Let us now examine the Sun and other stars in the Tychonian system, to see whether or not this MSS mantra has any basis in actual fact.

We have already established that the Sun is 1 AU or 93,000,000 from Earth, while the stellatum, which forms the walls of the Universe, is 10,000 times more distant (10,000 AU or 930,000,000,000 miles away). How bright would the Sun be if placed among the other stars of the stellatum? We can easily figure this out by borrowing the concept of apparent magnitude from the science of astronomy. We know that light obeys an inverse square law, simply meaning that if a light source, such as the Sun, is observed from a location twice as far away as the initial location, then the Sun would appear 4 times dimmer than initially (2 * 2 = 4). 3 times farther leads to 9 times dimmer, 4 times farther leads to 16 times dimmer, etc. Since we are proposing that the Sun be moved 10,000 times farther away from us than it is now, then the Sun would appear 10,000 * 10,000 times dimmer, or a full 100,000,000 times dimmer than it does at present. This is a huge decrease in light intensity. Astronomers tell us that the Sun, at its present distance from the Earth, has an apparent magnitude of -27 (brighter objects have increasingly negative magnitudes in astronomy, hence the Sun’s decidedly negative value). What would its magnitude be if it were 100,000,000 times dimmer? The answer is -7, obtained by taking the base 10 logarithm of 100,000,000, which is 8, dividing by 0.4 (a constant in these kinds of calculations), which is 20, and adding that 20 to the original brightness, giving -7.

Now, -7 is a very interesting apparent magnitude. Aside from the Sun and the Moon, of course, it is brighter than anything else in the sky. It is brighter even than any supernova outburst throughout recorded history. It is brighter than any star or planet or moon. In short, rather than being an insignificant object, the Sun, through its hypothetical apparent magnitude at the distance of the stellatum, shows itself to be the greatest and mightiest of all celestial bodies – truly the king of them all. It is no wonder, then, that Jesus Christ is referred to as the Sun of Righteousness in the Bible:

Malachi 4:2 King James Version (KJV)

But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

Also, the Bible is replete with the number 7, the number of spiritual perfection, particularly in the Book of Revelation, the final book in the Bible. This could be another whistle-blowing situation, where God is pointing us back to Himself by equating our Sun to His Son and to His number. Of course, we are not to worship the Sun, but the Sun serves as a daily reminder of Who It Is that we should be worshiping.

What of the stars themselves? How do they compare with the Sun? Actually, it is possible to answer these questions, since we know that all of the stars are at the same distance from Earth – 10,000 AU or 930,000,000,000 miles – but we must introduce a new equation, the Stefan-Boltzmann law, to proceed further. This equation governs the emission of light from incandescent bodies, which are material objects, like the Sun, whose light emission is solely due to their high temperature. The equation is this:

Brightness of Emitted Light = Constant * Surface Area * Temperature^4

This equation has been checked in the laboratory many times with artificial incandescent light sources. There is no longer any doubt that the relationship between the temperature of the emitter and the brightness of the emitted light is as shown.

Astronomers have measured the apparent magnitude of every bright star. Sirius, for example, also called the Dog Star, is the brightest star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of -1.46. MSS tells us that Sirius is larger, brighter, and hotter than the Sun, and very distant, at just under 9 light-years from Earth, where 1 light-year is roughly 6,000,000,000,000 miles. However, if Sirius is actually only 10,000 AU away, then it need not be a colossus compared to the Sun. To see this, we will have to do some calculations.

First, we need to figure out the constant in the Stefan-Boltzmann law, so that we aren’t left with multiple variables in our equation. Fortunately, the information that astronomers have already collected about the Sun allows us to do just that. We know that the Sun’s diameter is 865,000 miles, and so its surface area is just 4 * pi * r^2. That works out to be 2,350,618,163,232 square miles, a truly immense amount of acreage. Astronomers have measured the Sun’s surface temperature many times with optical techniques of various kinds, and it has been determined to be 6,000 degrees on the Kelvin temperature scale. Note that the temperature of an object is unaffected by how far away it is from us, and so we can trust the temperatures that astronomers have measured for the stars; it is the distances to the stars that are in doubt. Since the Sun is the brightest of all of the stars, we can set its S-B brightness equal to 1. In this way, all of the other stars will have brightnesses of less than 1, making for easy comparisons.

We can now algebraically rearrange the S-B law, and solve for the constant of proportionality. That works out to be 3.3 * 10^-28, a very small value, indeed. Armed with this constant, we can now find out how big or small the star we know as Sirius actually is. First, Sirius has a magnitude of -1.46, while the Sun’s magnitude at the same distance is -7. Subtracting the two gives 5.54. Multiplying this by 0.4 equals 2.216. Raising 10 to this power gives 164.44. Therefore, Sirius is 164.44 times dimmer than the Sun (in terms of astronomical apparent magnitude). If the Sun is 1, then Sirius is 0.00608. This is the brightness of Sirius in the S-B equation. Dividing this brightness by the temperature of Sirius (9,940 degrees Kelvin) raised to the fourth power, and dividing again by the constant of proportionality for the S-B equation, gives a surface area for Sirius of 1,897,761,149 square miles. Converting this surface area into a diameter gives just 25,000 miles. Sirius is smaller than the either Uranus or Neptune! Therefore, in a very real sense, if you want to know what the stars are like up close, in the sense of size, just look at the planets.

We can now see that the stars need not be the gargantuan objects that MSS says that they are. It is only the limitless space paradigm that requires mind-boggling measurements for the stars. We can go even further, by using our old friend, the small angle equation, and calculate how large the stellar disk of Sirius would look in our telescopes. This works out to be somewhere between 5 and 6 thousandths of a single arc second, an incredibly small angular size. This is why the stars look like mere points of light in even the most powerful telescopes; they are not that large to begin with, and are a substantial distance away for their size. Interestingly, MSS has obtained the same angular size for Sirius that we just calculated. It is claimed to be a purely experimental observation, but I have severe doubts about that. Successful measurement of such an incredibly tiny angle seems like pure fantasy to me. MSS astronomers are probably using their preferred stellar distance for Sirius, which is very great, indeed, applying the S-B law, calculating a surface area, calculating a diameter from that surface area, applying the small angle equation, and then merely claiming to detect that very same angular diameter with an unrelated optical technique. In this way, they seem to achieve independent corroboration of the limitless space paradigm. Many people find this approach sufficiently satisfying, and they leave it at that. Once again, though, we have a clash between worldviews. We have a fact, which is the brightness of Sirius. If you believe that the star is essentially an infinite distance away, then you must make the star very large and very bright, if there is to be any hope of seeing it at all. On the other hand, if you think that there is evidence for the star being relatively close by, then the star can be much smaller and dimmer, and still look exactly the same in the night sky.

When it comes to the stars, then, everything hinges on how far away they are. Is there any reliable way to determine the distances to the stars, without relying on a lot of unproven assumptions? Amazingly, yes, there is, but MSS has interpreted the key phenomenon in such a way that, not surprisingly, the limitless space paradigm is supported. Naturally, in this book, we will have a Biblical interpretation for the very same facts, but one which is based on actual experimental observations.

The optical phenomenon which we must now discuss is called stellar aberration. Discovered by British astronomer James Bradley in 1727, stellar aberration is the observed fact that every one of the stars in the night sky traces out a small circle about 20 arc seconds in radius. This is an easily measurable quantity. For example, with a telescope, the planetary disks of Venus, Mars, and Jupiter can display angular diameters of 60, 24, and 35 seconds of arc, respectively. Stellar aberration, then, is similar in size to the disk of a nearby planet in our own Solar System as seen through a telescope. Note that stellar parallax, upon which MSS has based its stellar distance measurements, is enormously smaller than this, being a tiny fraction of a single arc second in even the most favorable of circumstances.

Of course, we don’t notice aberration when we casually look up at the stars at night. One must observe the same star over the course of a year to appreciate the effect, all the while taking careful measurements of the star’s position using sophisticated astronomical equipment. The effect is complicated by the fact that the apparent tiny circle that the star traces out is changed to an oval, or even a straight line, depending upon where the star’s position is located with respect to the zenith (the point in the sky directly overhead). The optimal, circular effect occurs for stars directly above one’s observing location.

Bradley, and his partner, Samuel Molyneux, found that all of the stars succumbed to the effect, and that the dimensions of the circle were the same for all of the stars: about 20 arc seconds in radius. Bradley pondered the phenomenon for some time, trying to come up with a physically reasonable explanation. He finally decided that aberration was caused by the Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun, and was separate and distinct from the stellar parallax effect that he was initially looking for. Bradley found that a right triangle, whose base is the Earth’s orbital velocity (some 67,100 miles per hour, if the Earth orbits the Sun in a circular orbit in one year’s time), and whose height is the speed of light (671,000,000 miles per hour), formed an angle between the hypotenuse and the base which, when subtracted from 90 degrees, equaled the angular radius of the circle that all of the stars traced out over the course of a year! The light from a distant star directly overhead was treated by Bradley as a kind of subatomic rain or nonradioactive fallout, falling down on our heads and our telescopes at the speed of light. The orbital motion of the Earth, perpendicular to this rain, causes the stream of rain to tilt slightly away from the vertical and towards the moving Earth. You may have even noticed something like this effect in real life, if you have ever been in a moving vehicle while it is raining. It is a fact that the stream of vertically downward moving raindrops seems to tilt towards the moving car’s windshield. MSS agreed with Bradley’s explanation, and the discovery was hailed as a triumph of science and technology, as well as an independent confirmation of the Earth’s orbital motion. Note that Michelson and Morley tried to measure this same velocity in a different way, many years later, and found zero velocity (see Chapter 8).

Bradley’s interpretation of the experimental results was very clever, especially if the goal was to achieve widespread, popular support for the Copernican system and the limitless space paradigm. By linking the observed aberration effect to the motion of the Earth, one is free to create an open-ended Universe, and to populate that infinite space with all manner of celestial bodies and physical phenomena, none of which can be proven, but all of which will excite the popular imagination and, most importantly, maintain the flow of funding for scientific research (as long as that research toes the party line of heliocentrism, atheism, evolution (both physical and biological), Godlessness, situational ethics, and shifting moral stances).

There is at least one glaring problem with Bradley’s interpretation – it has never been proven in the laboratory. No one has ever seen an aberration-type effect using artificial light sources moving past each other at right angles as described in Bradley’s explanation. Instead, Bradley’s approach is merely accepted without verification because it provides an explanation for an observed effect which is also in line with the accepted scientific paradigms of the day. It is desired to have the Earth orbiting the Sun, Bradley’s explanation supports that view, therefore, Bradley’s explanation must be correct. Such is the state of MSS today.

There is, however, another interpretation for aberration, which we will now discuss. Notice that, in Bradley’s scenario, the speed of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun is exactly 1/10,000^th of the speed of light. This is a very interesting ratio, being such a nice, round number, and suggests that the math is trying to tell us something significant and profound about the physical situation that spawned that ratio in the first place. Is there anything that we have encountered recently in this book that is associated with that ratio? Yes! The ratio between the Earth-Sun distance and the Sun-stellatum distance (1 AU/10,000 AU)! Could aberration be simply explained geometrically through the Tychonian system, with its Sun-centered stellatum and its Earth-centered solar orbit? I believe so, but how would it all work?

In an earlier chapter, we said that the Sun is physically linked to the stellatum, and is located at the exact center of that vast, solid shell. Therefore, when the Sun moves to its southernmost point in the sky in the northern hemisphere, which we call the winter solstice, around the date of December 21^st of each year, all of the stars will do the same. However, we must remember that the speed of light is relatively slow compared to the distances over which light travels. Consequently, we won’t see a star attain the southernmost point of its aberration cycle until 3 additional months have elapsed (the vernal equinox, approximately March 21^st), owing to the fact that the light of the star must travel from the edge of the Universe (the stellatum), all the way across space and, finally, into to our eyes. In the same way, when the Sun moves to its most northern point in the sky (summer solstice, approximately June 21^st), all of the stars are dragged along by the Sun and follow that motion instantaneously, since the stars are attached to the stellatum, and the stellatum is connected to the Sun. But we won’t see this motion reflected in the aberration cycle until the autumnal equinox, some 3 months later (approximately September 23^rd), due to light travel time effects. So, if we think of the aberration cycle as the face of a clock, we can see that the 6:00 position will occur around the time of the beginning of spring, the 9:00 position around the start of summer, the 12:00 position around the beginning of autumn, and the 3:00 position around the start of winter, in an endlessly repeating cycle.

As for the 3-month time lag, that is easily explained by invoking the Pythagorean Theorem, just as Bradley did, but in a different way. If a light source, such as a star, is at a certain distance from us, then that distance can be represented by the height of a right triangle. If that light source also moves across our line of sight, as the stars affixed to the stellatum do, then that motion can be modeled as the base of our right triangle. The hypotenuse then becomes the actual path that the light ray would follow. When we get down to the business of actually performing the calculations, we can set the height of our triangle to 2.1, since light takes about 2 months to travel from the stellatum to Earth (if the stellatum were stationary), and we can set the base of our triangle also to 2.1, since the stellatum is rotating at the speed of light, carrying the stars along with it, again for about 2 months. The hypotenuse, the actual path that the light rays would follow on their journey to Earth, is then nearly 3 months, just the amount of time that would be required in order to make our model work!

The tiny but observable circle with a radius of 20 arc seconds that each star traces out over the course of the year is then simply due to the small angle equation working in concert with light travel time effects. It is as simple as that. Every day, the Sun revolves around the Earth. The stars do the same, since they are attached to the stellatum which, in turn, is attached to the Sun. Every day, then, the stars trace out a tiny circle that is an exact copy of the Sun’s orbit around the Earth. Since that orbit is 1 AU in radius, the stars will exhibit that same orbital motion, due to their attachment to the solid shell of the stellatum. But because the stars are 10,000 times farther away than the Sun, their orbits seem tiny to us, only 20 arc seconds or so in radius, exactly as the small angle equation requires:

(93,000,000 miles/930,000,000,000 miles) * (500/9) = 0.00555 degrees = 20 arc seconds

20 arc seconds is a very interesting number. If the small angle equation is rewritten to give angular distance in seconds of arc directly, it looks like this:

arc seconds = (diameter in miles/distance in miles) * 206527

Notice that the constant in this equation is 10,000 times larger than the radius of the tiny circle traced out by the motion of the stars every single year! This is very peculiar, to say the least. The simplest possibility is that the equation is telling us that all of the stars are equidistant from the Earth, and that the distance to the stars is 10,000 times larger than the distance between the Earth and the Sun! Or, it could all be a MSS coincidence, like the Sun and the Moon having the same angular size in our skies. Each person will have to decide how much coincidence they can live with before changing their worldview.

Why don’t we see each star’s tiny aberration circle after a single day of observation? Because it takes so long (about 3 months) for the star’s light to reach us. The great distance to the stellatum (930,000,000,000 miles) stretches out the time required for the complete circle to appear from one day to one year (there’s that “day-year” principle, again, which is so common in the Bible). Much has been written about Einstein’s so-called twin paradox, in which time dilates, or stretches out, when motion at nearly the speed of light takes place, allowing time travel into the future. This is pure fantasy, as common sense quite plainly tells us. The stellatum, on the other hand, provides us with the true time dilation, since there are 4 cardinal points to the aberration circle, each point takes 3 months for the “news” to reach us, so to speak, and 4 sets of 3 months is 12 months or 1 year. It all fits together. Remember that the distance to the stellatum, though great by human standards, is still much, much less than the distances to the stars in the limitless space paradigm of MSS. In MSS, the light of even the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, would take over 4 years to reach us, and its aberration circle is explained by an analogy to falling raindrops, even though light is a nonmaterial entity, and raindrops are substantive objects. Once again, the same facts (aberration circles in the sky) are explained in diametrically opposed fashion. Each person must decide which of the two versions has the “ring of truth” for them. As for me and my family, we choose the Biblical, Tychonian approach:

Joshua 24:15 King James Version (KJV)

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

Where does the parallax of MSS fit into all of this? We have already stated that we dismiss parallax in this book, as the tiny angles it claims to measure are much too small to have any confidence in. However, MSS swears by parallax, and uses its supposed miniscule shifts in the positions of the stars to calculate their phenomenal distances from Earth. The mathematics of parallax demand that the optimal times to take measurements are at the winter and summer solstices, 6 months apart, so that the Earth is at the opposite ends of its orbital diameter, thereby creating the longest possible baseline for stellar distance calculations (actually, any 6-month period would do). Notice that aberration is offset from parallax by 3 months, which is the main reason that MSS declares parallax and aberration two different phenomena. In the Tychonian system, however, aberration and parallax are the same thing, with the 3-month time lag being explained by light travel time effects. Choices, choices.

We have determined the size and distance of the star Sirius (25,000 miles across and 10,000 AU distant), but have not said anything about the other stars. Below are tables featuring key data for some of the bright stars in the night sky, arranged in order of brightness (from brightest to dimmest):

Of course, the number of bright to fairly bright stars in the night sky is enormous. There are perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 stars visible to the naked eye on a dark, Moonless night, in the absence of man-made light pollution. The 50 or so stars in the tables above are merely some of my personal favorites.

MSS considers the Sun to be a minor, unimportant, main-sequence, G-class, yellow-white dwarf star. In reality, the Sun is immensely larger and far more brilliant than any other star (nearly 200 times brighter and over 30 times larger than Sirius, the next brightest star after the Sun). The distances to the stars are high variable in MSS, ranging from just a few light-years to an essentially infinite distance. In the Tychonian system, on the other hand, each and every star is the same distance from Earth – around 1/6^th of a light-year. The reason for this is that each star is attached to the inside surface of the stellatum, and the stellatum is the great spherical shell of matter which both defines the dimensions of the Solar System/Universe, but also provides it with gravity through the agency of the ether wind. In the limitless space paradigm, the stars are required to be immense, extremely brilliant objects. Otherwise, none of them would be visible at all. As distance from Earth increases, the more extreme the physical properties of the stars must become. MSS astronomers now seriously discuss individual stars that are larger than the entire Solar System and more luminous than the combined optical output of millions of stars like the Sun. Obviously, such a huge object would have a correspondingly large mass, leading quite simply and naturally into the high-gravity objects like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, none of which has ever been unambiguously detected by MSS, but all of which are now considered “settled science”. At some point, thinking people must ask themselves whether or not these fantastical objects have the “ring of truth” about them. The Tychonian system seems much more plausible to me. Consider, for example, the closest star to the Earth: Proxima Centauri. MSS, with a straight face, says that this star has a density nearly 50 times that of water. Think carefully about what that means. The densest substance that we know of is the rare metallic element osmium. Is it reasonable that the next star beyond the Sun, a mere stone’s throw away in MSS astronomical terms, is such an extreme object that no material an Earth can equal or exceed its overall density? Is it reasonable that a great mass of incandescent hydrogen and helium gas, which is all that MSS says that Proxima Centauri is, could be compressed beyond the density of even our densest metal? Is it reasonable that the stuff that fills a child’s balloon could take on a molten form in which mercury would float like oil on water? Of course not. MSS has ranged far afield, and the time has now come to reign in the fantasy.

I initially thought that the stars might actually be physical objects attached by God to the stellatum in some away. It finally dawned on me that the stars are not physical objects at all. The stellatum is simply an immense digital video display screen with an essentially infinite number of pixels on its interior surface. Each pixel is something like one of our LEDs, although God’s LEDs are quite remarkable in that they can produce as few or as many frequencies of light as God wills, at whatever brightness level He desires. Remember, we are dealing here with engineering on a scale that our finite human minds cannot fathom. The stars are simply great, two-dimensional splotches of colored light created by God to light our nights. It pleases Him to make the light of the stars closely resemble that of the Sun, which is the one and only true star in the entire Universe. Why does God operate in this way? We can only speculate, and answer the question with more questions. Why does one model railroader make a winter scene, while another has or his or her toy trains running through perpetual autumn? It is simply pleasing for the hobbyist to do so. So it is with God.

So, when look at the night sky full of stars, we are simply staring into God’s LED array. Astronomers split the incoming starlight into its individual frequencies with their prisms, gratings, spectroscopes, and spectrometers, and then “force fit” the results into the accepted scientific theories of the day. None of it makes any sense, because our whole premise is all wrong. We assume that what is going on “out there” follows the laws of nature that operate “down here”. In reality, only “down here” is real. “Out there” (anything on the inner surface of the stellatum, some 10,000 AU from Earth) is simply a cosmic light show created by God so that the night isn’t too dark and to help us keep track of time. That’s it, folks. Everything else – the big bang theory, stellar evolution, modern astronomy – is just a bunch of overeducated stories that we spin to avoid confronting the One True God.

When I say that the star Sirius is 25,000 miles across, what I mean is that what we are actually seeing is a vast number of energized pixels on the inner surface of the stellatum, with an overall diameter of roughly 25,000 miles. We are seeing this two-dimensional circular patch of light from a distance of 10,000 AU (930,000,000,000 miles). The combined luminosity from all of the pixels that make up this circle of light is the tiny spark of light in the night sky that we call Sirius. MSS astronomers study the many optical frequencies that come to us from Sirius, and they create what they believe to be a plausible story regarding this object (spherical star, hotter than the Sun, larger than the Sun, brighter than the Sun, more massive than the Sun, etc.). The reality is that Sirius is just a patch of light on the inside surface of the great dark shell that divides our Universe from the Heaven that lies beyond it. There is no physical object at the location of Sirius – just a perfectly flat light-emitting region. Why does God deceive us with stars that aren’t really there? Well, actually, He’s not deceiving us at all. He said that He put the stars in the sky in Genesis 1:14-18, and that is exactly what we see:

Joshua 24:15 King James Version (KJV)

And God said, Let there be lights in the Firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the Firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.

And God set them in the Firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth,

And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

It is we who have decided that the Sun will be the prototype for every star in the night sky. We’ve never stopped to consider that the Bible might be true, and that the stars are just lights in the sky created by God for our benefit.

When we see a star, we merely assume that we’re seeing a spherical, opaque, self-luminous, far-flung physical object of gigantic proportions. Any other possibilities are not even considered. Stellar aberration is said to be the result of the Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun at 1/10,000^th of the speed of light, rather than the result of the Sun’s daily orbital motion around the Earth at 1/10,000^th of the distance to the stars. Incredibly tiny parallax measurements of much, much less than a single second of arc are used to justify the MSS light-year distances to the stars, rather than relegating parallax to the experimental error dust bin and using the easily measurable aberration of the stars to measure their distances. The Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment is invoked to “prove” the rotation of the Earth, rather than realizing that this same experiment should have been able to detect the Earth’s orbital motion, as well, but didn’t. The Michelson-Morley experiment should have been able to detect the Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun (it wasn’t sensitive enough to detect the much slower axial rotational motion), but obtained a null result, proving that the Earth does not orbit the Sun. Rather than consider this possibility, Relativity theory is trundled out to say that the Earth’s orbital motion is masked by “length contraction” and “time dilation”, but no such difficulty occurred during the M-G-P experiment, which also involved circular planetary motion. You can see where this is going – only the limitless space paradigm will be supported by MSS.

Even the temperatures of the stars are questionable. It’s very likely that the stellar surface temperatures that MSS astronomers measure are electronically, rather than thermally, generated. In other words, God is causing certain stellatum pixels to emit light in some way, probably by forcing electric current through them, much like we do with our own LEDs. We merely assume that the light of the stars is thermally generated, like that of the Sun, and this assumption leads us “down the rabbit hole” of modern MSS astronomy with its limitless space paradigm. The truth is that each pixel emits as few or as many light frequencies as God wills. In most cases, the complete spectrum of a star resembles that of the Sun. Again, we assume that similar spectra mean similar objects, and spin scientific stories in support of this assumption. However, even humans can now build tunable light sources able to produce any wavelength of light the experimenter desires. It is no longer necessary, for example, to stimulate sodium vapor into brilliant yellow-orange luminescence by using the light of another sodium-vapor lamp. We can now use a tunable laser to accomplish the same thing. It is no longer true that scientific detection of the spectral lines of sodium means that sodium vapor must therefore be present. You might just be staring down the barrel of a high-tech tunable light source. So it is with the night sky. Appearances can be deceiving, and extrapolating “down here” to “out there” is fraught with danger, at least in the sense of painting a true picture of what is really going on.

Speaking of stellar surface temperatures, it would be instructive at this point to discuss the stellar classification scheme used by MSS.  Most stars fall into 1 of 7 broad classes: O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. MSS astronomy students remember the sequence by utilizing the famous mnemonic, “Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me!” These letters stem from the history of MSS astronomy. Stars were initially classified into many groups based on how dark the absorption lines of hydrogen were in their spectra. Stars with the darkest and most prominent hydrogen spectral lines were placed into class A, stars with somewhat less dark and less prominent hydrogen lines were placed into class B, and so on. Eventually, it was decided that stellar surface temperature is the best way to organize the stars, starting with the hottest and extending down to the coolest. This emphasis on temperature caused a rearrangement of the alphabet, along with the loss of most of the letters. In today’s astronomy, the hottest stars are of class O, while the coolest are of class M. This coincides perfectly with the 7 colors of the rainbow: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red (there’s that number 7 again; more cosmic whistleblowing by the Creator, in which He is “outing” Himself to see if anyone notices how odd all of the numerical “coincidences” are). All stars emit white light, but with a certain colored tint thrown in based on surface temperature. So, the hottest stars emit violet-white light, while the coolest emit red-white light. A short table will reveal how all of this works:

Surface temperatures are in degrees Kelvin. Of course, the stars emit whatever light God wills. MSS astronomers “force fit” that wavelength spread into the Stefan-Boltzmann equation to get a surface temperature. There really is no proof that the stars are hot; MSS astronomers merely assume that the stars resemble the Sun physically because of spectral similarities, and apply the Stefan-Boltzmann law accordingly. The truth is, in all probability, quite different. Starlight could be generated by God through a decidedly non-thermal mechanism. Given a sufficiently advanced stellatum technology, we here on Earth could never tell the difference. Dark spectral lines that cross stellar spectra vertically are universally regarded by MSS astronomers as evidence for the presence of the chemical elements associated with those lines in terrestrial laboratories. However, God could easily cause His pixels not to emit certain wavelengths, thus creating the illusion of dark elemental absorption lines. Again, we here on Earth could never tell the difference. In fact, many stellar and galactic phenomena could be caused by God simply “ramping up” the current delivered to some of His pixels, while “ramping it down” in others. A distant supernova explosion, for example, could just be a brightening of certain pixels by God for reasons known only to God. Rather than consider the possibility that God is simply playing with His planetarium, or providing a sign for His followers, we paint an alternative, Godless picture of stellar evolution and cataclysmic star death, complete with fantastical (and invisible!) objects like neutron stars and black holes.

The table above featuring my favorite stars shows that the stars range in size from about that of the planet Jupiter down to the size of small asteroids only a few miles across. The stars are not colossal objects that could swallow much of the Solar System whole if they were to swap places with the Sun. This MSS view of the stars stems from slavish adherence to the limitless space paradigm in concert with Newtonian gravity. Limitless space requires limitless size and luminosity if the stars are going to be visible at all. Limitless size goes hand in hand with limitless mass. With limitless mass comes limitless density, and with that you get white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. However, if the stars are merely luminous patches on the inner surface of the stellatum, then astrophysics doesn’t apply, and the stars need not follow the scientific rules that we have mapped out for them. They are simply lights on the dome of the sky.

What about galaxies, star clusters, and great clouds of gas and dust (nebulae)? These, too, are just innumerable illuminated pixels on the inner surface of the stellatum, electronically-created patterns of light, darkness, and color, created by God to please Himself, to please us, to light the night, and to help us know what time it is. The light of the galaxies tends to redden as their angular widths decrease in size, and any apparently elemental spectral lines in their dim spectra tend to shift to the red end of the rainbow, as well. This is the so-called redshift, and MSS takes it to mean nothing less than the expansion of the Universe. However, redshifted spectral lines are easily created if you have total control of each pixel of the entire celestial dome, the way God does. Why does God like to redshift the light of galaxies? Who knows? Why do some people like science fiction, while others like opera? Some questions don’t have answers. Some things just are. We can only note them, accept them, and move on with life. You no doubt have particular likes and dislikes which are peculiar to you and to you alone. Why not God?

Sometimes, astronomers can see activity in what they would call interstellar or intergalactic space. For example, some nebulae are observed to increase in size over time, some stars flash off and on like lighthouses, some stars seem to explode, some stars seem to orbit other stars, some stars seem to pass in front of, and behind, other stars, and some galaxies seem to rotate. All of these phenomena are easily produced by God by changing the brightness, wavelength, and number of energized pixels. We do the rest with our so-called science, our limitless space paradigm, and our refusal to accept the existence of God.

On the other hand, much in space is static and unchanging. Some binary stars never change their positions relative to one another, and some stars have such constant luminosity that they are used as standards for measuring the brightness of still other stars. Here, too, the infinitude of God’s pixels and the rock-steady electric currents that He delivers to them can explain all that we see. Why does God allow changes in some spatial bodies, but not in others? Again, how can we answer such a question? Who can know the mind of God? We can know one thing, though. If Newton’s gravity reigns supreme throughout the Cosmos, and our ability to measure tiny angles is now godlike (the LIGO gravity wave observatories claim to be able to measure a shift in position smaller than 1/10,000^th of the width of a subatomic particle!), and the masses of the stars dwarf those of the Sun and planets, and we can now see the disks of the distant stars and their own planets, then such a static and stationary Universe should not be possible – we would immediately be able to detect the tiniest of changes within it. Either our scientific prowess has been much exaggerated, and the Universe is much different than we have been led to believe, or our scientists are gods among men, and their picture of a Godless Universe is all that there truly is. It’s one or the other. You can’t have it both ways, as we will now see in the next chapter.