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+Sep 1.
+
+    Today we read the story of the creation of the solar system
+
+    At the beginning of the big bang,
+    everything that can be seen --
+    everything that makes up the earth,
+    or the sun, or the clouds,
+    or the stars in the sky
+    -- was compressed
+    -- made to fit --
+    into a space much smaller
+    than the space taken now
+    by a human hand;
+    or even a finger;
+    or the smallest shaving
+    of a fingernail.
+
+14 billion years ago,
+January 1 on the Cosmic Calendar,
+At the stroke of midnight
+At the beginning of the new year--
+
+    Everything within that small space was identical everywhere.
+    There was nowhere any difference between light and dark,
+    or between full and empty;
+    but everything was full;
+    and it was as if all was dark,
+    because there was nowhere clear enough
+    for light to shine through.
+
+    And then the space expanded;
+    and there became the difference
+    between the full and the empty.
+    This was the Big Bang.
+
+15 minutes later on the Cosmic Calendar,
+or 370 thousand years after the big bang:
+
+    After the Big Bang began, space kept on expanding, getting bigger
+    and bigger, so that there was more and more emptiness to surround
+    all the things that would become the stars and the sun and the
+    earth.
+
+    It took fifteen minutes
+    on the Cosmic Calendar,
+    or 370 thousand years,
+    before there was enough emptiness
+    for light to shine
+    through the universe.
+
+    Then there was light,
+    and the emptiness expanded more and more,
+    and the empty spaces became like air bubbles
+    in a watery foam, surrounded by thin layers
+    of the things that would become the galaxies
+    and the stars and the sun and the earth.
+
+    As time went on
+    and the empty voids grew bigger and bigger,
+    the full parts between them grew smaller and smaller,
+    so that all the things that would become galaxies
+    came together toward each other, collecting themselves
+    into great flocks called filaments.
+
+    [The filament Pisces–Cetus is home to our Milky Way.]
+
+
+
+    [todo look up size of universe at various times]
+
+
+    But those things were not stars until they learned
+    the very first way of making a copy
+    which is called
+    the "chain reaction"
+
+
+    The thin layers of foam
+    surrounding bubbles of empty void
+    are called galactic filaments,
+    and there is one such layer,
+    called Pisces–Cetus, 
+
+                                      [Photograph: Cosmic
+                                      Microwave Background]
+
+                                      [As it is possible,
+                                      using a telescope, to
+                                      see backward in time; it
+                                      is possible today, using
+                                      the right telescope,
+                                      to see this very same
+                                      light: the very first
+                                      light that was able to
+                                      reach through empty
+                                      space.]
+
+
+
+
+
+there was
+no space that was empty,
+but everything was full,
+and there was no space
+for light to travel.
+
+
+
+The space taken up by the earth
+is itself larger
+than the human mind of an adult
+by nature comprehends;
+
+Yet the size of earth is nothing
+compared to the size of even a small star
+(which is all that the sun is:
+a small star,
+closer to us
+than any other star)
+
+and the stars themselves nothing in size
+compared to the galaxies
+(the skyfuls of stars
+such as we see in our Earth sky
+as we look out on the galaxy
+we call the Milky Way)
+
+
+(which are the stars of our galaxy, the milky way, and our local galactic filament, )
+
+on the earth and all the stars in the sky was compressed into a space smaller than a human
+hand.  The galaxy was compressed into a space smaller than a finger.
+All of the earth was compressed into a space smaller than a shaving of
+a fingernail.  All of that which would become the stars and the sun and
+the earth was then able to fit into a sphere with the width of a single
+hair.  And everything within that small space was identical everywhere;
+nothing was different anywhere.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Our year begins at the time of midnight and the date of January 1.
+On the Cosmic Calendar we count the universe along with the year.
+At the beginning of the year, we count the beginning
+of everything we know
+from before us,
+which is called the Big Bang.
+
+At the end of the year,
+we count our time right now,
+which is called the present.
+
+All along, in between, we count the days between.
+
+In a calendar year, we count 365 days.
+In a calendar year, each day has 24 hours.
+In a Cosmic Calendar year, we count 365 days.
+In a Cosmic Calendar year, each day has 38 million years.