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.