The Eternal Night 29/01/2009 09:44

| | Home
| | Glossary
| | Credits
| | Contact Us

The Eternal Night

| Posted on 5th of July, 2007 |

I. The Dawn

Since the dawn of human consciousness, people took it for granted that the day is the name of glory and brightness which
diminishes any trace & trance of night in the surroundings and on the Earth before them. And the night is the name of
phenomenon lacking any trace of the glory of a day. Both were independent of each other for apparent reasons. The night for
some people was the most magnificent window to the Universes of all kinds (physical and mystical) and brought Wisdom of both
kinds, and for some other people, it was time for sleep, lacking any reason to be awake with. This holds true even today. It took
thousands of years for us to know that the day is a day because some temporary, rather, local phenomenon is overlapping the
Universal and eternal night beneath it. It is something like we used to differentiate between the Earth and the sky, but later we
came to know that Earth is already in the sky, and modern research revealed that Earth is not only in the sky, but it is the sky itself.
This recent research is the basis of nuclear physics and astrophysics where the same ‘emptiness’ in the every atom of Earth is the
same found in the whole Universe. Moreover, Earth is basically composed of various elements which can be roughly categorized as
lighter-than-iron and heavier-than-iron elements. The lighter elements are formed in star's interior when it is still 'alive', but heavier
elements are formed in the aftermath when the star cannot burn the most stable element, Iron, and explodes as Supernova. All
elements, light and heavy, scatter in the space and finally are incorporated into new stars and the planets around them. Sun and all
of its planets were made the same way, including Earth. Day by day, we are unifying the things, and the time is not far when we
will have unified everything into the One.

II. Nightmare of Time and Space

In the ancient times, we do not find major contributions to the knowledge of what the day and night are made of or composed by;
instead, what we find is how they behave or seem to us. There are many other examples in which people were dealing with the
behavior of the things instead of knowing them what they basically were, for instance, the Space or emptiness in the Universe is
something which was considered ‘nothing’ and was thought to be something didn’t need caring about. In Newton’s theory of
gravity, the light and gravitational waves travel infinitely in no-time. The time we switch off the Sun, the Earth will be plunged into
darkness in the same moment. All emphasis was on the celestial objects contained in the Space which acted as the individual blobs
of light separated by nothingness. In the later developments of theoretical physics, the finite speed of light and how it behaves in
the space were added. Now, the Earth will be plunged into darkness some 8.3 minutes later when the Sun is switched off due to
the finite speed of light. Another issue is the nature of Time, which was again not understood in its ‘personal’ dimension, though,
we were able to develop the wrist watches and large clocks using mechanical components and later electronics to keep the track of
time. Since the century, we came to know that even constant tracking of time is not valid for every location. The cosmic film is
displayed differently at different locations and to different observers. Not everyone is watching the same scene at the same time.

III. Pebbles of the Sand Beach

In the near past, compared to thousands of years in the history, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein
researched scientifically and logically and gave us a nicer and sensible picture which was also supported by observation or logic or
both. As the time elapsed we started to gradually delve into the true knowledge and then the things started to make sense. We
had to change our prejudices and presumptions, and furthermore we had to start studying those things which we never thought
them the things. It is not that we have known everything; rather, as Newton said, our development is like as if we successfully
looked at the pebbles of the sand beach, and didn’t know that there was an unknown ocean in front of us. The phenomena of day
and night belong to the same ocean which we don’t exactly know what it is, though we are always affected by it unconsciously.

file:///Users/ahsan119/Sites/Subspace/xNight.html Page 1 of 4
The Eternal Night 29/01/2009 09:44

IV. Pytheas’s Midnight Sun

In about 3rd century BC, the Greek admiral, Pytheas, wrote a book naming ‘On the Oceans’. He sailed from Mediterranean Sea
towards Shetlands in the north of Scotland where he found the mysterious combination of day and night which was unbelievable for
his contemporaries, especially when the general concept was the Earth-centered Universe. The interval of day and night for
Mediterraners was almost uniform through out the year. Following is the passage from his translated version of the book:

“The barbarians showed us where the Sun keeps watch at night, for around these parts the night is exceedingly short, sometimes
two and sometimes three hours, so that only a short interval passes after the Sun sets before it rises once more.” – Measuring the
Universe, Kitty Ferguson.

If Pytheas would have traveled further northwards, it would have been even hard for himself to believe that there is just one day
and a night in the whole year. In the night of North Pole, many months of Mediterranean days and nights can be accommodated.
This counter intuitive information would have generated immense skepticism against the admiral. Every phase in the development
of human consciousness has rewritten its own definition of ‘counter intuition’.

V. The Cosmic Revelation

Things changed suddenly when at 9:07 AM in April 12, 1961, we entered in the new era of knowledge when Russia sent a first man
in the space; when Yuri Gagarin crossed the blue sky, and he was amazed to see the ‘Eternal Night’ beyond the ‘Temporary Day’
beneath. Along with manned space exploration, this journey initiated the new area of research concerning the realms of Eternal
Night encompassing the Space in every direction. Before the ‘eye witness’, though the human consciousness had already figured
out what the Space is like, the reality was not known to anyone until they experienced it for the very first time.

Along with many worldly matters of wars and economics, we had to figure out the heavenly matters too. Why was it dark there
when the Sun was shinning right overhead? Why was no more something like ‘overhead’ there? For the latter phenomenon, it
turned out to be the realm of our unknown sense between our inner ears which keeps the track of gravitational differences and
informs us about the ups and downs. The inner ear is not dependent on pressure waves of the air to function unlike rest of the ear.
In the Space, this sense doesn’t work properly and follows the ‘inverse squared law’ of gravitational attraction where gravity
decreases dramatically the more you get away from its source. This sense literally is cancelled out in the ‘Orbit’ where the force of
gravity equals the rate of fall around the object, i.e., Earth, causing the weightlessness and thus no difference between the ups and
downs. Have you ever seen the astronauts floating and sleeping upright onboard the International Space Station, the Earth-orbiting
human establishment? On Earth there can be various phenomena to experience weightlessness: An airplane which makes the 45-
degree angle downwards with a specific velocity. For few seconds, the traveler experiences the weightlessness inside the airplane.
Another way is if you board the lift from the top floor of a skyscraper, and suddenly the lift’s cable breaks down. The lift starts
falling. You will feel weightlessness inside the lift (don’t try this experiment at home). For the former question, lets visit the Moon.

VI. The Lunar Day

Then in 1969 a manned-spacecraft landed on the neighboring world for the first time. “Houston! Tranquility base here. The Eagle
has landed”, the commander reported from the Sea of Tranquility, Moon. Its opening hatch was located where the Sun was casting
the spacecraft’s shadow. After six hours, the first man on the Moon was facing an unexpected difficulty descending the ladder
because he could not see the shaded surface of the Moon properly where he was planning to step on. The shadow was not a
normal shadow; it was as dark as if there was a pitch black night in the shadow of his spacecraft. The sky was also the darkest of
all nights he was accustomed to, although, this was noon and the Sun was shinning extra-ordinarily with its splendor because Moon
receives all kinds of radiation from the Sun and the space unlike protective Earth. He descended on the surface by estimation in the
same way the airplanes land in the no-visibility due to foggy weather at night. We have never seen the actual first footstep of the
man on the Moon because it was so invisible in the darkness that its picture could not be taken. The famous footstep in the
historical pictures was the one which was imprinted away from the shadow, after many initial footprints.

Though this minor incidence has been around in the history and was not given great importance in the general public because of
the other emotional aspects of the overall event. In contrast, the scientists were actively interested in these smaller details which
they realized that they indicate far more real nature of the Universe which cannot be understood entirely by guesstimating from the
Earth.

To see the Eternal Night during day, we don't need to travel anywhere. We can see it from Earth. This is just a matter of
perspective provided we don't consciously bind the 'day' with Earth only. The Phases of Moon we see at 'local night' is the neat
observation that there is a day on Moon's visible part and limitless blackness of Eternal Night surrounding it.

VII. Veil of the Atmosphere

Why the Moon's day is different from Earth's day? The answer is atmosphere. Our planet has enough gravity to hold various gases

file:///Users/ahsan119/Sites/Subspace/xNight.html Page 2 of 4
The Eternal Night 29/01/2009 09:44

closer to the surface. There are about seven layers out of which the closest one is the densest of all too. Working like a prism, our
atmosphere has the capability to scatter the Sunlight into different wavelengths (colors) depending upon the locations of Sun and
the observer. Wavelength of blue light from the spectrum interacts with the atoms in the atmosphere more than any other
wavelength and thus scatters the most as well. On the Moon, there is no enough gravity to hold the meaningful atmosphere and
therefore Sunlight is reflected back without scattering following the same angle as you beam the laser light in the mirror and the
light follows the opposite angle of the beam reflected back from the mirror. In the experiment, NASA astronaut flashed the torch on
his foot and saw his foot in the light, but an astronaut standing near him didn't see other's foot in the same way because the
torch's reflected light didn't scatter and reflected straight to the former astronaut. This lack of scattering allows the observer
standing on the Moon to even see the stars and the Eternal Night during the Lunar Day. This means the atmosphere basically
creates the day and the night, both with local configurations, instead of Sun. Lets explore the further dependency of the day upon
the atmosphere, and not upon the Sun directly, contrary to normally what we think in general.

VIII. Examining the Solar System

The further evidence of scatterization of Sunlight due to atmosphere also comes from within our solar system. There seems to be
the relation of many interdependent factors of the presence of atmosphere on the planet or it's moon, not just the gravity. On
Venus, the atmosphere is so thick (ratio 97:1 to Earth) that the surface of the planet is never visible from outside. The distance
where Venus is in orbit from the Sun, water vaporizes away. Because water dissolves the carbon dioxide, lack of it would cause the
carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere, one of the major causes of why Venus’s atmosphere is basically composed of carbon
dioxide. Due to ionization of carbon molecules in the atmosphere, any person standing on Venus even during the night would never
see the complete darkness as normal a characteristic of night and also would not be able to see the stars. Venusians* don't know
there is a Universe outside. During the day, the Sun would appear as a haze of light, though Venus has approximately the same size
and mass as Earth. Due to very high reflectivity of Venus’s atmosphere, nearly all sunlight reflects back, leaving very less to reach
inside, and causing us to see Venus as the 3rd brightest object in the sky. Earth’s early atmosphere might have been like Venus’s.
On Mars, the day is not as bright as Earth's, reason is again the significant lack of atmosphere. Not all planets' atmospheres scatter
the blue light, its just the characteristic of Earth's atmosphere. You may notice the dominant reddish tone on Mars's atmosphere.
Venus and Mars are also called the Evil Twin and the Dead Twin of Earth respectively. Mercury same like Moon has no atmosphere
as well, and also partial tidally locked to Sun, the reason why Mercury's day is 1/3rd of its total year. Phenomena on Mercury
resemble our Moon in many ways if not all. Titan, the moon of Saturn, is the second largest moon in the solar system and
possesses the significant atmosphere but completely of different chemistry. It scatters the orange wavelength most. For all other
planets and moons with no atmospheres, there is no much difference between their days and nights except only one star is
comparatively larger than others.

(*This statement about the Venusians is an example of the thickness of planet's atmosphere and must not mean that there is life on
Venus. Please see Life in the Universe for probability of extraterrestrial life.)

IX. Day-Night Velocities in the Orbit

On the Earth, the night has various characteristic roles in the orbit. Lets examine all while visualizing the Earth in the orbit. Earth's
velocity in the orbit is 'averaged' 107,000 km/h. We know that Earth spins on its axis as well at about 1675 km/h. With both
counter-clockwise motions, the result is that Earth's nightside in the tropics (farthest to Sun) travels faster than the dayside in the
tropics (nearest to Sun) in relation to its orbit. Starting from the sunset, the point on Earth starts acceleration more than average in
relation to the orbit, and gradually gets back to normal at the sunrise, reaching at about 108,675 km/h maximum. During whole
day, the point on Earth goes backward in relation to the path in the orbit and approaches 105,325 km/h minimum. Thus, the points
in the tropics experience the difference of 3,350 km within 24 hours, while the points on the North and South poles experience
almost no variation of this sort, traversing the orbit without any increase or decrease in the overall velocity. This is true for Earth's
core as well.

Imagine a spinning top: Farther the point from the center, faster it will rotate about the center, and larger the circle it will make.
The rotation of the center or axis is extremely small. This is the same reason why the regions at North and South Poles and the
center of the Earth (all on the line of Earth's axis) do not follow the larger circular path or variate according to the net velocity of
orbit and spin. Because Earth's axis is 23.5 degrees titled, the poles are not inline with the terminator (the visible boundary on
Earth between day and night), though they both intersect in the Earth's core. Only twice a year, the Axis and the Terminator
gradually become equal to each other: at Autumnal (September) and the Vernal Equinoxes (March). The more you are away from
the equator either by latitudes or by depth inside the Earth, the smaller your circle would be about the axis and thus closer would
be your velocity to the average orbital speed of 107,000 km/h. These dayside and nightside velocities are so important that if both
velocities are much closer to the average velocity, it results in 'Tidal Locking' where the orbiting object faces the same side to the
host object. In other words, the duration of spin of the object is equal to the duration of the complete orbit. Our Moon is tidally
locked to Earth. Its farside travels very minutely faster than an average velocity and the nearside travels minutely slower than the
average velocity, the exact definition of the 'Tidal Locking', and the reason why we always see the same side of Moon. Observer on
the Moon would always see the Earth, changing its phases with respect to Sun, but fixed at the same part of sky. Decreasing or
increasing these minimum and maximum values can generate various configurations of days and nights throughout the solar
system (or any planetary system in the Universe). Mercury is partially tidal locked to Sun. Standing on Mercury's surface, the Sun

file:///Users/ahsan119/Sites/Subspace/xNight.html Page 3 of 4
The Eternal Night 29/01/2009 09:44

would tend to go back and forth in the sky. The balance of these values is one of the most vital requirements for the life to exist.
Lacking the balance would cause the intense and focused radiation or no radiation at all, both causing the atmosphere to variate or
burn up, not suitable condition for any life on the planet.

X. The Grand Cosmic Event

With the knowledge of the velocities of Earth, its day-night, Sun, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster, and the
theoretical orbit of the whole Universe in relation to the Subspace, the most grand cosmic fact about the nightside of Earth is that
starting from about midnight until the sunrise, the point on Earth faces the 'fresh space' in the direction of orbit. Because each year,
the celestial objects are at different points in the Universe due to its expansion and the Universe itself too, the daily as well as
annual 'New Space' never returns. This is collectively true in the reference frames of both, the Time and Space. On solar scales, this
is the best time to 'see' what’s ahead of Earth in its orbit and also the best time to observe the shooting stars, the debris left by
comets in the orbital plane of Earth, which burns out when interacts with Earth's atmosphere while Earth passes through this
debris. On the cosmic scales, every night there is a chance of entering in the known or unknown debris (cosmic rays) of historic or
living celestial bodies (i.e., stars or galaxies etc), or even in the fresh frontiers of hypothetical 'dark matter', some 96% of the total
mass and energy of the Universe. A fraction of this debris includes the subatomic Neutrino particles, considered as candidate
constituents of the darks. In addition to Sun, the other stars spray this nearly-massless debris in the space.

XI. The Magnetic Field in the Constant Night

Earth is considered as a giant magnet and possesses a nice magnetic field as a consequence of its molten core which generates the
electric current due to the rotation of the Earth, gravity, and other forces. Sun sends a stream of charged particles or solar wind
which is extremely harmful to Earth and Earthlings alike, thanks to this magnetic field, for which it deflects the path of the solar
wind and protects the Earth. On the facing side of Earth towards Sun, this magnetic field is compressed by the solar wind and
reaches about 65,000 km in altitude from the ground. In contrast, this magnetic field becomes elongated towards the opposite side
of Earth and trails away in the space in millions of kilometers. Moon, frequently visits this large trail at least once a month even
without requiring the eclipse. Because this trail always faces opposite to Sun, it is always perpendicular to the orbital plane of Earth
where it is casting the shadow.

The mysterious region which requires serious attention is from about a few kilometers to 65,000 km away in the trail of magnetic
field at night, is the zone of magnetic confinements (or radiation belts) of the 'plasma' particles and cosmic rays those are trapped
there. The plasma is the fourth state of matter in which the gas-like substance is electrically charged at extreme temperatures.
Universe is made of plasma, including our Sun. Because plasma requires high temperatures, it is not found on Earth in abundance.
The plasma is the smokeless fire which doesn’t oxidize as the normal flame requires on Earth. The reason why this zone requires
our serious attention is the fact that humans possess the magnetic field as well, commonly named as ‘Biomagnetic Field’ generated
by electric pulses inside our bodies, especially by the heart and the brain. There may be some procedures by which most of us ‘trap’
the Universe’s invisible energy in our own personal radiation belts without the conscious knowledge, triggering different levels of
understanding by this attainment. This may be the explanation of some phenomenon when suddenly many discoveries and
inventions come into view at the same time from different and unrelated individuals. In fact there are limitless phenomena which
can be accounted for due to this ‘entrapment’. Is that physical phenomenon or metaphysical? This is under research.

In other words, if the shaded part of the Earth is night, then it is clear that configuration of magnetic field remains constant while
Earth slips beneath it as if it enters in the day or night. Earth's shadow always is casted towards the trail of magnetic field and thus
always goes hand in hand. If the trail of magnetic field, which is essentially the characteristic of night, becomes the reference frame
of night then the points on Earth namely the 'Lands of Midnight Sun' are physically in the night doesn't matter an observer is
looking at the Sun at the same time.

XII. The Eternal Night

This elaborates that the local day-night phenomenon only depends upon the motion of a celestial body in the orbit, local
atmosphere, and the magnetic fields and that the day and the apparent night are the local for every location, not the Universal. The
major reference frame for day-night is not the glorification of the day and darkness of night, but it is Magnetic field which
possesses the properties of both, very differently. And what's true in the quantum levels of atom is also true throughout the
Universe, even beyond, is the underlying Eternal Night.

Question: ahsan119@hotmail.com

2007 © SubSpace Research, Manchester, England

file:///Users/ahsan119/Sites/Subspace/xNight.html Page 4 of 4