Thursday, October 1, 2026

Introduction To This Blog System

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Image used by permission

Posting is usually done once a week, on Thursday.

Postings may be later combined into a compound posting on this blog. Many of the postings concern my observations in various branches of science, but there are also many on technology, religion, economics and, general world issues.

I would really like to thank everyone who reads any of these blogs for your interest.
 
SCIENCE WRITING
 
Most of the postings on this blog are visits to various places around the world, and articles about such topics as history and religion. But much of the writing is about science. I do not write about what is already known but only if I can write something new, or at least a new way of looking at things.
 
If you would like a quick background in the science and mathematics that everyone should really know in the 21st Century, the posting "Scientific Literacy" provides this in about a hundred paragraphs. Similarly, "The Way Things Work" provides a quick background in everyday technology.
 
I am a Christian and I want to show that belief in God is not unscientific at all. I was interested in science long before I was interested in religion, and have never had any trouble believing that God created everything.
 
There are six major scientific theories, each arranged in the form of a textbook. The first five of the following six are on this blog.
 
"The Theory Of Stationary Space" is my cosmological theory of how so much revolves around time being explained by us being in four-dimensional space, with the dimension that we cannot access being perceived as time. This is my version of string theory, with matter actually being strings in four dimensions rather than particles in three dimensions. Everything is ultimately based on negative and positive electric charges, with energy being able to overcome the laws of attraction and repulsion of electric charges. No one has ever explained exactly what time is, and a myriad of explanations of other things fall right into place around it.
 
"The Flow Of Information Through The Universe" is about how so much can be explained by seeing how there is a limited amount of information, and it must be the same information that constructs the highest levels as the lowest levels. A ready example is how the orbits of planets around the sun is based on the orbitals of electrons around the nucleus, in the atoms of which the sun and planets are composed. This concept is extremely useful because, understanding this, we can study things that we cannot directly see by analyzing things that we can see because all must be built on the same information.
 
"The Theory Of Complexity" is about what information actually is, how energy and information is really the same thing, and how we see the universe as we do because of our perspective of being at a higher level of information than our inanimate surroundings.
 
"The Lowest Information Point" is about how, since information and energy is really the same thing and the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, it also always seeks the "Lowest Information Point". So much is explained by how the universe prefers equalities to inequalities and related ratios where the numerator of one ratio is also the denominator of the other. This explains so much from why dust particles are as big as they to why the planets and stars are the scale that they are.

"The Theory Of Infinite Dimensions" is the most recent scientific theory. It is the second cosmological theory, after"The Theory Of Stationary Space". We see the universe as an infinity of distance in three spatial dimensions and light as always moving in straight lines. But this is another example of how we see the universe as we do not only because of what it is but also because of what we are. It is more logical that the universe has an infinite number of dimensions. We can see in all of the dimensions because light actually can turn corners but it requires energy. We can only see it as three dimensions because of our limited dimensional order. Light consists of two-dimensional waves and we perceive space as being three-dimensional. This means that we can see light as coming from different directions but can only perceive it as moving in a straight line.
 
"The Story Of Planet Earth", on the geology blog, is about how virtually every major feature of the earth's surface, both on land and seafloor, can be explained by lines of magma emergence from below that were affected by the landing of three Continental Asteroids. Many people believe that land originated from a past "super-continent", but there is no explanation of where it came from.
 
There are a few of what we could call "minor" theories, where there is not as much written as with the major theories. On this blog, there is "How Biology And Human Life Fits Into Cosmology". On the meteorology and biology blog, there is my theory of the nature of water, "Water Made Really Simple".
 
There are compound postings about science which are groupings of writing about a certain topic.
 
Scientific compound postings include, "Computer Science", "Atomic Science", "Measurement", "A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law", "Our Solar System", "Mind-Bending Cosmology", "The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple", "In Appreciation Of Electrons", "The Science Of Human Society " and "Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts from Space".
 
Compound postings about history and the world include "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", "Niagara Stories", "Economics", "How History Repeats Itself", "The Meaning Of Freedom", "The Western Hemisphere", "Our Language" and, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris".
 
There are two compound postings about prophecies and the Bible. There is "The Aztec Prophecy" than, for prophecies that are directly made in the Bible there is "New Insight Into Bible Prophecy".
 
"Investigations" is the compound posting that is a collection of any posting about an investigation.
 
The rest of the postings are individual postings. For more detailed information about this blog, see the posting "Thanks To Readers". For general topics of conversation, see "Thoughts And Observations", on the world and economics blog.  

Other Blogs And Books

                                                                                                                                                                       

Lights at night 

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.

On this blog, you can see a list of all postings by clicking on the year or month to the right. But on the topical blogs, that is not the case. If you click on a year or month on those blogs, it will display the postings themselves, but the list on the right will still only show those postings that were added most recently.

To access a list of all postings on those blogs, it is necessary to click on the arrow in front of the year or month in question.

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ is my geology and global natural history blog for topics other than glaciers. My natural history blogs concerning the impact of glaciers is http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

 http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

 http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.

http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

On my photo blogs, Blogspot will not hold all of the photos in each blog in a straight line. To see all of the photos, you must click on the bottom posting listed on the right at the top of the blog after seeing all that there are in the initial showing. The last posting in the North America blog should be "Tijuana, Mexico" and the last posting in the Europe blog should be "Notre Dame Cathedral Door And Arc De Triomphe, Paris". Each photo in the photo blogs can be clicked on to enlarge it to full screen.

My autobiography is http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek".   

Chennai

Most of our visits to India on this blog have been to the northern part of the country. But there is so much going on in the southern part of India. Today let's have a look at Chennai, formerly known as Madras, on India's southeastern coast.

Hindi is a northern Indian language and southerners speak different languages. Chennai is known today as an industrial center and for producing so many cars. It is one of Asia's most important financial centers.

Health care has gotten so expensive in places like the U.S. that many patients can be flown all the way to India, have the medical procedure done, and then flown back home for less money than it would have cost to have the procedure done at home. This is known as medical tourism and so many of the patients go to Chennai.

Chennai, unlike so many other cities in India, does not go back to ancient times as a major city. One of Jesus' apostles, Thomas, went to India after the Crucifixion and spread the Gospel there. He landed on India's west coast but journeyed across southern India before being martyred at what is now Chennai.

Thomas was the apostle who expressed doubt that Jesus had really been resurrected. This earned him the nickname of "Doubting Thomas".

More than 1500 years later, during the Age of Discovery, Portuguese explorers intended to spread Christianity in India. They were greatly surprised to find that there were already Christians there.

The original Christians of India, sometimes referred to as "Thomas Christians", were part of what is sometimes called the Church of the East. The Church of the East is often referred to as Nestorians or Jacobites.

We have seen the Nestorians already, in the compound posting on this blog "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began".

What differentiates the Church of the East is Christology. Jesus had both a human and a divine nature and Christology refers to how those two natures relate to each other. There are three fundamental positions on Christology.

1) The divine and human natures are completely separate.

2) Jesus's divine and human natures were two natures in one.

3) The human nature was completely absorbed by the divine nature.

This might sound like hair-splitting to some people but it was considered as very important in the early days of Christianity. The reason we do not often hear of Christology today is that the vast majority of Christians, Catholics, Protestants and, Eastern Orthodox, are of the second position, called Chalcedonian because it was agreed on at the Council of Chalcedon.

Some Christians today are of the third position, known as Miaphysite, and including the Egyptian Coptic Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

The original Christians of India were of the first position, known as Nestorians, Jacobites or, the Church of the East.

There was a legend in medieval Europe, called "The Legend of Prester John". It was about a great kingdom of Christians, somewhere out there in the east. These was indeed these Christians in southern India, although I can't see that they ever had a kingdom.

The Portuguese explorers tried to pressure the Christians in India to become Catholics. Some formed one of the Eastern Catholic Churches.

This is not the same thing as the Church of the East. There are actually more than twenty Catholic Churches, in communion with the pope. The vast majority of Catholics belong to only one of those churches, the Latin Church. The others are called the Eastern Catholic Churches, and do not use the same rites as the Latin Church.

Some of the original Christians in India continued as Nestorians. Some later became Protestants.

In the Sixteenth Century the Portuguese built a church over the tomb of St. Thomas.

ALL IMAGES ARE FROM GOOGLE STREET VIEW 






This shrine is on St. Thomas Mount, where he was martyred. There is also a statue of Mother Teresa there.






There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide previews of successive scenes, if you so wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@13.0313177,80.2772713,3a,75y,142.02h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMjRUubkfa9IWkjM7kTbpi3LA3hdMNXFibmhEzL!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMjRUubkfa9IWkjM7kTbpi3LA3hdMNXFibmhEzL%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0.7298001-ya52.753628-ro-1.4551557-fo100!7i5376!8i2688

Fort St. George is now occupied by government buildings.
















Each Indian city has it's own colors for these three-wheeled taxis. Having one wheel in the front enables the taxi to make a sharp turn on narrow streets or easily turn around.



There don't seem to be many dogs in India but here is one.








https://www.google.com/maps/@13.0849016,80.204761,3a,75y,110t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipObrJh4tTWVy-1VwMVLX49LrT54VZ69Vc6iBnE!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipObrJh4tTWVy-1VwMVLX49LrT54VZ69Vc6iBnE%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya32.55-ro-0-fo100!7i6000!8i3000

This is north of the city.

https://www.google.com/maps/@13.0892344,80.1781261,3a,75y,320h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOMi41Ur0Awwntw3sttQerUwP4XFQWnc1QMRo42!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOMi41Ur0Awwntw3sttQerUwP4XFQWnc1QMRo42%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya322.86685-ro-0-fo100!7i13312!8i6656

Proceeding south from Chennai we arrive in this area.

https://www.google.com/maps/@12.973835,80.2510922,3a,75y,240h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipP7BWqYN57QIJl8PxVE9Cjp0cDPw01ylm05j6ym!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP7BWqYN57QIJl8PxVE9Cjp0cDPw01ylm05j6ym%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya234.12766-ro0-fo100!7i13000!8i6500

This is a residential area to the south of the city.

https://www.google.com/maps/@12.9712505,80.2090302,3a,75y,100h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOWBpWcuJz5hy5srNiPne0E_3DeYmsv5wAu6ADK!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOWBpWcuJz5hy5srNiPne0E_3DeYmsv5wAu6ADK%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya265-ro0-fo100!7i9728!8i4864

Here is another residential area to the south of Chennai.

https://www.google.com/maps/@12.9589656,80.1417936,3a,75y,80h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipN46CZXDiJQNkS0AOjcVbkBVQCyed63eA7MaRyP!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipN46CZXDiJQNkS0AOjcVbkBVQCyed63eA7MaRyP%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya238.49655-ro-0-fo100!7i13312!8i6656

Indian cities have colorful or palatial train stations.





India's space program is run from Bengaluru (Bangalore). But the launch site is on the coast north of Chennai.

Like America's Cape Canaveral, the reason for putting a space launch site on an east coast is that the earth rotates eastward. The spacecraft picks up some of the earth's eastward momentum and this means that, if something should go wrong or stages have to be dropped, they would fall into the sea rather than onto a populated area.

India's space program has several notable accomplishments.

In 2008 Chandrayaan 1 was launched to the moon to take measurements from lunar orbit. An impact probe would separate from the spacecraft and strike the near the moon's south pole. That part of the mission was successful but communication with the spacecraft was lost in 2009. In 2016, NASA located the spacecraft, still in orbit around the moon.

Mangalyaan, to go into orbit around Mars, was launched in 2013. Missions to Mars have a high casualty rate but the mission was a success. India remains the only nation to have a successful Mars mission on it's first attempt. Unfortunately the spacecraft recently ran out of fuel and contact with it was lost, but it far exceeded expectations.

The name of "Chandrayaan" means "moon craft" and "Mangalyaan" means "Mars craft".

Chandrayaan 2 was launched to the moon in 2019. It was going to land a rover near the moon's south pole, but it crashed and was destroyed. As every spacefaring nation has learned, occasional heartbreak is part of the game.

India has put quite a bit of effort into the area around the moon's south pole and I think it would be appropriate to name the area "New India".







The Chola Empire And Space Exploration

India's space program, with spacecraft launched from Chennai, has been so successful that I wondered if there might be something behind it. We know that history is a powerful force. We tend to repeat history, sometimes intentionally but often without realizing it. 

The Chola Empire, from the Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries, was one of India's golden ages. It only ruled south India but it was a maritime empire. It conquered nearby Sri Lanka and then much of southeast Asia. 

The Cholas brought Hinduism with them and this is the reason for so many Hindu temples across southeast Asia, even if they were later converted to Buddhism. One of these temples is Angkor Wat, which is today the largest temple complex in the world and is on the Cambodian flag. The Khmer accepted Hinduism and the Sanskrit language. Image from the Wikipedia article "Flag of Cambodia".

The Cholas are why the island of Bali, in Indonesia, is still predominantly Hindu. Indonesia is actually named for India. The name of Singapore comes from the Sanskrit term for "City of the Lion".

The city of Chennai, from where India's spacecraft are launched, is in what was Chola territory and near the capital of the territory. Bengaluru , from where the space program is run, is also in what was Chola territory. I have concluded that the Chola maritime expeditions are being reenacted today as India's space expeditions, first to the moon and then to Mars. The moon represents nearby Sri Lanka and Mars represents distant southeast Asia.

Here is a look at two of the well-known Chola temple sites. There is a third, in the same area, at Gangaikonda Cholapuram.

ALL IMAGES ARE FROM GOOGLE STREET VIEW 

This is the Brihandeesvara Temple.








This is the Airavatesvara Temple.






THE WEST THEORY OF ANGKOR WAT 

The largest religious monument in the world is supposedly Angkor Wat, in Cambodia. It was built as a Hindu temple before later being converted to Buddhism. Unlike other Khmer temples, it is aligned to the west. Stories from Hindu scriptures are carved in stone but, unlike other temples, the story is told counter-clockwise, rather than clockwise, because of it's alignment to the west.

It is unknown why it is aligned to the west but there is a simple possible answer. The Chola Empire didn't build the temple, the Khmer did. But the Cholas brought Hinduism and Sanskrit to the Khmer Empire. The Chola capital region, in Tamil Nadu, is due west of the site of Angkor Wat. Image from Google Earth.