Is the Bible's Firmament the same as the Van Allen Belts, and are all satellites below the Belts?

Question

Referring to man and unmanned satellites, not probes in to deep space,....are all orbiting satellites below the Van Allen Belts? If not, are there any manned orbiting satellites beyond (the other side of) the Van Allen Belts?

Answer 1

The firmament in the Bible times was a layer of water surrounding the earth, protecting it from the sun's rays. It fell during the flood, which, of course is where all the flood waters came from.
The satellites are at different orbits, some close to the atmosphere, some further away.

Answer 2

A satellite in High Earth Orbit is about 36,000 km out. That is well outside the Inner Van Allen Belt but still inside the Outer Van Allen Belt which occupys an altitude between 10,000 and 65,000 km. The inner Van Allen Belt is at an Altitude between 1,200 and 10,000 km

The international space station is in LEO (low earth orbit) and is an area of space between 200 and 1200 km and within the Van Allen belt. Any higher and the astronauts would be affected by the radiation and could suffer serious health side effects. The astronauts that went to the moon purposely piloted their craft through a weaker area of the Van Allen Belt to minimize their exposure to the radiation.

The firmament refers to the eighth sphere of the universe which is outside the spheres of the seven planets (Moon, sun, venus, mercury, mars, jupiter and saturn) and carries all the fixed stars. On the other side is heaven. So, I would have to say that the idea of a Firmament is not a reference to the Van Allen Belt as it surrounds all the known planets at the time, not just the Earth

Answer 3

Actually, the Van Allen belts were discovered by Dr. Van Allen, who was a researcher in Iowa in the late 1950s, who was the principle investigator of the science experiment on the Explorer I ... satellites.

These satellites were fairly low earth orbiters, and the Van Allen belts in general range in altitude from a couple hundred miles to a couple thousand.

Generally manned satellites (Space Shuttle, International Space Station, MIR, SOYUZ, etc.) are below the Van Allen belts. The unmanned satellites with which the earth is ringed these days vary from below to far above the Van Allen belts, and just use radiation hardened electronics that can survive in that environment.

Communication satellites are often in Geosynchronous orbit, and well above the Van Allen belts.

Men have been back and forth across the Van Allen belts quite a few times, when they went to the Moon and came back.

Answer 4

If you take the bible literally then the firmament could be some sort of star gate technology, we really have no clue about.
If you believe NASA then it would seem that the firmament is the van Allen belt. So the argument
between the flatheads and the ball heads would be imagination to the extreme.

Zeon W

Answer 5

"Firmament" is just a fancy- schmancy work for sky. Why air would be considered firm is beyond me... I guess it's because while it's easy to push air around the sky you see in the background itself couldn't be easily pushed away. As for the Van Allen belts, I don't know if there's any orbiting above it but most satellites would be about 23,600 miles above the Earth so they can stay above the same point at all times... that's well within the outer Van Allen belt.

Answer 6

There's nothing fancy/schmancy about it; it is part of the history of human thought, and worth understanding.

"Firmamentum" is a Latin word that means "a thin sheet of metal," and it stands for the Greek word "stereotom," meaning "solid structure." And my Hebrew lexicon is out in the other building and I don't have time to go get it, but you can look it up in any good scholarly exposition on Genesis.

In any case, the concept of the Firmament is an archaic notion that came from old Hebrew mythology. You have to remember that the ancient Hebrew-speaking people were a small sub-population in the ancient world, and were not considered important by anyone in those days but themselves.

They avoided learning or teaching the sciences that were known in the majority of the ancient world, for the same reason some school board members in the 21st century would like to prevent the teaching of correct biological science: they fear that their God cannot take care of himself, and will be demeaned.

Silly, if you think about it, but they don't.

The original "firmament" was the mythic notion of a dome that rested on a circle of mountains running around the perimeter of the inhabitable world, called the "pillars of heaven." You have to remember that the ancient people who believed these ideas lived their whole lives (with a few exceptions) within about 5-8 miles of the place where they were born. They had no idea what was beyond the limits of their own town and fields, and they really didn't want to know.

So they were comfortable with these simple ideas. The firmament was a thin sheet of magical metal. God divided the waters into the waters of the earth and the waters "above the firmament." When God wanted to, he could open little holes in the firmament, and it would rain. No adiabatic curves, no variations in atmospheric pressure, none of that complex, atheistic stuff.

And that kind of myth has been amazingly persistent. But it is finally dying in our time. And it has nothing to do with the Van Allen Belts or any other actual object or phenomenon. But it makes for lots of interesting reading. Go thou and do likewise...

Answer 7

The writers of the Bible were ignorant men who had no idea what science was. They used language that was acceptable in their day to describe the world as they knew it. They thought the world was flat, that the sun moved around the earth, and that things like world wide floods were possible.

So they wrote those silly ideas in the Bible thinking they were true.

Those people who try to use the Bible as if it were scientifically accurate are perpetuating that ignorance. It is not reasonable to try to find science in the Bible because it is not there. The Bible is filled with completely wrong ideas about our world that we now know are false. Those people who think the Bible is without errors are just living in a dream. I might add that the same is true of ALL religious scriptures. The Koran is also filled with errors.

The dictionary gives as the definition of "firmament": the vault or arch of the sky : HEAVENS. This definition has NOTHING to do with our modern description of the exosphere or universe. The Van Allen belts are fairly recent (1960s) discovery and were not known before the 1960s. By the way Dr. Van Allen, whom the belts are named after, just died last week.

Answer 8

The van allen belt is fake. The firmament is real. Space is fake. The flat earth is real. Do your research.

Answer 9

The firmament in Genesis 1: 6 is the Earth's atmosphere, our sky.

Answer 10

Firmament Bible