Friday, November 11, 2005

It's too damned hot here in heaven. I want to go to hell

Hell will freeze over before heaven does—The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7 x 7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all.

The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that.

The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Botzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300ºK), gives H as 798ºK (525ºC).

The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed. However, Revelation 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone [sulphur] means that its temperature must be at or below its boiling point, 444.6ºC.

We have, then, that Heaven, at 525ºC is hotter than Hell at 445ºC.

[From the blog Jesus' General]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi! Found your site via a link from elsewhere (too lazy to dig it up again) and was delighted at your computation. Perhaps I'll be sticking around a bit...

Also, as an aside, I adore the poem from which you have drawn your tag line.

Cheers,
Simon

Joel Shurkin said...

Thank you. You are very welcome.

J