Hello marietta and bgruagach:
A few points if I may. First let's differentiate between "arc" and "ark".
"Ark" in its simplest and most prevalent usage in the OT only means "box". Admittedly, the ark of the covenant was a very special box. It contained some very sacred items if Genesis is to be believed. If I am not mistaken it contained fragments of the tablets of the law received by Moses from G-d and then were broken into pieces when Moses hurled them to the ground when he came upon scenes of transgressions by his people. The ark was also supposed to have contained a perpetually flowering almond branch, and an omer of manna...the whitish substance that descended from heaven overnight and could be made into flatbread and eaten for sustenance by the Hebrew tribe when nothing else was available in the wilderness.
The ark may have also been some sort of a primitive quantum computing and communications device, but apparently only had receiving capabilities. The rituals performed annually by the King of the Hebrews and the high priest point to this because of the light rituals they performed with it. Once a year they were allowed to ask questions of the ark which represented G-d's virtual presence, and then received answers in the form of light emanations from the ark which spelled out G-d's answers when interpreted with the ephod, the urim, and the thummim. Actually the form and construction of the ark, a specifically designed acacia wood box covered with gold sheeting and gold ornamentation, is a reasonable description of how one would build a sizeable capacitor, which is a device which receives and stores energy and can be manipulated to discharge the energies when necessary and appropriate.
The poles were to keep the carriers and users of the ark from accidently coming into contact with the gold conductive surfaces of the box. If the ark received a charging of energies over time, great caution would have to be taken so as to not ground the device and inappropriately discharge the energies. An analogy would be to grab a live wire while standing barefooted in a puddle. This would mean instant death if the accumulated voltage and amperage levels were sufficient. Such lethal energies can be transmitted and received through the air as Nicola Tesla demonstrated in many experiments during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Energy transmissions through earth materials is also well known and has been utilized in a large part in our cell phone systems the past twenty years or so.
An "arc" could be defined as an open-ended curve, usually a parabola or a hyperbola. A spheroid circular segment would not qualify here because mathematically, it defines a closed system. Calculations of travel through space often employs calculations of trajectories which encompass the descriptions of parabolic or hyperbolic arcs. Theoretically these sorts of curves have no beginning or no end, but yet may be used to define the travel of energies or objects through time and space. The gateway arch in St. Louis would be a good example.
flow....
