Wow. Just Wow!

Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton (University of Washington, USA), B. F. Williams (University of Washington, USA), L. C. Johnson (University of Washington, USA), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler.

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“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1)

I saw this in Relevant this am. I was reminded of this picture when it was made public in January.

Isn’t it amazing that we are on one little blue marble in the vastness of the universe? It really leaves one speechless except for one little phrase: “Wow. Just Wow!.”

It was captured by NASA and the Hubble Telescope, and it shows the Andromeda galaxy. Actually, it’s not just one photo. It is a collection of 411 photos stitched together. It is the largest image (1.5 billion pixels). “It is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40 000 light-years” (NASA). You have to use NASA’s zooming tool to really see it. (On whatever you look at this image, it will NOT do it justice. You would need 600 HD monitors just to take it all in.

There really isn’t any way to comprehend this reality. This image is just a snippet of the space in which we find ourselves. 40,000 light-years? That in and of itself tells us that we have to be open-minded about our cosmological conclusions as Christians.

“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Heb 11:3).

We know the WHO; We have no idea, really, of the HOW.

Here is another video clip of how small the earth is in comparison to the universe, or of what we think we know about it. (Again, thanks to Jesse Carey at Relevant for all of these links. Check out his full article and other cool universee-kind of things at Relevant.)

• “If the moon were only one pixel”

• “Zoom out to the far-ends of space from a single molecule”

• “Zoom and pan of Hubble’s colouful view of the Universe”

• Mystic Mountain image

After looking at all of those images and videos, what questions come to your mind when thinking about this? Here are a few of mine?

• When the Bible talks about heaven is that the same mental model that we have today? (The word for heaven in Hebrew and Greek also meant sky. There was no way they had a clue what heaven/sky meant.)

• Just how vast is the universe? (What a silly question, really. I have no framework to be able to wrestle with the question. It’s like me asking one of our Chinese students, “Now, what part of China are you from?” Whatever they tell me doesn’t matter. I don’t really know where Bejing is located in relation to China.)

• What does it really mean that the universe was created out of nothing? (It’s just words. I can’t even begin to entertain that thought!)

• What can we learn from NASA and other cosmologists when considering the HOW question? (The Bible helps us with the WHO, but it seems pretty cool that we as humans get to figure out the HOW.)

• What are your questions?

Now, look at it again at the image ….

“Wow. Just Wow!”