The first two chapters of the biblical book of Genesis contain two variations as to how the ancients thought of creation. Those poetic visions, along with other creation poems in the Bible, may be beautiful and meaningful to some people, but they were never meant to be taken literally. They were not and are not scientific explanations as to how the Earth was created.
More beautiful and more wondrous and more exciting are the insights that science proffers as to the creation, not merely of the Earth, but of the universe itself.
The Hubble Space Telescope, first launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990, has provided all of us "a conduit to the cosmos." Neil deGrasse Tyson, in an article in Parade Magazine, June 22, 2008, notes that the Hubble has already been operable longer than intended, and a thus a "new servicing mission" is underway to extend Hubble's usefulness for several more years.
Hubble is not up in space alone, either, says Tyson. "About two dozen space telescopes of assorted sizes and shapes orbit the Earth and the Sun. Each of them provides a clear view of the cosmos that is unobstructed, unblemished, and undiminished by Earth's turbulent and murky atmosphere."
These various telescopes "detect bands of light invisible to the human eye ... Entire classes of objects and phenomena in the cosmos reveal themselves only through one of more of these invisible cosmic windows."
Black holes, which we hear so much about, "were discovered by their .... radiation that was generated by the surrounding, swirling gas just before it descended into the abyss." But most important is the fact that these telescopes have been able to "capture microwave radiation--the primary physical evidence for the Big Bang."
The Hubble telescope operates differently in that it sees the universe "using primarily visible light." It's images "brought the universe into our backyards, or rather expanded our backyards to enclose the universe itself. It did that with images to intellectually, visually, and even spiritually fulfilling that most don't even need captions."
Because of Hubble, we've been able to view "planets, dense star fields, colorful interstellar nebulae, deadly black holes, graceful colliding galaxies, the large-scale structure of the universe" ... [and] Hubble's scientific legacy is unimpeachable."
Perhaps the most wondrous of Hubble's gifts is that it has allowed us to settle "the decades-old debate about the age of the universe." Before Hubble, the data were so confused and muddled that the astrophysicists could not arrive at a consensus. "Some thought 10 billion years" while others doubled that to 20 billion.
No longer. "Hubble enabled us to measure accurately how the brightness varies in a particular type of star that resides in a distant cluster of galaxies. That information, when plugged into a simple formula, tells us their distance from the Earth. And because the universe is expanding at a known rate, we can then turn back the clock to determine how long everything was in the same place."
We know now that the universe came into existence 14 billion years ago!
Hubble has provided a great deal of other significant information to which we never before had access, perhaps the greatest of which is simply the wondrous and incredible magnificence that is the universe!
Hubba, hubba Hubble!
1 comment:
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the telescope one day exposes the Intelligent Designer’s workshop? Of course that would lead to all sorts of new speculation as to the origin of the ID and the first material that a tool was made of, etc. No matter how we slice it, we are stuck with the lack of conceiving that out of nothing, came something. Was there something before nothing? If so, then we are still back to the original question.
Bob Poris
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