Infinite Pinwheels

This is one of God’s seemingly infinite number of pinwheels.  What follows is from several websites helping us better appreciate the wonder and glory of creation and God that is well beyond our understanding!

(begin)This astronomical feature is known as Arp 273—so named because it was part of an atlas of peculiar galaxies compiled by American astronomer Halton Arp six decades ago. Arp 273 is two galaxies located about 300 million light-years from Earth. The two spiral galaxies are in the process of interacting with one another, and astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope believe the distinct signs of intense star formation in the nucleus of the smaller galaxy were probably triggered by the encounter with the larger one.  Three hundred (300) million light-years is about 1,750,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.  Mind-boggling!  God’s creation is without bounds so it seems.  

How long would it take to travel 1 light-year?  Said somewhat differently, how long does it take a spaceship to travel one light-year? The fastest spaceship ever relative to the Earth was the Juno probe at 265,000 km/hour. A light-year in kilometers is 9.461 × 10 to the 12th power, so it would take the Juno craft about 4,300 years to travel that far.  Seriously!?  And, that’s just one light-year, not 300 million.  These distances are incomprehensible.

For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles. That is a six with 12 zeros behind it.

When we use powerful telescopes to look at distant objects in space, we are actually looking back in time. Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles (or 300,000 km) per second. This seems really fast, but objects in space are so far away that it takes a lot of time for their light to reach us. The farther an object is, the farther in the past we see it.

Our Sun is the closest star to us. It is about 93 million miles away. So, the Sun's light takes about 8.3 minutes to reach us. This means that we always see the Sun as it was about 8.3 minutes ago.

The next closest star to us is about 4.3 light-years away.  When we see this star today, we’re actually seeing it as it was 4.3 years ago. All of the other stars we can see with our eyes are farther, some even thousands of light-years away. (end)

We believe God is everywhere and at the same time throughout all creation and immense distance.  How can this be?  Consider that if we could travel faster than the speed of light, time would slow down and eventually stop.  If our spacecraft was traveling at close to the speed of light, time on the spacecraft would have slowed down (would be approaching zero or frozen).  I still cannot fathom this space-time phenomenon, and I never will.  

We often envision God with a human form.  That is from our imagination and, admittedly, from the Bible written by human hands and minds with divine inspiration, so we believe.  Our God appears to “work” or exist in a universe with space-time peculiarities we cannot understand.  

Whatever!  What’s most important is our belief that humanity has the special attention of our Creator despite our smallness.  Therefore, we have special obligations to respect and protect all of Earth’s inhabitants and the marvelous globe itself.  We are not doing a very good job.  Some would say we are failing miserably.  We had better flip the switch and act differently before our time stops.

Deacon David Pierce