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Even to the non-inquisitive mind, there is the intrigue of the overwhelming mysteries of “from where did we come? how did we come to be on earth? just how large is our universe? how many stars are there? is there life on any other planet? (see "Our Uniqueness" in another page) where and when did it all begin?” For most of man's early time and only until recent years were there ways and means by which we could begin to "answer" but a few of these questions -- but there continue to be just guesses. This page in my Website will contain a collection of information from different sources. I will name them when I can; but the reader will have to depend mostly on my memory of what I remember of the articles I read, and the information I gathered from them. It wasn't any earlier plan to record all the sources, nor remember from where I obtained much of what I'll record here. This is both good and bad. Good in that I do remember the details, bad in that I can't give credit to those who earlier listed them and wrote them down or said them so that I did learn. I apologize mostly for the bad. And if I make a slight error in giving some of the details, I also apologize for that. In truth, though, there is scarcely anything as interesting as our universe, unless it is the search for the answer to the burning question of from where did we come? and just why are we? It is obvious that the two questions are closely related, but just how is another question. I'm reminded of a quote that one of my email correspondents uses at the end of his notes to me. It says, "Reality is but a figment of our imagination." I wonder?
Beyond
the haze of whatever we sense on Earth is a beauty beyond imagination. To
know that this beauty is a gift from our Creator is to know that He loves
us. Nowhere in the Universe has He given such beauty to any other
creation; for God said, "Let Us create man in Our image." And
man was created. Still, as beautiful as it is, Paul said, "We see
through a glass but darkly." For there is beauty far outside our
understanding awaiting us beyond our Earthly life.
Rejoice! Stand in awe! For our Creator had a purpose, and we are His
purpose; we were His plan; we are
because of His action. I wonder at times: Did God create us to keep Him
company? To assuage His loneliness? He had the angels. Why us? I say, if
He was lonely and created us for company, I do wish we would be more as
His children -- and pay Him our filial obligations. Don't you?
When you look into the night sky, stretched before your eyes are what appear to be the only thousands upon thousands of stars that exist -- all scattered in random order across the night sky. Still, we are told that what we see represents only a miniscule fraction of the vast number of stars and other heavenly bodies that make up our universe. And, to make it more mysterious, what the scientists tell us is that the billions of billions of galaxies with their billions of billions of stars make up only a small part of the matter that exists in the whole of the universe. How can this be? Most of us don't appreciate this mystery. If what is seen is only a tiny fraction of what exists, what makes up the most of it? The search for much of the matter that makes up the universe has been like looking for a wall in a dark room. You know that it's there holding up the ceiling, you just can't see it. But now astronomers have flipped a light switch, using the brilliance of a distant stellar object to detect tendrils of hydrogen in the vast dark between galaxies. The discovery of the mysterious matter, long predicted but undetected, could reveal much about the large-scale structure of the universe, astronomers say. Scientists determined the presence of invisible matter years ago by measuring the motion of stars within galaxies. They found that stellar objects visible from Earth did not contain enough mass to provide the gravitational force that keeps the galaxies from flying apart. So there had to be more mysterious material out there somewhere. Astronomers believe at least 90% of the matter in the universe is hidden in an exotic dark form that still hasn't been seen directly. What can it be? Here's a revealing quote from the Bible: "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of the things which are visible." -- Hebrews 11:3. Perhaps looking to the Bible we find more than meets the scientists' eyes! Who knows of such things? But by faith, we have a more comfortable attitude toward what we cannot see. At least I believe so. (Note: Some of the information used here came from an article in The Arizona Republic, Phoenix, AZ. I don't remember the Volume, edition, nor date.)
Besides the fact that our universe consists of billions of billions of galaxies with their billions of billions of stars (and who knows of how many planets there may be -- even though none of them appear to be able to support life as we know it), here's an interesting item for you to ponder just before you go to sleep tonight: The universe is flat! That's right, I said flat -- has no roundness to it at all. It's not like a huge "star" burst such as you see displayed at Fourth of July pyrotechnics, not like an inverted cup -- either concave or convex -- nor is it wrinkled or misshapen in a variety of ways. It's flat, flat. Of course, there are a few "wrinkles" in it, sort of like waves, but for all practical purposes it's as flat as a skating rink's icy dimension. The wrinkles or waves, if you wanted to give any consideration to them, would rise to no higher that one degree or so across the whole universe -- about the same width (or height) as the diameter of one full moon seen from earth. Now if you consider that the universe is between 10 and 15 billion years old and had that much time to expand, it doesn't take a rocket engineer to figure that if you were to lay a level across its whole expanse (if such a thing were possible), it would be smoother than if it were sanded down to a mirror flatness. Still, cosmologists say, just because we now must think in terms of "flat", we still have to think of this flatness as three dimensional! Try to figure out this three-dimensional thing along with your pondering its flatness as you lie in bed planning your going to sleep. You might not get to sleep at all! But what the cosmologists mean when they say the universe is "cosmically" flat is that rays of light that start out parallel will stay that way, going on forever without intersecting or veering away from each other. They say that this has a bearing on what the universe is made of. There are indications that the universe is composed of about 35 percent matter -- only 5 percent regular matter and 30 percent mysterious dark matter -- and the other 65 percent? it's made up of dark energy (whatever that is.) They theorize that the dark energy is the force pushing the galaxies apart and speeding up the expansion of the universe -- which, by the way, they now believe will go on forever! Like God, maybe? The cosmologists figure that the whole universe started out as a kind of hot cosmic bisque of particles and radiation, and at its very beginning all of its substance wasn't any larger than an atom -- compressed and hotter than anything you can imagine! A tremendous unknown-caused explosion made the whole thing happen. (Practically no cosmologist has openly made the leap of faith to consider a supernatural cause.) Further, the fact that the explosion was so tremendous, it literally flattened the nothingness of space around it as each particle sped away from all the others at the speed of light -- that's as fast as they could go, because no speed exceeds the speed of light, Star Trek and other sci-fi warp speeders to the contrary. How did the cosmologists come to this astounding conclusion -- that the universe is flat? Read on below and see.
The theoretical "Big Bang" that originated the universe is said to have occurred approximately 15 billion years ago. To "see" the actual origin is still the Holy Grail of cosmologists; and they are doing all they can to do it. Looking back in time is their pastime and passion -- work, work, but pleasant work, for sure. Using a variety of instruments -- optical telescopes, radio telescopes, infra-red telescopes and the like -- they have peered deep into the past searching for answers. It is their looking back in time that gives them hints of what caused our universe; and, looking back in time to just 300,000 years after the theoretical Big Bang that started it all, the images the cosmologists have seen show a blotchy pattern of hot and cold spots over a small segment of the sky, showing an infant universe that, at that time was tiny, hot and cosmically "flat." Each blotch appears about as big as the full moon might, but even appearing this small, the blotches are trillions of miles across. What they show is nothing less than snapshots of the young universe that are helping them understand just what happened shortly after the massive explosion that occurred. The young universe at 300,000 years old was a thousand times smaller and hotter than it is today. The snapshots or images were captured two years ago and studied that long until now to determine their meaning. They were obtained by a helium balloon outfitted with a very sensitive telescope sent circling high over Antarctica. The balloon was aloft into rarified air devoid of practically all of the disruptions that are caused by atmospheric changes closer to the Earth. Studying the images obtained and comparing them to some gathered as early as 1991, the cosmologists were able to determine that what had earlier been a theory only -- that the universe was flat -- is not now theory, but fact. Of course, there's still the real problem we face: Just what was the condition of the universe before the theoretical Big Bang, and more important, what or Who caused the explosion to occur? And equally as puzzling, from where did the material that formed the atom-sized universe come in the first place? Was it always there? If that is the case, can we say with certainty that our universe originated from an atom sized object that was always there, but came from nowhere? just happened? Weighty questions. It calls for a great deal more faith for me to believe that the material of our universe came from nowhere and was always there than it is for me to believe that it had a Creator Who was always there, continues to be, and will never cease being. How about you? Now, what does all this have to do with A Better Life? Well, if you think hard about it, wouldn't it be nicer to believe that you came from an Energy that has always been there, is here now, and always will be here than to believe that you came from some thing that was always there, but came from nowhere? How can you feel good, or better, about yourself if you feel you came from nowhere? From my perspective, it's nicer to feel good having a faith that relaxes me, to know there is a Creator who gave me my existence and is always present to assure that I'm all right. He gave me choices to be all right, to be all I can be. The rest is up to me, I guess. Even you have choice to believe as I believe -- or not. What's your choice?
