That's the Carina Nebula. You can find more pictures of it by clicking here.
The Atlantic is offering 25 of these images in it's 2012 Hubble Advent Calendar (<-- this link takes you to the Atlantic article announcing the calendar for this year). You can find all of the daily pictures by checking them out on Tumblr or liking their Facebook page.
I look at these images and a host of childhood memories and questions flood in. Are we the only ones created in God's image in this universe? If we one day find other life forms in distant galaxies, what will they tell us about God? What else is God doing in this universe?
Look at these images and consider this: Why would the creator of all of these amazing things choose to come to this tiny planet and walk among us? Isn't it amazing that the one who set all of this into motion loves us? To me, it's a question that calls for humility, not pride or arrogance.
Blessings to all of us!
Beautiful! Just sent the link to my Dad, an atmospheric physicist.
ReplyDeleteWhile it’s always possible, finding other forms of life like ours is highly improbable; just how improbable is mind-boggling. Just to have a life-permitting universe, it has to be fine-tuned. William Lane Craig gives a pretty good explanation in his book “On Guard” in chapter 5. He says: Remember the low-entropy state in which the universe began? Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of a low-entropy state’s existing by chance alone is on the order of one chance out of 10 to the 10 (123) power [I think that’s 10 followed by 1,230 zeros – Dave], a number that is so inconceivable that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. The fine-tuning here is beyond comprehension. Having an accuracy of even one part of 10 to the 60th power is like firing a bullet toward the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light-years away, and nailing a one-inch target!
ReplyDeleteCraig has a bit more on his website at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/probability-of-fine-tuning.
Although I read this stuff, I’m not sure I really understand it. If you’re a scientist Nelson, maybe you can read it and explain it to me. I have to go now. This has given me a brain-ache.
A lot of the estimates I've seen about the likelihood of finding life (as we know and define it) elsewhere in the universe are based on the assumption that all of the conditions that had to occur for life to develop were random events with low probabilities of occurrence. When folks estimate the likelihood of each of these low probability occurrences happening in sequence at exactly the right times, you end up with odds along the lines of 1 in 10 raised to a number that has many many zeros trailing it. I was looking around to see if I found a range in estimates and came across this quote:
ReplyDelete"Infinity was invented to account for the possibility that in a never-ending universe, anything can happen."
If we assume there's nothing directing the creation of life as we know it, then the odds of it happening elsewhere in the universe would be infinitesimally small (but I'm not sure how that plays out in an infinitely large universe). But if a creator chose to put the parts into motion in other places in the universe, then those odds no longer hold. I'm not saying there's any reason to believe that did happen, but we know that nothing is impossible with God.
If you step back further and consider that life forms elsewhere in the universe don't necessarily have to conform to our definition of life - or, at the least, life forms don't have to look like us or require the same environmental conditions in which to live - then we might be able to eliminate a few of those zeros. And that might just add to your brain-ache.