Pondering Space

 

Hayter for Aug 11, 2024

“The Enjoyment of Wonder” 

          Today is the day we’re going to attempt something that Albert Einstein recommended we do daily. The exercise involves only our brains, so we won’t be working up much of a sweat. So, adhering to Einstein’s suggestion, we shall now “Ponder the Universe”.

I have done a bunch of universal pondering, which means that Albert and I are from similar gene pools. We both prefer mustard over mayonnaise and we both tend to ponder about the universe. With that in mind, I shall now share a few of my ponderings about the universe, after which you can start your first daily exercise of the same.

I recently read something by Carl Sagen where he mentioned that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all of the beaches of the earth. My thought is – “Of course there is!” The Universe is supposedly eternal in time and infinite in distance. Anything that is eternally infinite has more of everything there is or ever was.  Forever. The number of granules of sand on the planet are numbered. No one’s come up with the figure yet, but there is one.

Someone else said that there are more trees on earth than the number of stars in the Milky Way. It’s been estimated that there are three trillion trees in the world. Of course, in the last couple of seconds, we’ve lost 10,081 of them. Just a guess. At last count there were 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. It likely took at least eight people to count ‘em. When “AI” becomes even more effective, we’ll know how many grains of sand there are on the moons of Jupiter… for what it’s worth.

Ask yourself, what are the total number of planets circling the 100 billon stars that are in the Milky Way? Discounting the asteroid Pluto, there are eight planets circling the Sun. Were we to assume that each star has at least one planet circling it that supports life, that would make about 100,000,000,000 planets in our galaxy with some kind life form.

According to earth’s greatest space telescope, the David Webb, there are over 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. Since the size of the universe may have no ending, the estimated planets supporting some forms of life would be inestimable… say that three times fast.

I’ve made no mystery of the fact that I was practically born in a church building. Over the years, I have heard hundreds of sermons on hell. Of course, “hell” was never used as a word for “hell”. The preacher said that we were going to Hades or The Devil. By the time you got to hell, the devil would already be there. Point being, don’t say “hell!” I never heard a sermon on the making of hell, but I heard a bunch on how God created the heavens and the earth! And He did it in six days, taking the seventh day off to rest. And he did all of that, oh, about six thousand years ago.”

I once asked a Sunday School teacher, if the earth was no more than 6000 years old, how did all the fossils get here? His answer was, “God made the fossils.” It was another way of saying, “What do you care?” That is a comment I’ve heard several times while trying to ponder the universe with others. It’s the same as saying, “If God had wanted us to think about the universe, He would’ve given us more details about it.”

I can only assume that some believe that God never wanted us to think about other planets with other beings on them. In the movies, these beings don’t look nearly as good as we do, but that’s to be expected. The question is, in an infinite universe, and countless planets that may have different life forms, how many Jesus-experiences might there be? While that thought could trash a religion, it should do nothing to ruin one’s faith in God.

Let’s face it, every civilization since the dawn of mankind had a religion. While Moses was chiseling the Ten Commandments there were other people in Asia, South America, Australia, Africa, and the Middle East, each with their own religions. So many civilizations, so much history, so many religions. And we are here on one planet we’ve named Earth. Assuming there are a countless number of life forms in the universe, and assuming most of them have different religions, one must wonder where heaven is. Is there one heaven in a never-ending universe or are there countless heavens all across the universe? It’s a wonderment, but only to those who ponder.

A psychiatrist would answer the question of heaven or heavens, with, “Hmm. What do you think?” If I hadn’t been blessed with a desire to know more about the universe, I would never even consider the question. Why would I want to know impossible stuff like that? I am one of the eight billion+ people on the planet Earth who has too much to think about as it is. 

          Being one person among eight billion is humbling. Of course, being one among a few million earthlings who consider themselves as children of God, my goal is to get closer to Him. And, I would have so much more trouble doing that without the use of my God-given desire to wonder.

         

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