The Final Frontier

The past few days I’ve been “farm-sitting” for friends.  Their small farm is located on a high plateau not far from where we live, but the views are completely different.  It’s a refreshing change of scenery with thriving fruit orchards and food-producing fields of green and gold.  Our home is on a hillside above a river and we are surrounded by towering pine trees.  We have some very nice sunrises and sunsets, but we don’t have the wide-open view that the farm has. 

Over the weekend, the weather prognosticators (add that to your vocabulary for the day) had predicted the potential of Aurora Borealis sightings.  I was excited that we were staying on the bluff where there would be a clear view to the north. With no city lights visible, there was hope that we would get to see the rare occurrence. Throughout the evening, both my husband and I would pop outside to check the horizon.  After he gave up and went to bed, I wandered out a few more times “just in case”.  The northern lights did not make an appearance, but I stood outside and took in the crystal clear starry night.  The deep black cloudless sky was host to all the constellations in all their glory.  It was breathtaking. 

Space is something that’s hard to even fathom.  While it is the source of endless mysteries, we know that it all somehow manages to hold together to create galaxies, solar systems, stars, and planets.  To me it’s no accident that somehow this little planet of ours stays in perfect rotation around the sun at a distance that allows life to thrive.  We share that rotation with a group of other planets that do not share our perfect blend of land and water and air that sustain all sorts of life.  Even though we are doing our best to make a mess of our beautiful planet, that is a topic for discussion elsewhere. And, by the way, while I know there are still some who believe the earth is flat, I’m pretty comfortable that it is not.  What I do know is that we are not here by mere chance.  It’s all part of a grand design. 

We earthlings have a fascination about knowing what is out in space in and beyond our own little Milky Way galaxy.  We have worked for a very long time to send things and people out there to see what there is to see and send back pictures.  Here are just a few things that we’ve come to understand about what we’ve learned in our exploration:

1.    In space, no one can hear you scream.  Space is silent because sound cannot travel in a vacuum.  The space outside of our own atmosphere is not a perfect vacuum, but it’s not one where sound waves can travel. 
2.    There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the earth.
3.    Dark matter, which we know exists in space, is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light and cannot be seen directly. We only know it exists because of its effect on objects around it.
4.   When massive stars run out of fuel, they end their lives in gigantic explosions called supernovas. These blasts are so bright they can briefly outshine entire galaxies.
5.    A black hole is a region in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it.
6.    One million earths can fit inside the sun.
7.    The Apollo astronauts’ footprints on the moon could stay there as long as a hundred million years (if space still exists a hundred million years from now).
8.   We are able to have solar eclipses because the sun is exactly 400 times the size of the moon, but the moon is 400 times closer to earth.
9.   The most distant human-made object in space is Spacecraft Voyager 1 which is currently over 13 billion miles from earth.
10.  A nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas occupying the space between stars and is a nursery for new stars. 

Mind blown yet?  If you need to see more, search Hubble Telescope photography.  Some of it seems incomprehensible when you consider the vastness and the order that has to exist for us to be where we are in time and space.  Next time you look up at the stars, know that what you can see is a pin dot in the universe.  And yet, the universe wouldn’t be the same without you or me.  I believe to the grand designer we are not random or unplanned or unnecessary. We are all a critical part of the bigger plan and have a purpose beyond our own comprehension.  No matter how small we may seem in this giant universe, we matter big time to the Creator of it all.   All we have to do is shine like the stars in a night sky. 

Photo credits to NASA courtesy of the International Space Station, Voyager Spacecraft, and Hubble Telescope.