Credit: WMAP Science Team, NASA.
A few years ago, astronomers and astrophysicists created this map of the universe as it appeared just 380,000 years after the big bang, over 13 billion years ago. Our home planet earth is a mere 4.6 billion years old. Can it be that the scientific chronology for the birth and [...]
I ran across this image in my library, and I cannot find a context for it. It makes me think of the Big Bang, or one of the many little bangs since. As I continue to watch and listen to my DVD “Understanding the Universe” course, I may learn what it is. Or I may [...]
News of the launch of Endeavor on the 32nd shuttle mission to the International Space Station probably did not land above the fold on many of the nation’s newspapers on February 8. Our thanks to James Vernacotola for this spectacular pre-dawn shot of the launch to orbit from about 115 miles away.
Thanks to NASA, here [...]
I think I am entering my second childhood, and I must say it promises to be a whole lot more fun than my first one. For one thing, I can now afford to purchase more toys, at least when I can do it without disrupting marital harmony. For another, I suddenly realize how dumb I [...]
Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, U. Arizona
Explanation: Charles Messier described the 88th entry in his 18th century catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters as a spiral nebula without stars. Of course the gorgeous M88 is now understood to be a galaxy full of stars, gas, and dust, not unlike our own [...]
In this article I will head straight for the tough stuff and tackle Chapter 3, The Age of Our Universe: Six Days and Fifteen Billion Years. This is mostly a summary of today’s scientific conclusions, and after we get a good layman’s grasp of this, we may be able better to judge whether it can [...]
In Bang! (I), I suggested that it might be intellectually and spiritually very satisfying to be able to show that the scientific and biblical views of our time about creation are converging. This is what author Gerald Schroeder set out to show in The Science of God, the convergence of scientific and biblical wisdom [...]
Big, that is. My logical mind is convinced that there was a Big Bang that marked the origin of life and the origin of man. My logical mind is also convinced of an eternal realm beyond time and space and matter. God exists. I read how some religious writers interpret the first chapter of Genesis, [...]
I think I’ll be sick. Suddenly (it seems to me) some of my dreary e-mail correspondence has bloomed into garish colors and cute typefaces. Even a few mail lists and newsletters have caught the virus. The recent minutes of a church presbytery meeting has also bloomed and become almost unreadable. I hate it. ( know, [...]
I’m starting to feel lonesome. I suspect that family and friends are not visiting the Orlop as frequently as before, nor are they depending on e-mail as much for their primary means of on-line communication. Perhaps it is because they are spending more time on Facebook.
I am more concerned about e-mail. I notice many [...]
