Let Creation Speak! An Invitation to Awe and Wonder by Michael Guillen, PhDSample

UNIMAGINABLE

There was a time when we believed the size of the universe was finite. Not anymore. Today, based on what we’ve learned using powerful telescopes, spacecraft, and other clever devices, we realize the size of the universe is truly incomprehensible.

For starters, the sun is roughly 1.3 million times bigger than Earth. Of the solar system’s total mass, 99.8 percent of it belongs to the sun, and only 0.2 percent belongs to all the planets, moons, and asteroids combined.

Our solar system is located within the Milky Way galaxy, which contains roughly 200 billion stars, our beloved, life-sustaining sun being just one of them and of average size. The Milky Way itself is also of average size, yet it takes a beam of light 120,000 years to cross it; a commercial jetliner would take 150 billion years.

According to our best estimates, the observable universe contains roughly 200 billion galaxies, many of them far bigger than our Milky Way. Assuming each galaxy contains at least 200 billion stars, it means the observable universe contains more than 40 billion trillion stars—and even more planets than that.

And that’s just the observable cosmos.

We now know that outside the observable cosmos—past the asteroids, moons, planets, stars, and galaxies of this world; past its invisible dark energy and dark matter; past what astronomers call the cosmic horizon—is a universe that is and always will be hidden from us, an unobservable world whose size and nature is, and always will be, beyond human comprehension.

REFLECTION

There are many people who use the unimaginable size of the universe to diminish our own significance. They claim that since our solar system is a mere speck in the great scheme of things—and we humans are even tinier whits on that mere speck—we aren’t important at all.

But there’s another way of seeing things.

There are more than 40 billion trillion stars in the observable universe—many of them far bigger and flashier than our own mediocre sun; there are even more planets than that in the observable universe. But despite centuries of searching and searching, we have found zero planets with any kind of life, let alone human life.

For now, then, far from being insignificant, our seemingly lowly sun and planet are beyond significant. So next time you look up and marvel at the unimaginable size of the observable cosmos—and the even more unimaginable world beyond the cosmic horizon—stop and marvel at the one who’s doing the marveling.

Stop and marvel at yourself, and at the ineffable God who created you—and the unimaginable universe you call home.