The Order in the Skies

During the night of July 4th in 1054, Chinese astronomers witnessed an extraordinary event: a very bright star that suddenly appeared near the constellation Taurus. It was so bright that it could easily be seen even in daytime. At night it was brighter than the moon.

What Chinese astronomers observed was one of the most interesting and catastrophic astronomic phenomena in our universe. It was a supernova.

A supernova is a star that is shattered by an explosion. A huge star destroys itself in an immense blast and the material of its core is scattered in every direction. The light produced during this event is a thousand times brighter than normal.

Scientists today think that supernovas play a key role in the formation of the universe. These explosions are what cause different elements to be carried to different parts of the universe. It is supposed that the material ejected by these explosions subsequently combines to form a new galaxy or a star somewhere else in the universe. According to this hypothesis, our solar system, the sun and its planets including Earth, are the products of some incredibly ancient supernova.

Although supernovas may seem to be ordinary explosions, they in fact are minutely structured in their details.

In Nature's Destiny Michael Denton writes:

The distances between supernovae and indeed between all stars is critical for other reasons. If the distance between stars in our galaxy was much less, planetary orbits would be destabilized. If it was much more, then the debris thrown out by a supernova would be so diffusely distributed that planetary systems like our own would in all probability never form. If the cosmos is to be a home for life, then the flickering of the supernovea must occur at a very precise rate and the average distance between them, and indeed between all stars, must be very close to the actual observed figure.

The ratio of supernovas and stars' distances are just two more of the fine-tuned details of this miraculous universe. Examining deeper the universe the arrangement we see is beautiful both in the organization and design.

Why is There So Much Space?

The universe following the Big Bang was a nebula of just hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements were produced later by means of intentionally-designed nuclear reactions. Yet the existence of heavier elements is not a sufficient reason for the universe to become a suitable place for life. A much more important issue is how the universe was formed and ordered.

We shall start by asking how big the universe is.

The planet Earth is a part of the solar system. In this system there are nine major planets with fifty-four satellites, and an uncounted number of asteroids all revolving around a single star called "Sun", a middle-sized star compared with others in the universe. Earth is the third planet from the sun.

Let us first try to understand the size of this system. The diameter of the sun is 103 times that of the Earth. To visualize this, the planet Earth has diameter of 7580 miles . If we scaled that down to the dimensions of a glass bead, the sun would be about the size of soccer ball. But the interesting thing is the distance between the two. Keeping to the same scale, the two balls should be 919 feet apart. Some of the objects representing the outer planets would have to be set several kilometers away.

Big though this might seem, the solar system is a quite miniscule in size compared with the Milky Way, the galaxy in which it is located. There are over 250 billion stars in the Milky Way–some similar to the sun, others bigger, others smaller. The star nearest to the sun is Alpha Centauri. If we wanted to add Alpha Centauri in our model system, it would have to be located 484.670 miles away.

That's too big for almost anyone to grasp, so let's reduce the scale. We'll assume the earth to be as big as a dust-particle. That would make the sun as big as a walnut about 9.8 feet from the earth. On this scale, Alpha Centauri would have to be located 398 miles from the sun.

The Milky Way consists of about 250 billion stars with similarly mind-boggling distances between them. The sun is located closer to the edge of this spiral-shaped galaxy than it is to the center.

Even the Milky Way is dwarfed by the vast size of the whole universe. It is just one of many galaxies–nearly 300 billion of them according to recent calculations. And the distances between galaxies are millions of times greater than that between the sun and Alpha Centauri.

George Greenstein, in The Symbiotic Universe , comments on this unimaginable vastness:

Had the stars been somewhat closer, astrophysics would not have been so very different. The fundamental physical processes occurring within stars, nebulas, and the like would have proceeded unchanged. The appearance of our galaxy as seen from some far-distant vantage point would have been the same. About the only difference would have been the view of the night time sky from the grass on which I lie, which would have been yet richer with stars. And oh, yes-one more small change: There would have been no me to do the viewing…All that waster space! On the other hand, in this very waste lies our safety.

Greenstein also explains the reason for this. In his view, the huge distances in space makes it possible for certain physical variables to be arranged so as to be exactly suitable for human life. He also notes the importance of this huge space in allowing Earth to exist while minimizing the risk of collision with other stars.

In short, the distribution of celestial bodies in space is exactly what it must be for human life to exist on our planet. These huge spaces are the outcome of an intentional design for a purpose and not a result of coincidence.