Sermon Tone Analysis

Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?

-Sir John Templeton.

Romans 1:16-20

PICTURE OF EARTH and Moon

During its flight, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft returned images of the Earth and Moon.

“Rather than being one planet among billions, Earth now appears to be the uncommon Earth,” said science educators Jimmy H. Davis and Harry L. Poe.

“The data imply that Earth may be the only planet ‘in the right place at the right time.’ ”earth’s location, its size, its composition, its structure, its atmosphere, its temperature, its internal dynamics, and its many intricate cycles that are essential to life—the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorous cycle, the sulfur cycle, the calcium cycle, the sodium cycle, and so on—testify to the degree to which our planet is exquisitely and precariously balanced.

20 As they begin their influential textbook Earth, Frank Press of the National Academy of Sciences and Raymond Siever of Harvard University write about what they call “the uniqueness of planet Earth.”

21 They note how its atmosphere filters out harmful ultraviolet radiation while working with the oceans to moderate the climate through the storing and redistributing of solar energy, and how the Earth is just large enough so that its gravity retains the atmosphere and yet just small enough not to keep too many harmful gases.

Then they describe the Earth’s interior as . . . . . . a gigantic but delicately balanced heat engine fueled by radioactivity. . . .

Were it running more slowly . . . the continents might not have evolved to their present form. . . .

Iron may never have melted and sunk to the liquid core, and the magnetic field would never have developed. . . .

If there had been more radioactive fuel, and therefore a faster running engine, volcanic dust would have blotted out the sun, the atmosphere would have been oppressively dense, and the surface would have been racked by daily earthquakes and volcanic explosions.

22

These kind of highly choreographed geological processes—and there are lots of them—leave me shaking my head at the astounding ways in which our biosphere is precisely tuned for life.

Meteor and Milky way over the Alps

Now this was a view with a thrill.

From Mount Tschirgant in the Alps, you can see not only nearby towns and distant Tyrolean peaks, but also, weather permitting, stars, nebulas, and the band of the Milky Way Galaxy.

What made the arduous climb worthwhile this night, though, was another peak -- the peak of the 2018 Perseids Meteor Shower.

As hoped, dispersing clouds allowed a picturesque sky-gazing session that included many faint meteors, all while a carefully positioned camera took a series of exposures.

Suddenly, a thrilling meteor -- bright and colorful -- slashed down right next the nearly vertical band of the Milky Way.

As luck would have it, the camera caught it too.

GAALAXIES

Milky Way Galaxy

aNDROMEDA

Hot stars burn brightly in this new image from NASA Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the ultraviolet side of a familiar face.

Approximately 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is our Milky Way largest galactic neighbor.

The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades star cluster, seem to float on a bed of feathers in a new infrared image from NASA Spitzer

STARS IN OUR OWN GALAXY

Pleiades

What is a nebulla

Cygnus Loop Nebula

Wispy tendrils of hot dust and gas glow brightly in this ultraviolet image of the Cygnus Loop nebula, taken by NASA Galaxy Evolution Explorer.

The nebula lies about 1,500 light-years away.

Helix Nebula

This infrared image from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.

Behemoth Black Hole

The black region in the center represents the black hole’s event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object’s gravitational grip.

The black hole’s powerful gravity distorts space around it like a funhouse mirror.

Light from background stars is stretched and smeared as the stars skim by the black hole.

Astronomers have uncovered a near-record breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe.

The observations, made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, may indicate that these monster objects may be more common than once thought.

Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes – those roughly 10 billion times the mass of our sun – have been found at the cores of very large galaxies in regions of the universe packed with other large galaxies.

In fact, the current record holder tips the scale at 21 billion suns and resides in the crowded Coma galaxy cluster that consists of over 1,000 galaxies.

Strobel, Lee.

The Case for a Creator (Strobel, Lee) (p.

157).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

Blazars- Picture of Artists concept

Black-hole-powered galaxies called blazars are the most common sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

As matter falls toward the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center, some of it is accelerated outward at nearly the speed of light along jets pointed in opposite directions.

When one of the jets happens to be aimed in the direction of Earth, as illustrated here, the galaxy appears especially bright and is classified as a blazar.