The night sky is a
great equalizer for humanity.
No matter who you are
or what your background is,
when you stand beneath the night sky looking out
into the vast darkness of the heavens,
our humanity experiences a sense
of awe and is filled with wonder.
When we consider
what is beyond the stars,
the mere existence of space
conveys a necessary pre-existing Cause.
But our Cosmos is not merely
a small assemblage of space,
rather it is vast reaching distances
that boggle the mind.
Come with me on a quick journey
to explore the size and scale of the Cosmos,
marked out by the matter that fills it.
Beginning with the region that surrounds us
we see the scale of our everyday lives,
those aspects of our lives on Earth,
common-place to us.
As we expand out we see that our own planet
has terrain and topography, forests and waterways,
and differing habitats for life.
Beyond the mountain ranges and landforms,
we find the structure of continents and oceans
that compose the entire globe of our planet.
At this point our field of view is only about
10,000 miles wide and while it encompasses
everything that comprises our lives,
we are only seeing one object in space.
Moving away from Earth, we see our
nearest neighbor--the Moon--come into view.
At a distance of 240,000 miles,
this rocky airless body is our nearest neighbor
and is the brightest object in the night’s sky.
By the time our field of view includes the Sun--
the nearest star to Earth--
we are able to see the orbits of the
two innermost planets: Mercury and Venus.
Located about 50 million miles outside
of Earth’s orbit, we find our neighbor Mars--
the red planet--and thereafter, we see
the Asteroid Belt forming the boundary
separating the orbits of the inner
Terrestrial planets from the orbits
of the outer Gas Giants:
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
We have now reached a field of view
encompassing all of our Solar System
out to the dwarf planet Pluto
and its several moons.
Our field of view at this point is almost
7.5 billion miles, yet only contains one star,
eight planets, a few dwarf planets,
asteroids, and comets.
It is not until we have many stars
in view that we even begin to see
that there are large clouds of gas--
called nebulas--that become visible.
Continuing to accelerate outward we see the
structure of our own Milky Way Galaxy,
with its spiral arms encircling a dense nucleus.
Our field of view is now 100,000 light-years.
Now we are viewing distant points of light,
which are not stars but are large collections
of stars, gases, and dust,
known as galaxies.
Each of these galaxies likely contains billions of
stars like the one our planet orbits every year.
Finally at the largest scales to the Universe,
we see that even galaxies
are organized into groups,
clusters, and superclusters.
Seeing the Cosmos from
its smallest to its largest scales,
we get a view of just how vast it is.
When we consider all that is beyond the stars,
is it reasonable to conclude
that everything we observe is merely
the result of chance and chaos?
Or that a random, unguided, non-intelligent origin
provides the greatest explanatory power
for why why we are here?
Few people in their lifetimes will travel
very far around our single planet.
Rather, we expend much of our energy and
our intellect to build shelters for our families,
buildings for our communities,
and infrastructure for our countries.
We recognize that the
physical structures around us
require intelligence
and design and effort.
But these man-made structures pale
in comparison to the physical structures
that exist and populate our entire Universe.
Their existence requires the same recognition:
that is that we inhabit a Grand Cosmos
created by an intelligence of such greater
proportion than even the size and scales we see.
