More Than Meets the Eye

by Richard Swenson

  Superstrings are still theoretical. The theory is based upon staggeringly complex mathematical constructions, so complex that there are more than a hundred million possible solutions for the equations. Part of the reason strings are so difficult to comprehend is because of their diminutive size. If superstrings exist—and there is strong evidence they do—they are very, very small.

  A superstring loop is a hundred million billion times smaller than the nucleus of an atom. To give a better idea of just how small superstrings are, let’s compare them to other things more comprehensible. “Imagine, if you can, four things that have very different sizes,” explains Freeman Dyson. “First, the entire visible universe. Second, the planet Earth. Third, the nucleus of an atom. Fourth, a superstring. The step in size from each of these things to the next is roughly the same.”26 Each entity is 1020 times smaller than the one that preceded it. To experimentally probe the domain of superstrings, engineers would have to construct a particle accelerator measuring one thousand light-years around. (A light-year is the distance light travels in one year—nearly six trillion miles. For reference, our solar system is one light-day around.)27

  Strings are like ultra-thin vibrating rubber bands. It seems the entire universe is one huge disco, filled with infinitely tiny elastic filaments twisting and vibrating rhythmically. To better visualize what we are talking about, let’s zoom the microscopic camera down past the molecules, past the atoms, past the electrons, neutrons, protons, and quarks. By now we have entered infinitesimal space, descending smaller, smaller, smaller … finally, we arrive at what first looks like a point. But as we approach closer, we see that this is not a point, but a wiggling string. According to this theory, the whole universe is made up of such strings.

  This vibrating string has a surprise for us—extra dimensions. The visible world we inhabit seems to be made up of three spatial dimensions plus time. String theory, however, requires at least nine spatial dimensions, possibly more. These additional dimensions are tightly rolled up and thus not perceptibly applicable in the functioning of the universe.

  There is much yet to learn about superstrings; many questions are yet unsolved. The theory stretches the human mind in unaccustomed ways. Whether we have the intelligence to probe at such a level of complexity remains to be seen. But what does it teach us of God? One important lesson is that He has created at deeper levels than previously known. How does He master detail at such size dimensions? Is there anything yet smaller than strings? Does He have all the strings in the universe counted? What does this say about His ability to monitor the macro-details of our individual lives?

  More interesting is what the added dimensionality of superstrings tells us about the spatial realities of the spiritual world. If our visible world has three spatial dimensions plus time, and the superstring world has nine spatial dimensions plus at least one or two time dimensions, how many dimensions will we experience in Heaven? Apparently many more than we currently experience, with implications that are staggering to the imagination. For example, if we lived in one dimension, all we could do would be travel along a line. If limited to two dimensions, all we could do is travel on a surface like a tabletop. If three dimensions, we could travel anywhere on, above, or beneath the surface. What would it be like to travel in six dimensions? Eight? Ten? The imagination can scarcely go there.

  God, however, lives there. And He is even now getting it ready for us. “Things beyond our seeing, things beyond our hearing, things beyond our imagining,” wrote Paul. “All prepared by God for those who love him.”28 Personally, I can hardly wait.

  AS THE HEAVENS ARE HIGHER THAN THE EARTH

  “Whenever man tries to probe into the universe’s dimension of time, he will finally be confronted with eternity,” explains Gerhard Staguhn. “Where he tries to understand the dimension of space, he will be finally confronted with infinity. And where he tries to understand matter by separating it into ever smaller particles, he will always discover something that is even smaller, and be confronted with the fact that there is no final smallest particle.”29 These are discomforting answers for those who prefer certainty. Yet at the same time, this new reality is endlessly exciting for people who enjoy faith. It turns out that the universe is far more interesting than first suspected—scientifically as well as spiritually.

  The challenge for us is to understand what the new physics teaches us about God. For one thing, it confirms that He is brilliant, a “superintellect.” Additionally, quantum uncertainty shows us that He can never be pinned down. If we try to put Him in a box, He will vigorously refuse the experience. He is mysterious; as soon as we think we understand reality, He redefines it. Even as light is a central defining entity in the life of the universe, He is Light. He inhabits more dimensions than our imaginations can deliver; He manipulates time as it suits Him. He is unfathomable, just as He said.

  Let the record show: God is impressive. But does He love us? Does He care? “Calvary is the measure of the love of God,” says J. I. Packer. “Lay it to heart.”

  The STORY of the STARS

  “HE who gazes at the stars unavoidably starts thinking,” said Gerhard Staguhn.1 There is something about the heavens that leads to thoughts of Heaven. Who hasn’t had a quasispiritual experience watching the twinkling firmament with its shooting stars or northern lights? Or, while driving down the interstate, unexpectedly seeing a huge moon just cresting the horizon? But the best is just the night sky itself, rid of city lights, and with plenty of time to drink it in.

  There is one sense in which the night sky is God’s response to our questions and fears. “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens,” wrote Isaiah. “Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”2

  When John Glenn had the opportunity to ride the space shuttle in 1998, he gazed once again from the unique vantage of orbit. “To look up out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible,” he remarked in an interview. “It just strengthens my faith.”3

  Newsweek columnist George Will wonders if the U.S. government might be required to suspend the space program on the grounds that it violates the separation of church and state. “Soon the American Civil Liberties Union, or People for the American Way, or some similar faction of litigious secularism will file suit against NASA, charging that the Hubble Space Telescope unconstitutionally gives comfort to the religiously inclined,” he jests. “Science … is augmenting, not subverting, the sense of awe that undergirds religious yearnings.”4

  THE UNIVERSE

  In an earlier era, most scientists believed the universe was both infinite and eternal—meaning that it had no dimensions, no bounds, no beginning, and no end. Such a belief was appealing because it seemed spiritually neutral. Today, however, few scientists believe in an infinite, eternal universe. This has forced upon spiritual skeptics a First Cause discomfort they would rather have avoided.

  If the universe had a beginning, where did the event happen? It is a question that surprisingly has no reference. When the universe began, simultaneously space itself began. Prior to such an event there was no space, at least that we can discern. And if there was no space, there was no “place in space” for creation to happen. The best we can say is that, consistent with the biblical record, it just happened. Additionally, although the universe seems to measure between ten and twenty billion light-years across, it is not possible for us to locate its center. We are floating somewhere in the middle of a pretty big cosmic bubble. Not to worry, for God has it all clearly marked with a gigantic pushpin in the map room of heaven.

  The universe contains a trillion trillion trillion trillion tons of matter (1056 grams)—bringing a level of quantification to Solzhenitsyn’s oft quoted Russian proverb: “A word of truth outweighs the universe.” In addition, the observable universe contains a hundred million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion elementary particle
s (1080). Not only does God know precisely where the earth is, but in fact He also knows precisely where each one of these subatomic particles is located. This might sound ridiculous to us: There are far too many ; they are too small ; they move around too fast ; and why would God be interested to track them anyway? My response—stop thinking about God from a human perspective. Go to the dictionary and look up the word omniscient. If God is indeed omniscient, then He knows where each of these particles in the universe is located—every second of every day, for the complete duration of eternity.

  To reach deeper levels of trust, we need to understand God correctly. To do this we need to approach Him on His own terms. Isaiah teaches us that no one can fathom God’s understanding.5 When we fully realize what unfathomable means as applied to His understanding, then it becomes easier to rest in His sovereignty.

  When God set out to create a human-oriented universe, He apparently showed a preference for dimensional symmetry. The dimensions of the largest created entity—namely, the entire universe—are 1027 meters in size, while the dimensions of the smallest subatomic particle are 10-26 meters in size. Humans, at about one meter (100), fall precisely in the middle. When astrophysicist Joel Primack was asked about the significance of this, he was unsure. But, he commented, it does make for a “soul-satisfying cosmology.”6

  Some look at this vast expanse and feel overwhelmed by the puny insignificance of humanity. In Carl Sagan’s movie Contact, Jodie Foster desperately searches for extraterrestrial life, saying repeatedly that if we were alone in the universe “it would be a terrible waste of space.” Stephen Hawking likewise balks at the idea that somehow the entire universe might exist only for the sake of humanity. “The human race is so insignificant, I find it difficult to believe the whole universe is a necessary precondition for our existence. Clearly the solar system is necessary, and maybe our galaxy, but not a hundred billion other galaxies.”7 Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg believes that religious experience “is an ordinary product of the brain,” and that moral order is “created and imposed by us.”8 As for the universe? “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”9 It’s nice to be lifted above farce, but personally, I’d like the elevator to go a little higher than tragedy.

  Others see the same universe yet have more hopeful conclusions. “As a religious person, I strongly sense … the presence and actions of a creative being far beyond myself and yet always personal and close by,” says Nobel laureate physicist Charles Townes. Townes believes that scientific discoveries reveal “a universe that fits religious views”—specifically, that “somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.”10

  Similarly, noted astronomer Allan Sandage, who began his scientific journey as an atheist, was overwhelmed by the data to accept the existence of God. “It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science,” he says.11 “We can’t understand the universe in any clear way without the supernatural.”12

  God has, in fact, left clear evidence of His creative role in all universal artistry. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.13 If we have trouble understanding the message of the firmament, it probably isn’t God’s fault.

  THE GALAXIES

  The universe is populated by galaxies. Our own galaxy is, of course, the Milky Way. But in addition to our humble collection of stars, the universe contains at least a hundred billion other galaxies. Each is peppered with about a hundred billion stars.

  These galaxies are spread across the expanse of the universe, yet not evenly. In some areas there are Great Voids, regions containing few galaxies. In other areas, however, there are clusters of galaxies together, and even superclusters. The Great Wall, discovered in 1989, is the largest structure in the universe, with a huge concentration of galaxies. No one knows how or why it could have formed in the way that it did. Another area of note is called the Great Attractor. This mysterious region, only recently discovered, is so massive that it is pulling other regions rapidly toward it (including you and me, so have your cameras ready).

  Perhaps a fitting illustration is to suggest that if the universe is your living room, the galaxies are like furniture, and stars are like dust on the furniture. The Great Wall is probably the largest sofa ever made. The Great Attractor is most likely a giant television screen in the corner.

  Galaxies come in all shapes and sizes. “Galaxies are like people,” observes astrophysicist Virginia Trimble. “When you get to know them they’re never normal.”14 Most galaxies are either elliptical (shaped like a racetrack) or irregular (no distinct shape). The Milky Way galaxy is an example of a spiral galaxy, which make up only about 5 percent of all possible shapes. It is flat and round like a pancake. The spiral spins rapidly around the center nucleus like a pinwheel in a hurricane. Our earth, located on a distant arm of the spiral, spins rotationally at a half-million miles an hour.

  Our galaxy is not classified as a great void, which is an existential relief. Instead, the Milky Way is a part of a small neighborhood—a cluster called the Local Group. Only a few of the galaxies in our Local Group are visible with the naked eye, including our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. The Andromeda galaxy is speeding toward us at 200 thousand miles per hour. Although a collision is not on the short-term calendar, it does bring up the question of what happens when galaxies fly into each other. In most instances the stars are spaced so far apart that head-on collisions are rare.

  Our entire Local Group is speeding toward the Great Attractor at a million miles an hour. When we turn our attention in that direction, however, we can’t see what the big deal is. Ninety percent of the cause of gravitational pull from the Great Attractor is invisible.

  The invisibility problem of the Great Attractor is also a problem with the universe at large—namely, missing mass. In short, we are not sure where 90 percent of the mass of the universe is hiding. Because it is not visible, it has been labeled dark matter. Dark matter does not participate in the process of nuclear fusion that gives luminescence to stars. Thus, dark matter is invisible to our telescopes. Many theories are being actively pursued, but finding dark matter is like looking for a needle in a hay-universe.

  THE STARS

  Stars seem the centerpiece of the heavens. God determines the number of stars, reports the psalmist, and calls them each by name.15 A star marked the place of the Christ child’s birth. Paul instructs us to be blameless and pure, shining like stars in the universe.16

  Lying on our backs at midnight on a clear, dark summer night can be awe-inspiring. The total number of stars in the universe is unknown, but appears to be between 1020 and 1024. Yet with the unaided eye, we can see only a small fraction of even the stars in our own galaxy, and virtually nothing beyond that (except on occasion one or two neighboring galaxies so remote they appear as faint single stars).

  Some stars are very small—even smaller than our moon. Others are huge. The largest supergiants have a diameter of nearly a billion miles—a diameter that equals the orbit of Jupiter!

  Interstellar distances are astronomical. Our closest neighboring sun, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away. To give some perspective, if our sun were shrunk down to the size of a marble, Alpha Centauri would still be over 200 miles away. There is a good reason for these distances—namely collision avoidance. Since God did not see fit to equip us with a global airbag, He decided to widen the distances instead.

  As mentioned in Chapter 8, stars are gigantic perpetual hydrogen bombs, generating both light and heat. Core temperatures can rise as high as forty million degrees centigrade. That stars shine by means of nuclear fusion was theorized by Hans Bethe in the 1930s, earning him a Nobel Prize four decades later.

  Even though French philosopher Auguste Comte predicted in 1825 that we would never be able to discern the che
mical composition of stars, we can now read them like a book. Using radio, infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray radiation plus additional techniques, we can detect the specific signature for each atomic component in a star.17 It is easier for us to tell what is going on within a star than what is going on within our own earth’s core. It is also perhaps easier for us to tell what is going on within a star than what is going on within our own heart. “One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego,” observed G. K. Chesterton. “The self is more distant than any star.”18

  We have become proficient at reading the stars, but it is God who remains good at creating them. Because of His generosity, we receive life, warmth, and beauty from stars.

  They are referred to in the first chapter of the Bible and the last chapter of the Bible.19 A star announced His coming in redemption. Now, all who await His return say: “Come, bright Morning Star.”

  THE SUN

  Our own personal star, the sun, in many respects is quite unremarkable. It is not very big, not particularly hot (as stars go)—in other words, perfect.

  Our relationship with the sun is completely one-sided—it gives, and we take. Of course the sun has an almost inexhaustible energy supply from which to draw. Every second it converts five million tons of mass to energy and then doles out these rays freely to the universe. We intercept only one-billionth of this total solar energy output and yet that suffices for virtually all our needs.