This week NASA announced that Voyager 1, the space probe that was launched back in 1977 to explore and study Jupiter, Saturn and the outer planets of our solar system, had officially left the solar system and was now the first man-made object to enter interstellar space. The still-working spacecraft has sent back evidence that it has left the heliosphere, the vast magnetic boundary that separates the sun, the planets (including official non-planet Pluto), and solar wind from the rest of the galaxy.
According to its official odometer at the NASA website, Voyager 1 is now 11.6 billion miles and counting from Earth. To let you know how old its onboard technology is compared to today, the data it records is measured in kilobytes rather than terabytes. Up to 69.63 kilobytes (just a little over the maximum RAM of a vintage Commodore 64) can be saved on its digital tape recorder, an 8-track tape actually, and its computer can make about 8,000 decisions a second, compared with over 10 billion per second with the iPhone you may be reading this on. Its transmitter has a power of 23 watts, the data sent back to Earth takes 17 hours for it to be received by NASA... and just like its contemporary the Atari 2600, it's still working just like it did 35 years ago. It's scheduled to shut down around 2025, when the nuclear fuel cells powering the craft will finally run out.
Our sun is just one of billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and beyond that there are billions and billions more galaxies in the universe. I think of the opening words from the theme song of the old PBS children's series Big Blue Marble: "The earth's a big blue marble as it floats about in space" or something like that. Compared to the rest of the universe, this Big Blue Marble we sit upon isn't even a grain of sand. It can make one feel insignificant. And as I look at how it all seems so beautifully designed, the first word that comes to mind is "intelligent". I simply cannot comprehend how it all could have come about from a Big Bang billions of years ago and supposedly evolving by chance into all that is today. There must be, there has to be, an intelligence behind it all. I see that intelligence as God.
Our God is intelligent and infinite, beyond what our finite, puny human minds can ever comprehend in a million lifetimes. And yet this same God is also intimate. He cares for each and every one of us. He loves each of us. He loves us so much that he became one of us, something less than a quark in comparison to all of the universe, to save us from ourselves and to be in loving fellowship with Him. He walked among us in the person of Jesus Christ. Why such an infinite God would condescend and stoop so darned low to reach out to us is something even I cannot understand. But I accept it and am grateful for it.
God is probably getting a good chuckle out of NASA going gaga about Voyager 1 leaving the solar system, as if we could do one better than Him in the heavens He created. But more importantly, He lives in and has relationship with every person who has put his or her faith in Him through the finished work of Jesus.
Pardon the pun, but that's out of this world.
No comments:
Post a Comment