Space Science

Last flight

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The Scholar Redeemer (my friend and colleague, Dr. Robb Wilson) eloquently commemorated the last space shuttle flight yesterday

… it was truly awesome to witness so much power under complete control, doing exactly what was expected. It was amazing to have a human made device that went from sitting completely still in Florida to being over 100 miles up and over the Indian Ocean less than an hour later. Watching such a complicated machine with so much demonstrated explosive capability safely carry fellow humans completely off of our planet so quickly… there just aren’t words for it.

Please pay him a visit and read the whole thing.

The shuttle had become a bit of a dinosaur, but I couldn’t help but be moved every single time I watched one launch into space: to me there are fewer sights more awe-inspiring than a 2,000-ton spacecraft slipping the bonds of the Earth, and realizing that it is powered almost entirely by human ingenuity.

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Billions of planets in the Milky Way?

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About 50 billion, to be specific. If you take the results from the Kepler Mission and do a bit of math, that’s the implication. Hundreds of millions of those planets are predicted to be in the habitable zone, too.

I’ve seen a moderate amount of hubbub about the theological implications of finding life elsewhere in the universe, especially intelligent life. I’ll likely post on this in the future, but for now I’ll just point out two things: 1) the Bible is mute on the subject; and 2) the great Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, had no problem with the prospect of intelligent life out there. (He did, however, express concern about humankind’s likely behavior toward any alien life we might encounter. Unfortunately, he’s probably right, but I’ll keep watching Star Trek and hoping for the best anyway.)

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