There is a really good PBS video called “The Secrets of the Sun,” on Nova. I am giving the link here,
because watching it may be more interesting than reading about it on this blog.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2226474716/
It is 53 minutes well-invested.
As a Christian apologist, two things stood out to me while
watching this documentary about the sun. These provide evidence that the
Universe has been purposefully created by God.
The first has to do with the composition of the Sun. Nuclear
fusion in its core is the source of it’s great heat and light. There is a
nuclear reaction going on in the core of the Sun that is equivalent to millions
of atomic bombs going off each second. If that is so, then why doesn’t the Sun blow
apart? A Princeton Scientist explains on the documentary, “Because there’s a beautiful balancing act that occurs. In the core of
the Sun you’ve got this pressure, from all of this fusion pushing outwards; and
the sun is huge so you have all this gravitational pressure pushing downward so
you’ve got this gravity pushing down and the Sun trying to blow itself apart
from the inside, and it is this beautiful balancing act between the two, that keeps the Sun in
one piece.[1]”
It’s a “beautiful balancing act.” Just the right amount of push both ways to
keep the Sun stable and dependable. I find it exciting how these types of
balancing acts keep occurring over and over again in nature.
The second point that grabbed me in this documentary was the
fact that the Sun is vibrating. Because of the massive movement of the Sun’s
plasma due to convection, many, many sound frequencies are emitted from the
Sun. Satellite studies of the Sun’s surface tended to show it vibrating. It was
initially thought to be errors in the instruments. As the instruments improved,
scientists finally realized the entire surface of the sun vibrates… with sound.
The sound is compared to notes on a pipe organ. Another web
source quotes Stanford scientist Dr Amara Graps as comparing the sound to a
bell.[2] Professor Ken Lang of Tufts University writes, "The Sun is playing a secret melody,
hidden inside itself, that produces a widespread throbbing motion of its surface.
The sounds are coursing through the Sun's interior, causing the entire globe,
or parts of it, to move in and out, slowly and rhythmically like the regular
rise and fall of tides in a bay or of a beating heart." [3]
The sun is like a pipe organ. Like a bell. Like the rise and
fall of tides. Like a beating heart.
Maybe now we begin to comprehend the meaning of the passage in Psalms: "Praise Him Sun and Moon, Praise Him, all you shining stars." [4]
[1]
Luc Peterson, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, on the PBS Video, Nova: The Secrets of the Sun
[3] Kenneth
R. Lang http://solar-center.stanford.edu/singing/
[4]
Psalm 148:3 (Revised Standard Version)
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