Towards a Christian Cosmology

As people who know me will be aware, I am a ‘dabbler’ in astronomy. One area that fascinates me in particular is cosmology — a few years ago I even managed to stagger my way through Brian Green’s The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. (And for a bit of fun, click here to see Brian Green being ribbed by Sheldon and Amy on an episode of The Big Bang Theory — a show which is another of my favourite things.)

The subject matter of cosmology comes down to how the universe got to be here and why it is the way it is. Phenomena such as cosmic background radiation, or the red shift of most objects in the universe challenge cosmologists to put forward theories and models that fit what we observe about the physical world.

It is all great fun. The problem, however, is that in many cosmologies, and certainly in the prevailing ‘pop-cosmology’ written for folks like me, human beings wind up as an accidental by-product. Indeed in the worst cases, we almost seem to fit the apostle Paul’s description of himself and his companions as “the offscouring of all things” (1 Cor 4:13).

And this is somewhat ironic, when you consider that it is these same ‘persons’ who have the ability and inclination to seek an understanding of the universe that they then interpret as denying them any ‘universal’ significance.

There are, of course, some exceptions. Paul Davies, for one, appeals to the ‘anthropic principle’ as a possible basis for cosmology — in his case the view that the emergence of minds like ours retrospectively determined the physical constants that made their emergence inevitable. For the most part, however, modern cosmology uses its astonishing insights and suggestions to relegate us to the margins of the very reality it sets out to study.

This is one reason why I think it is important for Christians to develop their own cosmology, drawing not on physical data but on the data of revelation, particularly that found in Scripture. And whilst what we might call ‘natural cosmology’ addresses the existence universe at the level of its physical components, a ‘spiritual cosmology’ would address the ‘big picture’ which includes ourselves as persons and all that ‘personhood’ represents.

Indeed a Christian cosmology begins with a person — the person of Christ. Perhaps the most significant statement regarding whom in this regard is found in Colossians 1:16, where it says that “all things were created by him and for him” (NIV).

Speaking from this passage, I have often said that if you want to make a cup of tea for me, you need to start with my tastes in tea, not yours. Two sugars and plenty of milk is not going to evoke my happy face (such as it is).

Thus we need to look to the character of Jesus if we are to understand what sort of world would be made ‘for him’. And in this regard, I believe Scripture says something profoundly important (which I have explored in my booklet The Eternal Cross) to the effect that Christ’s character in relation to the world is always and essentially that of the ‘slain lamb’. Thus Peter writes,

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. (1 Pe 1:18-20, NIV, cf Eph 1:4; Rev 5:6)

That being the case, however, we ought not to be surprised that the world — our ‘cosmos’ — is one appropriate to a dying Saviour. In other words, sin, death, illness, disease, decay, etc are exactly what we ought to expect (just as they are, of course, exactly what we find).

Similarly, we ought to expect that we ourselves are of necessity creatures who need saving by a dying Saviour. As has often been said, it is not that God had a ‘plan A’ which then had to be turned into a ‘plan B’ when sin came along. However, this observation follows not just from the sovereignty of God but from the character of Christ.

I have often mused on the fact that according to Genesis 3:22, it would seem that the post-Fall human couple were more like God than they were pre-Fall. What the serpent promised (“you will be like God”, 3:5) has come true (“the man has now become like one of us”). Of course this is why we also need the one who will strike the serpent’s head at the cost of the serpent striking his heel (3:15). But given that Christ had already been ordained for this “before the creation of the world”, it raises in my mind the question as to whether the achievement of becoming “like one of us” could have been brought about any other way.

Implicit in this, therefore, is what I would term a ‘benign necessitarianism’. This, if I have understood him correctly, is essentially the view put forward by the Christian philosopher Norman Kretzmann. In answer to the question ‘Why would God create anything at all?’, his answer, essentially, is ‘Because he is like that.’

The term ‘necessitarianism’ refers, therefore, to the way in which creation is, to some extent, a ‘necessary’ action on God’s part. But it is ‘benign’ because, rather than being constrained by some external factors, God is impelled by his own nature.

And this brings us to a further feature of a Christian cosmology, which is to suggest that the nature of Christ entails the existence of the Church. Indeed arguably it is the Church of which it can most truly be said, ‘This was made for him.’ One of the reasons for taking this view is found in Kretzmann’s own arguments (drawing, amongst others, on Thomas Aquinas) that it is God’s love that drives the act of creation. The Church is thus supremely the object of the love of God shown to us in Christ Jesus.

I have argued elsewhere (though I drew some flak for doing so) that the account of the creation of the woman in Genesis 2 is itself an example of biblical ‘typology’ in this regard. Adam is ‘self-sufficient’ as regards his physical existing and his imaging of God in his personhood. There is no deficiency in him, yet it is ‘not good’ that there should be ‘only him’ (Gen 2:18, the proper sense of the Hebrew word translated ‘alone’ in most English versions). And the woman — taken from him and participating in his life rather than being a further derivation from the dust of the ground — is both the remedy to this ‘not good’ and a forerunner of the bridal Church in relation to her husband in Christ, an image in which the one imaged finds a separate self to love as his own self.

Furthermore we need to be aware that this ‘spousal relationship’ between the Creator-Redeemer God and his created-redeemed people goes to the very heart of the nature of our salvation (consider 1 Cor 6:16-17, for example) and again points back to factors relating to our ‘cosmology’.

All this is by way of very preliminary thoughts, but I sometimes worry that I won’t ever get round to developing these ideas more fully. I therefore offer them for your consideration and, perhaps, for your own further development.

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Buying a telescope? A couple of tips

I see from the Daily Mail that there has apparently been a surge in people buying telescopes as a result of the recent ‘Stargazing Live’ programme on BBC2.

As a bit of a ‘dabbler’ myself (I actually have a minor qualification in astronomy from my university days), I think this is basically a good thing.

However, when it comes to buying a telescope, there’s a couple of tips I’d like to share — and I’d invite others to contribute their own.

First, forget magnification. It’s complicated to explain, but magnification figures can be very misleading when it comes to what you’re going to see down the telescope when you finally get it set up.

Instead, go for ‘width’ — the bigger the aperture, generally the better.

Think of light like water. Imagine its raining and you put a tea cup and a washing-up bowl out in the garden. After twenty minutes, which one’s going to contain the most water? It’s going to be the bowl. Because it covers a bigger area than the teacup, it will have been able to catch more of the rain.

The same with light coming from the sky. A 4" wide telescope will capture not just twice as much light, but four times as much light as a 2" telescope. This means you will see much fainter objects.

But don’t expect to see views like the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. With a decent 4" telescope, the Andromeda galaxy — one of the biggest and brightest ‘deep sky objects’ — is still only going to look like a faint fuzzy patch.

On the other hand, the moon and the planets can be quite stunning. But here another rule applies regarding telescopes.

Basically, telescopes come in two kinds: refractors and reflectors. Refractors, you look straight through the tube — think Lord Nelson. Reflectors, you look into it sideways. (There are complicated variations on reflectors, but hey, you’re a beginner, right?)

Due to the way they’re made, reflectors are shorter and they tend to allow big apertures at lower costs. Refractors are longer, and you pay much more, proportionately, for large apertures. BUT refractors give sharper planetary viewing at smaller sizes than do reflectors. So if you want to view the planets — and there’s a lot to see right now — a smaller, quality, refractor might be better than a larger (but not quite large enough!) reflector.

Even so, the rule above still applies — magnification is not the first concern.

The other thing to bear in mind is what you’re going to put the telescope on. If this is your first venture, you’ll probably be OK with a package of telescope and mount, and don’t worry too much about fancy things like motor drives and ‘Go-to’ mounts. Just whack the thing on a tripod, have a look round and if you enjoy it, upgrade when you get bored.

But if you’re reasonably serious about this, look carefully at the mount you’re going to buy. Bear in mind, you can always stick a better telescope on a good mount, whereas a flimsy mount, or an unreliable tracking motor, means even you best viewing efforts will be frustrated.

And another thing — don’t neglect simple binoculars. In fact, for the complete beginner these may be a much better starting point than a telescope.

Personally, I would recommend getting a pair of ‘specialist’ astronomical binoculars. I have a pair of these ‘Revelation’ binoculars from Telescope House. On a limited budget, you would be hard-pressed to do better. They cost me more than the current £55, and they will give you that ‘wow’ factor if you point them at the right part of the sky.

Notice they are 15x70. That is to say, they ‘only’ magnify 15 times (though that’s a pretty big seagull at 100 yards). But they have a 70mm aperture. That’s 2.75 inches — as big as some telescopes. They’re heavy — you’ll get best viewing by putting them on a stand, so don’t forget to buy the tripod adapter as well. But a camera tripod, or even a tall ‘monopod’ will do (it needs to be tall if you’re over 6ft, like me).

Get your kids a pair of these and they will have something that really will last them years, even if they graduate later to a telescope. It is much easier to pack the ‘bins’ and whip them out when needed than to do the same with a 105mm Meade, believe me! (And if you have the money, look at the next size up, though bear in mind that these ‘astronomical’ binoculars are less suitable for daylight work, like birdwatching.)

Finally, much as I appreciate Amazon, this really is a case where I would recommend going to and buying from a specialist suppliers. Telescope House in Tunbridge Wells give a good service in my experience, as do Green Witch (I think it’s a word play on Greenwich, where the Royal Observatory was once located), though they have now moved from their Cambridge location. (Please don’t get their advice then buy from Amazon — that is just wrong.)

Enjoy. But bear in mind, its blooming cold out there.

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More Astrophotography

Meanwhile, everything is OK in space.

I got a book called Photoshop Astronomy for my birthday (which, incidentally, Waterstone's did a lot cheaper than the Amazon price). It is very complicated, but once you get the hang of things, makes a real difference. Anyway, above is a picture of Orion's belt showing the Great Nebula, taken with nothing more complicated than a digital camera with a zoom lens mounted on a tripod in my back garden a couple of years ago, then processed through Deep Sky Stacker (free online) and Serif Photoplus which you can get earlier versions of for £15.

Enjoy. (Click the picture to enlarge.)

PS - if you look between the central star of the belt and the bright star at about 3.30 on the clock face, you can see a short 'trail' which I reckon may just be an asteroid!

PPS - compare it with this earlier effort and you'll see what a difference the book makes (although that was based on a different image)!

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When I behold the heavens ...

Sometimes it is good to get things in perspective. Here is a photo of the constellation Orion, taken from my back garden and then processed a bit to bring out the detail. You're looking at the 'belt' (the three stars in a straight line at an angle) and the nebula on Orion's sword. Zoom on the image to check out just how many stars there are, most of which you can never see with the naked eye and yet which are just a tiny fraction of those that would show up in a telescope.

This was shot using a digital slr camera on a tripod - nothing more fancy than that. Below is a wider angle image of the same. Two thirds of the way up, on the left, is my favourite star, Betelgeuse, a red supergiant which is so big that if it replaced our Sun, we'd be orbiting inside it. I should just point out that the round dots are not the surface images of the stars. Even Betelgeuse is too far away to show a 'disk'. This is just an illusion cause by slight movements of the tripod and, mostly, atmospheric distortion.

The colours are true colours, but exaggerated by increasing the 'saturation'. The red at the bottom of the picture is not sunset but sodium street lamps!


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Possibly the worst bit of reporting this year

The Sunday Telegraph today contains what has to be in line for ‘Worst Reporting of the Year’ award.

Under the headline “Second Sun on its Way” (which rather caught my eye), it reports, “The Earth could find itself with a 'second sun' for a period of weeks later this year when one of the night sky’s most luminous stars explodes, scientists have claimed.”

“Fantastic!” thinks I. But to my knowledge, no-one has yet been able to predict a supernova explosion, so what’s happened?

Read on:

Betelgeuse, which is part of the Orion constellation 640 light years away from Earth, is a red supergiant, meaning that it is nearing the end of its life and is due to explode.

When it does do, it will burn so brightly that the earth will appear to have two suns in the sky, the Daily Mail reported.

So far, so familiar to astronomy fans, but then comes the key phrase:

What is less certain is when it will explode.

And so,

Brad Carter, senior lecturer of physics at the University of southern Queensland in Australia, said the explosion could take place before the end of the year – or indeed at any point over the next million years.

Hm. Not worth waiting up for, then. And in any case, astronomy being what it is on these shores, it is bound to be cloudy.

(As a PS, Betelgeuse is the slightly red-looking top left star in the constellation of Orion, the one with the 'belt' of three stars close together. It is so big that if it replaced our Sun, we would actually be orbitting inside it!)

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Now you see us, now you don't, or "Who knows where the time goes?"

Earlier in the week I posted a ‘musing’ about time.

I’ve been thinking about the issues raised there for quite a while, but more recently I’m inclined to suggest they have some bearing on our present-day intellectual battles.

I have just begun reading Keith Ward’s More Than Matter?, which makes the following point:

Most people ... accept a philosophy of common sense. They assume that things continue to be roughly what they are observed to be even when nobody is observing them. We live in a world of real objects in three-dimensional space, and we observe it more or less as it is (this is ... sometimes called naive realism, because many philosophers think it really is rather naive). (30-31)

That, I think, pretty much describes where most people are at. Indeed, I would go further and say that is pretty much where the public discourse encourages them to be at. We are encouraged to think of the world on a ‘what you see is what you get’ basis, within which we are marginalized as mere accidents, able to observe for a while but due to disappear quite soon, whilst the ‘reality’ of the universe continues as it has always done.

At the same time, however, we are also encouraged to regard human affairs as of mammoth importance — the state of the economy and the behaviour of governments, for example, are prominently headlined, even though, for the most part, most of what is headline news only affects us emotionally (and, indeed, is written up precisely to affect our emotions).

Thus one could say we actually live in a ‘Matrix world’, imagining we are busy with important things, but shielded from too much present awareness of the real reality.

Of course, those who understand much science (and especially physics), know the naivety of this ‘naive realism’ all too well. Matter is not matter ‘as we know it’. Nor, indeed, is time what we ‘know’ it to be. Indeed, our ‘real’ world of space-time is avowedly elusive, and, at the level of ‘common sense’ almost illusory.

One illustration of the latter, it seems to me, is the question of when ‘now’ becomes ‘then’.

Common sense says we live in the now — the present moment — which has an extension in time. My guess is that for most people ‘what is happening now’ is quite a flexible concept. Right now I am typing. Right now in Africa people are starving. It is now early evening in Perth — and so on.

Yet if we think about ‘now’ as ‘that which has not become the irrecoverable past’, it becomes contracted almost to the point of vanishing. By the time I finish typing this sentence, the production of the capital B is already ‘the irrecoverable past’. I can go back and correct a mistake, but I cannot go back in time and not make it in the first place.

Worse than that, however, by the time I have typed the w at the end of ‘now’, the n at the beginning is already in the ‘irrecoverable past’. And so it goes on, as we slice ‘now’ (both the action of producing the word, and the concept itself into smaller and smaller sections.

But, of course, it is not just the ‘time’ that is irrecoverable, it is also the matter — the physical reality that we think of as ‘permanent’.

And this realization can, I think, be somewhat mind-boggling. We are accustomed to think of the past in terms of millennia (or even ‘billennia’) that, by their sheer magnitude, establish it as something ‘real’. Yet it would seem that actually nothing ‘in the past’ exists. Certainly it existed, but only for that brief moment we call ‘now’. In our ‘now’, what is ‘then’ doesn’t exist at all.

More strangely still, the entirety of the universe is exactly the same. All the vastness, from here to whatever is the furthest point we can speak of as physically existing, is actually in existence only ‘now’. We may predict what vast swathes of it are going to be like in a moment’s time, or even millions of years time, but what we can predict nevertheless has no existence. And we can see what equally vast swathes of it were, and how that relates to the nature of things ‘now’. But what once ‘was’, now ‘is not’.

And this, I would suggest, has implications for the answer to the question, ‘Why are we here?’ For although the condition of the world ‘now’ results from its condition in the past, the existence of the world ‘now’ stands — it would seem — separated from either the past or the future.

And there I must leave it — for now.

John Richardson
16 December 2010

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Is there really "no time" like the present? A question about physics with a theological twist

I am looking for some help with understanding an aspect of physics which relates to something I want to consider theologically.

Basically, it is to do with the question of existence and time.

There’s a rather nice diagram which, I gather, sums up the present state of understanding in terms of time and space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_line.svg 

Here, the past is ‘the region from which we can receive light’ and the future is ‘the region to which we can send light’.

Thus the longer ago a thing happened, the further the distance from which we can receive light from that event. Hence, the ‘past’ light cone contracts towards us, the observer, in the present, as we can only receive light from recent events that are correspondingly near to us in space, whereas we can receive the light of events that took place billions of years ago from equally immense distances away.

On the other hand, if we point a flash gun at the sky and set it off, the light will spread out (theoretically) throughout the universe, so the ‘future’ light cone expands away from us. After eight minutes it will have reached the Sun. After about four and a half years, it will have reached Alpha Centauri, and so on.

What I am really interested in, however, is that bit of the diagram labelled “hypersurface of the present”, and what the relationship is between ‘the present’, ‘the past’ and ‘the future’.

And here’s my key question: how can we speak of things that are not on the hypersurface of the present actually existing?

It would seem patently obvious (though I may be missing something!) that from a simply physical point of view, nothing on the ‘future’ side of the diagram actually exists at all, even if its ‘coming into being’ is both predictable and inevitable.

Does the same, however, apply to the past? If so, then the only realm in which we can talk about things actually existing is on the plane of the hypersurface of the present.

But then we have to ask the question, just how ‘thick’ is that plane? I believe some people suggest it is just a ‘Planck Moment’, but I’d be interested to know of other ideas.

I am aware that the question is complicated by aspects of Relativity theory, which mean that time is not ‘absolute’. In particular, there is the interesting, though hard to conceive, fact that events which appear simultaneous to one observer may be separated in time from the perspective of another observer.

Considered overall, then, the hypersurface of the present may be ‘wavy’ — a bit ahead for some observers, a bit behind for others, but how far might these ‘waves’ extend?

I am also aware that St Augustine of Hippo wrote a whole chapter on this subject in his Confessions. What he said is very interesting, but I’m trying to get at the physics in the first instance before looking at the theology.

What I am asking is whether it could actually be that, despite our memories of the past and our anticipation of the future, what exists, physically, is confined to a ‘micromoment’.

Thoughts and contributions would be welcome.

John Richardson
14 December 2010

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Venus and Mercury

Just had a pleasant week away at Blakeney in Norfolk, during which I managed to shoot this picture on Thursday night of Venus and Mercury in conjunction at sunset (7.30pm, looking west). Click on the picture above for a full-size version.

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Getting things in perspective

Yesterday, whilst languishing in my sick-bed, I was musing about my occasional hobby of astronomy and wanted to look up online some information about galaxies. That led me to this website which, as the name suggests, is a handy 'Atlas of the Universe'. What is really fascinating is that it begins at the level of 12.5 light years from the Sun and zooms out in stages - the solar neighbourhood, our local arm of the galaxy, etc.

Where it gets truly mind boggling is at the level of the local galactic superclusters - groups of galaxies where our own galaxy is just one dot amongst thousands, consisting of 200,000,000,000,000 stars (200 trillion).

Finally, we get a picture of the whole universe (and yes, there really is a 'you are here' sign, though it points to the Virgo Supercluster, rather than just us).

The temptation, of course, is to see ourselves as 'insignificant' against such vastness. The curious thing, though, is that we ourselves seem to be about a third of the way along the spectrum from the very smallest (subatomic) to the very biggest (whole universe) objects, as can be seen here and here. From the perspective of a single cell, then, we ourselves are truly 'vast'. And from the perspective of a virus, a cell is huge. Yet right now I am experiencing the importance of the very very small when it comes to the very very big. (The scale difference between me and a virus is about that between me and the entire globe.)

John Richardson
24 January 2010

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Best Saturn yet

This time I managed to capture Saturn with the 'Barlow' magnifier which gives a bigger image.

It also makes it harder, however, to pick up in the viewfinder, so this took some capturing.

If you look very carefully, you can still see Titan, over on the left side of the picture, about a fifth of the way down, as a faint dot. I've cross-checked this with Redshift 5 to establish that is where Titan was at the time. Remember, it is orbiting Saturn, so it won't be where it was last time.

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Crescent Venus at last, and a better Saturn

With the scope up and running, I finally got a picture of the crescent Venus. It's a long way short of brilliant as the planet is now very low on the horizon - or at least, low enough to be behind the surrounding fences, trees and houses in my back garden. I had to set up without proper alignment and take a very short exposure. There are also a lot of problems with heat haze rising from roofs, etc.

However, I managed to get a much better shot of Saturn than previously (scroll down a bit and you can see the old one). In fact in this picture you can just make out Saturn's brightest moon, Titan. Technophiles may be interested to know that these are taken with a webcam stuck down the eyepiece of the telescope. The camera is a Philips SPC900NC, which uses a light-sensitive CCD chip instead of the normal CMOS. These are becoming quite rare!





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The scope is back - and here's Saturn

Thanks to the very nice man at Telescope House in Tunbridge Wells, the telescope is back and working! I managed to get a shot at Saturn last night. I think there was some dew on the lens, as the picture isn't as sharp as I would have hoped, but it was very cold!

Funnily enough, the last time I think I have been that cold was also when doing some astronomy, back at Keele University in the winter of early 1970.

BTW, you can't just wipe the dew off! That would ruin a very expensive piece of kit - you have to get a dew shield (mine is broken!!!) or a heating element to go round the telescope tube.

Update 20 March

I posted this on the Society for Popular Astronomy website, where I'm a member. You can now see the (much improved) pictures I took the next night, and also see a link to some truly astonishing work from the world-famous Pete Lawrence, who seems to have personal access to a spaceship.

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Why Venus is so bright

For those who were interested in yesterday's photo of the crescent Moon and (crescent) Venus, this snapshot from Redshift 5 software shows why the planet is currently so bright.

From this angle, above the solar system, the planets are rotating round the Sun anti-clockwise. Because Venus is so close to us, it is visually much bigger than when on the other side of its orbit, even though only part of its cloudy 'surface' is illuminated.

However, Venus is going faster than us, as is Mercury (the swift 'Messenger of the Gods'), and will soon pass us on the 'inside track'. At that point, although it is closest to us, it will become much less visible as it gets nearer the Sun from our point of view.

By mid March it will be back to being the familiar 'evening star', visible just around sunset, particularly with evenings getting lighter.

By April, it will (if I've got this right) be re-appearing at a similar brightness, but this time as the 'morning star'. And with days getting longer there won't be many opportunities to observe it, so enjoy it while it lasts.

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