Tag Archives: science

Jesus’ return and the science of reentry

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Atlantis rentering earth's atmosphere (from space station)


Over at the Jesus Creed, a lively discussion over Jonah and the whale has been going on.

http://twitter.com/#!/scotmcknight/status/159362241655877633

The question posed is what would happen to Jonah if he was really swallowed by a fish? The post then quotes an article describing what happens to a person who was swallowed by a sperm whale, here is a portion of that grisly tale:

As the stomach acids broke you down, you would continue through three smaller stomachs — a chain of membranous, acid-filled cavities. The second stomach is S–shaped, and the third is more like the first, only smaller. Then, liquidated, you would ooze into the intestine, and eventually leave the whale as excrement, floating out of the anus and into the cold deep ocean, dissolving still further until you had become so small as debris that you were indistinguishable from the ocean itself. You would lap against whaling ships looking for whales.

The article from which the quote is taken challenges the reader “Still, you’d like to think it’s possible”. The implication here is that it is improbable (impossible?) for a person to survive this experience. While  there are certainly more important things to take away from the book of Jonah – like how to manage our anger and while a discussion can certainly be had as to the literary genre (historical narrative or a parable) it is interesting to see that many are willing to dismiss the possibility of the story as history (at least in part) based on the scientific evidence that one would simply be digested.

In an attempt at humor I can imagine this same group puzzling over how Jesus might fulfill his promise to return (Matt 24:29-31; John 14:3) given the scientific evidence for what happens to objects that go through the earth’s atmosphere:

Launching a spacecraft into space is one thing. B­ringing it back is another. Spacecraft re-entry is tricky business for several reasons. When an object enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it experiences a few forces, including gravity and drag. Gravity will naturally pull an object back to earth. But gravity alone would cause the object to fall dangerously fast. Luckily, the Earth’s atmosphere contains particles of air.

When it enters the atmosphere, it starts hitting these molecules of air which aren’t moving very much. Since the spaceship is moving very very fast, it hits each molecule of air very, very fast like a car hitting something on the road. The higher up in the atmosphere, the fewer molecules it hits; the closer to the Earth, the more molecules it hits. This is called friction.

This friction causes the object to experience drag, or air resistance, which slows the object down to a safer entry speed.

The disruption of it’s velocity energy expended with each molecule it hits turns into heat. The deeper into the atmosphere it gets with a great amount of speed, the greater the heat since it’s hitting more molecules at a time the faster it goes.

Specifically, shuttles face intense temperatures of about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1649 degrees Celsius)

[Mashup Source: HowStuffWorks and Wiki.answers]

Science can demonstrate that without heat shields, parachutes, and proper reentry angles a person returning from space would have a pretty tough time getting back to Earth. Using only what we know of science then imagine the scene given descriptions of Jesus returning on a white horse wearing only a robe.

I have no problem with the science here and also no problem placing my hope on the promise of His safe return, because the fact is Jesus is the One through whom all things were created and is also the One who sustains the very universe. Miracles by definition defy science. Otherwise they would not be miracles.

When Jesus encountered the stubborn rich, young, ruler who walked away from Him, He tells the disciples that it is difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom, in fact it is basically impossible. The disciples are stunned. Then Jesus tells them:

With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. – Mark 10:27

Far harder than preserving a man in a fish, is the changing of man’s stubborn selfish heart. And since God can do that  (I am living proof) I also believe He could have preserved Jonah through the ordeal of being swallowed by a fish.

He sustains the Universe

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I have been reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It is a relatively older book having been originally published in 1999 with a new edition released in 2003. The author is ambitious aiming to explain to a general audience the major advances in physics regarding the makeup of the universe and the contradiction involved in some of the theories (special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics) that string theory hopes to overcome.  Having read the first three chapters I am impressed with how Greene has explained the most complex of concepts using everyday examples. Math is certainly not one of my strong subjects (understatement of the year and it just got started) but I found myself understanding these concepts (at least more than I did).

NASA

Greene talking about the four fundamental forces of nature discusses the differences in strength between them. The electromagnetic forces are 10 to power of 42 stronger than gravity, while the strong force is 100 x stronger than electromagnetic and 100,000 times stronger than the weak force.  Why is this important:

the universe would be a vastly different place if the properties of the matter and force particles were even moderately changed. For example, the existence of the stable nuclei forming the hundred or so elements of the periodic table hinges delicately on the ratio between the strengths of the strong and electromagnetic forces. … But a rather small change in the relative strengths of these two forces would easily disrupt the balance between them, and would cause most atomic nuclei to disintegrate.

Furthermore, were the mass of the electron a few times greater than it is, electrons and protons would tend to combine to form neutrons, gobbling up the nuclei of hydrogen (the simplest element in the cosmos, with a nucleus containing a single proton) and, again, disrupting the production of more complex elements. (Kindle location 305)

In A Brief History of Time, noted physicist Stephen Hawking wrote:

The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. We cannot, at the moment at least, predict the values of these numbers from theory – we have to find them by observation. It may be that one day we shall discover a complete unifed theory that predicts them all, but it is also possible that some or all of them vary from universe to universe or within a single universe. The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. (p129)

In a Discover Magazine article, several leading theoretical physicists share that view:

an extraordinary fact about the universe: Its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. Tweak the laws of physics in just about any way and—in this universe, anyway—life as we know it would not exist. … There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.

“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” Linde says.

…

If [dark energy] had been any bigger, there would have been enough repulsion from it to overwhelm the gravity that drew the galaxies together, drew the stars together, and drew Earth together,” Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind says. “It’s one of the greatest mysteries in physics. All we know is that if it were much bigger we wouldn’t be here to ask about it.”

Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a physicist at the University of Texas, agrees. “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident,” he says.

As science continues to pursue answers to the makeup of the universe and the conflicts in existing theories we must remember that it wrestles with grand ideas that may or may not all hold up to experimentation. In 2010 Greene wrote an article for Discover magazine talking about string theory, space, and time:

For a long time we have been pursuing theoretical ideas like string theory without input from experiment or observation, and that is an unusual way for a science to evolve. In three decades—perhaps sooner with the help of the Large Hadron Collider and satellite-based astronomical observations—I would hope this changes. Should the observations support the theory, great; should they rule it out, that’s great too, because we’d be able to move on, full throttle, to other ideas.

…

And if I allow my imagination to run wild, I would love it if we had some deep insight that let us understand what space and time actually are. We know a lot about the features of space and time, what they can do—but many of us believe these are not fundamental. Identifying the constituents of space and time would be a grand insight.

As I read this book I found myself gaining an even greater appreciation for the intricacies and fine tuning of the universe, but best of all a greater appreciation for the One who created it.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:1-4, ESV)

When science learns how to explain all of these things even better than they can now it will not change the fact that He is the grand unifier and grand sustainer of it all.

HT: Thinking Christian for pointing out the Discover Magazine article.