Good Heavens! The Human Side of Astronomy

Venus is the morning and evening star, often mistaken for a plane or UFO. Named after the Greco-Roman goddess of love, Venus is anything but hospitable to human life. Tornado-like windspeeds in the upper atmosphere, a crushingly suffocating and poisonous atmosphere, a harsh, volcano-covered surface, all make us marvel and wonder. What exactly is Venus?

Here on this month's Good Heavens! episode Wayne and Dan ponder aloud the mysteries and wonders of the second planet from the sun and how they think Venus points us to the glory of God in Christ.

Thumbnail image from...

Mountain peaks and summits make for excellent platforms for observing the glory of God. How might the summit of the dormant volcano of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, with its thirteen active telescopes operated by 11 different countries, point us to the glory of God and what God has done for us in Jesus?

Thumbnail image: The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The telescope is operated by the East Asian Observatory https://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/public/gallery/images/

Good Heavens! is a production of Watchman Fellowship, Inc., a nonprofit educational research ministry.
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This month, Wayne and Dan go to the moon (sort of)! We talk about the historic Artemis II mission, discuss some scientific mysteries about the moon, read some moon poetry and scripture which mentions the moon. We also, hopefully, make sense of how we see the moon pointing us to the glory of God in Christ.

Image credits in the thumbnail. Moon and Earth - Artemis II crew and NASA. Astronaut cake topper, Jennifer Blevins.

Links n things we mentioned in the broadcast.

NASA Press Conference Artemis II
https://www.you

Come and see!

Yet another discovery courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope, something over which astronomers are presently puzzling!

A star? A quasar? A galaxy? It's not something that astronomers have ever seen before.  Like the Platypus, these objects are hard to categorize. How does this latest curious heavenly object remind us of the One who created them?

Wayne and Dan have some ideas! Join us!

Recently, cosmologist Dr. Sean Carroll suggested that the amount of galaxies in our universe is not something we would expect if God created the universe.

But how does Dr. Carroll know what we should expect a God-created universe to look like? That's a question we explore on this month's episode of Good Heavens! Come and see!

The thumbnail image of this month's episode is an enormous field of galaxies, thousands of them, released by NASA and the ESA last April. You can read more about this stunning image here. With the exception of the orbs...

What do meerkats and comets have in common? Well, besides both being created by God, which is no small thing, you'll have to just listen to this month's episode of Good Heavens! to find out the answer! If we told you everything in the show notes, you might not end up listening!

This month, Wayne and Dan give some updates on the science of interstellar comet 3i-ATLAS, talk about meerkats, stars, and a fantastic new discovery announced in December of last year that has astronomers' heads spinning!

Come and see!

Good Heavens! is...

We have another interstellar visitor in the solar system, something truly out of this (particular) world!

Is it an alien spacecraft? Is it a comet? A sign of the end of the world? An asteroid? Demons just messing with us?  What's All the Gas About?

Here on this episode of Good Heavens! we cut through all the viral hype and make some biblical sense of this wondrous interstellar object. Come and see!

NASA fast facts on this mysterious object:

This is Mark and Rita's first-ever podcast interview! The Schrocks are fellow Christians and engineer specialists at NASA's Mission Control in Houston, Texas and share with us what working at Mission Control is like. We talk about everything from landing on the moon, to Space Shuttle missions and even what they think of aliens!

And of course, we talk about how we believe it all points to the glory of God. Human space exploration is good, but it isn't safe.

Mark is the chief design engineer behind the Space Shuttle's Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver which was...

How does a short passage in Mark chapter 2 point to Jesus as Lord and God? And what might Jesus' healing of the paralytic say about the nature of the universe and our place within it? Can we trust Mark's account as real history?

This is a short audio essay examines these questions in greater detail and hopefully provides us with some encouragement not to be discouraged in times when God seems silent.

Thumbnail photo credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)). This is Pismis 24, a small star cluster in the constellation Scorpius, the...

Atheists have often claimed that the Bible makes no scientific predictions and therefore cannot be a valid source of knowledge about the universe.

But this is simply unfounded. First, modern science as we understand it today did not exist thousands of years ago. To demand that our modern expectations should be imposed upon the text of Scripture is anachronistic eisegesis. It is our imposing our expectations and understanding into the texts of the Bible.

But second, Psalm 19, written by King David some 3,000 years ago, tells us that the heavens are continually pouring forth speech and...

How does philosophy inform modern physics? And how do physicists incorporate philosophy into their research?

On this episode, we dive into those questions with philosopher Dr. Timothy McGrew and astrophysicist Dr. Luke Barnes in order to help you fine tune your thinking about the fine tuning of the universe.

Critics of the fine-tuning argument will often invoke probabilities in order to get around the argument's deeper implication of the existence of God.

Tim and Luke will explore some of the issues in probability theory as it informs the physics of the fine-tuning

The brand new Vera Rubin Observatory recently opened its 28-foot diameter mirror and snapped a few stunning images that astronomers displayed to the public for the first time in June.

You can explore the amazing imagery of the heavens at the observatory's website at this site: 
https://rubinobservatory.org/news/first-imagery-rubin

Why so many stars? Why is the universe so immensely enormous, beyond our comprehension? What is the universe saying to us?

There would be no science of the heaven

Despite how secular most disciplines in the physical sciences are today, those who study nature assume that nature is intelligible and that it should be explored. But how does modern science actually explain what nature is saying to us? How do the explain that nature is intelligible to us at all? Is science the only way to understand the physical universe and everything it contains?

From silvery meandering rivers to the variegated heavenly canopy of stars above us, all creation is speaking to us, but in the words of the late Dr. Carl Sagan, "Who speaks for...

The Bible tells us that we can see and understand "God's invisible attributes" through what He has created. And this is precisely what former atheist Michael Ray Lewis discovered as he spent three years examining the evidence for Christianity. One of the most impressive arguments he encountered during his time of searching was that of the fine tuning of the universe.

Jesus eventually got hold of Michael and not long thereafter his wife encouraged him to make a documentary about the evidence he had uncovered for Christianity.

Here on part two of our conversation with...

This is why we produce Good Heavens! God's creation shows us His invisible attributes. He uses His creation to lead us to Christ, through whom and for whom the entirety of the heavens and earth were made (Colossians 1).

Dan recently met a former atheist who became a Christian and has recently completed the final edits on a remarkable docudrama film about the cosmos and how it all points us to Jesus. The film is called Universe Designed and it is the passion project of our guest on Good Heavens! for the next two episodes, filmmaker Michael Ray...

Neptune is the Roman name for the Greek god of the seas and of earthquakes. Poseidon, in Greek mythology, is the father of Polyphemus, the tyrannical, man-eating cyclopes of Homer's Odyssey. Because the Odysseus blinded Polyphemus, it was Poseidon and his wrath which ultimately made Odysseus' trip home a little more circuitous than was to the Big O's liking.

Thankfully, Poseidon and his offspring exist only in the long-gone minds and imaginations of Homer and the Greco-Roman world.

But there is a true King of king and Lord of lords, which even the wind, wave...

You don't hear much about Uranus these days. Probably because it's 1.8 billion miles away, or maybe because the last time an Earth-launched satellite probe visited the enigmatic ringed world was in 1986. A few years ago the James Webb Space Telescope took the beauteous portrait of Uranus you see in the thumbnail, but for the most part, most folks don't think much about the quirky planet that orbits the sun whilst rolling on its side.

Hopefully, this episode will at least make you think about Uranus as a work of art, the "handiwork" of God (Psalm 8 and 19), which...

What does the Bible say about the sun? What is the purpose of the sun? Why did God create it? How does the sun remind us of God's invisible attributes? How could there have been life on earth before the sun? How can we best understand both what the Bible says and what science says about our sun?

The sun was designed and created for God's glory; for signs and for seasons, for days and years, to govern the day, and to give light on the earth. Come and see with Wayne and Dan what the Bible...

Our thumbnail image this week is not a doctored or photoshopped image, but a genuine picture of the sun from October 2024. Taken in 193 angstrom light on Oct. 26, 2024, NASA captured our sun in a state of rejoicing, or so it seemed (image credit NASA/GSFC/SDO). The darker regions you see that comprise the eyes and mouth are actually regions of the surface of the sun that have been blasted off by coronal mass ejections that can trigger solar storms here on earth. In fact, solar storm warnings were issued because of this particular image. All that "missing" material is...

How might things like "spooky action at a distance" or mysterious as "dark matter" point us to the glory of God? Whether you are a theist or a non-theist or a Christian who believes in a young or an old universe, we can all agree on at least one thing.

The universe is a fascinating place in which we find ourselves. That the universe is intelligible to us is even more remarkable.

But here at Good Heavens! we like to think the cosmos is more than just fascinating. We believe, as the Bible reveals, that...

As human beings we occupy a wondrously peculiar size in the cosmos. With our unique stature, we are able to see and comprehend scales of the universe at the inconceivably huge and the unimaginably small. We here at Good Heavens! believe God has arranged this peculiar state of affairs and wants us to know and delight in what He has made. 

The heavens are telling of His glory and we want to be a part in getting His word and the works of His hands out there for everyone to contemplate, consider, and enjoy.

On t...

Black holes continue to amaze and surprise us. Just when it seemed the scientific community was settling in on how black holes form, a string of recent discoveries has begun to call those assumptions into question.

How about a triple black hole system? Or how about a black hole that is "feeding" itself many times faster than astrophysicists thought possible.

Here on part two Wayne and Dan delve into the mysteries of these entities to the best of their knowledge and ability and they consider how these recent discoveries point us to the glory of...

Black holes remain one of the most enigmatic and wondrous entities in the cosmos. We have only known about them for less than a century. And just when you think you've got a handle on what exactly they are, new discoveries begin to challenge these assumptions.

Just in the last decade, astrophysicists have not only photographed a black hole but have detected gravitational waves, the ripples in spacetime fabric created by the merger of two supermassive black holes.  (See a video on this at  https://www.youtube.com/live/aEPIwEJmZyE?si=tZhq0Gs-WKZfRvOX )

Here on...

The telescope technology of our time has revealed wonders in the cosmos our ancestors could only dream about. But have these discoveries in any way undermined the biblical account of creation? Our guest again this week, astrophysicist and author at Reasons to Believe, Dr. Jeff Zweerink tells us that we have nothing to fear, not even the multiverse! Many atheists and skeptics have tried to employ the multiverse as a means of explaining away God as the cause of the existence of our universe. Come and hear what Jeff has to say this week about how creation not only...

The universe is a fantastically wondrous place. There are more things in heaven and earth than are often dreamt of in our philosophies, to paraphrase Hamlet a little bit. And for the many things we can observe in the physical universe, science sometimes struggles to come up with an explanation as to what is really going on. How much more mysterious are those things which we cannot see? How should Christians think about things that the science of the heavens tells us cannot be seen, such as the idea of the existence of many different universes? That's the question...

Instead of just one topic, Wayne and Dan thought it would be fun to cover some current events in the heavens and call it "News from Space" for lack of a better segment title. On this episode they chat about astronauts stuck in space, some strange exoplanets, what it really means to be an "earth-like" planet, and there's even a black hole that shoots out a Death-Star like jet of plasma that seems to ignite supernovae!

And of course, how Wayne and Dan think it all points to the glory of God in Christ.

Part two with former 4th-generation Latter-day Saint James K. Walker and astrophysicist and Cosmologist Dr. Luke Barnes, plus some bonus surprise guests.

Make sure you listen to Part One for fuller context of our conversation!

There is a reason the Gospel has often been referred to as "the Greatest Story ever told." Here on part two, we flesh out a little bit more into the ideas of many universes, materialism, Mormonism cosmology, and how they compare to the Christian story and our place within it.

Come and see!

Something a little out of the ordinary for our Good Heavens! family. How about theories in physics and cosmology combined with a discussion about Mormonism and storytelling? Yes! That's a lot to process, but we hope you'll find it mildly interesting and encouraging.

This broadcast will also be airing on our sister podcast Apologetics Profile later next month.

On this episode and next we'll be featuring our president of Watchman Fellowship, James K. Walker, a former 4th-generation Latter-day Saint in conversation with astrophysicist and cosmologist from Sydney, Australia, Dr. Luke Barnes, discussing many worlds, multiverses...

As you certainly know by now, for the month of August, Wayne and I have taken a little break from the heavens for a very special focus on the Earth, specifically some spectacular geological evidence for the biblical flood.

Here on part three of our three-part series we are yet again grateful and honored to have as our very special guest one of the top creation geologists in the world Dr. Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis.

Whether you are a young or old-earth creationist, a skeptic, agnostic, atheist or whether you know next to...

For the month of August, Wayne and I are taking a little break from the heavens for a very special focus on the Earth, specifically some spectacular geological evidence for the biblical flood.

Here on part two of our three-part series we are once again grateful and honored to have as our very special guest one of the top creation geologists in the world Dr. Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis.

Whether you are a young or old-earth creationist, a skeptic, agnostic, atheist or whether you know next to nothing about geology, we think you'll...

For the month of August, Wayne and I are taking a little break from the heavens for a very special focus on the Earth, specifically some spectacular geological evidence for the biblical flood.  And in this three-part series we are honored to have as our very special guest one of the top creation geologists in the world Dr. Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis.  Whether you are a young or old-earth creationist, a skeptic, agnostic, atheist or whether you know next to nothing about geology, we think you'll find our three-part series fascinating and enlightening.

Ou...

We continue our discussion about the Hubble Constant and delve into a few other cosmic anomalies, including the assumption Albert Einstein made regarding the speed of light.

And, somehow, we also ended up talking about Noah's flood and the Whopper Sand. You'll have to listen to the end to find out how that happened!

Come and see how we think it all points to the glory and majesty of God.

Dan's very short video on the whooper sand.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r9COYBra94

Probably the only thing that is constant about the Hubble Constant is that it keeps changing! What is it? Why is it such a hot topic in cosmology today and why are some even calling it a "crisis"?

Come along with Wayne and Dan as they dive into the quest for the elusive magic number. What does it mean for cosmology and what might it all have to do with the way God made the universe?

The following links are not meant to imply the ideas contained therein reflect those of Good Heavens! or Watchman...

What explanations have astronomers come up with to explain the recent mysterious discovery of JuMBOs in the Orion Nebula?  Why so many? How did they form? Why so many in pairs? Why did the form in the Orion Nebula? Here on part two we discuss some possible "naturalistic" hypotheses but conclude that no matter what technical explanation astronomers might offer, we believe these wonderful little orbs are just a small part of how the heavens declare the glory of God and show forth His marvelous handiwork.

Come and see!

Wayne's article on the s...

The "Standard Model" of particle physics is science's attempt to explain the basic, fundamental building blocks of the universe. In many ways, the Standard Model has accurately predicted many groundbreaking discoveries at the subatomic levels.

But for everything the Standard Model has predicted and described, there are a great many things for which it cannot account. Never in a million years could anyone look at the intricacies of the atom and think that from this tiny Lego-block-like structure things like giant sequoia redwoods, or blue whales, or even enormous variegated swirling arms of stars in galaxies would...

Come and hear more on Saturn's rings and what scientists say about how they formed! Despite all science tells us about the sixth planet from the sun, the wondrously ringed world of Saturn, there is still much that remains unknown. And maybe we will never know all there is to know about it. And maybe that unknown is part of what the glory of God is all about, after all He is omniscient and we are not! But God has graciously enabled us to look at what He has made in the heavens in a very up-close and personal...

Wayne made up "eclipsnic" to describe our combination picnic and eclipse we watched with not a little awe and wonder in Waxahachie, Texas on April 8, 2024. On this special episode we try to put into words what words cannot finally adequately describe.

The event was truly wondrous - a carefully choreographed dance of the Sun, Moon, and Earth has to be experienced in person. If you did not get a chance to see this marvel, we try to give you a theater of the mind experience on this broadcast and make you feel like you were...

News clip from CBS https://youtu.be/ZSMiQQ7aQKI?si=2KKoL2ECu8YOgOln

Link to "The Journal of Creation" December 2023 issue, featuring Wayne's article on Saturn's rings. The article is presently through subscription to the Journal only. https://creation.com/journal-of-creation-373

Dan's article on the hexagon high atop Saturn.

Total eclipses are a spectacular and breathtaking wonder to behold. And a total eclipse is coming over the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex as well as parts of the eastern United States on April 8th, 2024. Totality in the DFW area will last a little over four minutes.  If you are in the vicinity of DFW, come join Wayne and Dan in Waxahachie, Texas on April 8th, 2024 for the Discovery Institute event. You can find tickets here at this link.

https://www.discovery.org/e/eclipse/

Waxahachie, Texas will be nearly in the center of the moon's s...

Stereo repost.  Current models of how our universe came to be are based on a few assumptions the brilliant physicist-genius Albert Einstein made about the universe - things he could not finally physically test or demonstrate.  In order to do his calculations, Einstein simply assumed that matter would be evenly distributed throughout the universe and that the universe would look the same in any direction or location.  If Einstein's assumptions are indeed correct, astrophysicists and cosmologists calculate that the largest structures we should expect to see in the universe would not exceed 1.2 billion light years in size.  But discoveries in r...