God’s Miraculous Sun
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
The skies proclaim the work of his hands.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the Sun,
Which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion.
Nothing is hidden from its heat.” (Psalm 19)
What is the fastest speed you have ever traveled? Here is a multiple choice list; check the box for each that is appropriate:_____90 mph _____550 mph; _____1056 mph; _____67,108 mph; _____492,126 mph; _____1,304,880 mph. You should have checked every box; here’s why. You have probably traveled 90 mph in a car and 550 mph in a commercial airplane. Earth rotates at 1056 mph to complete one day, and travels at 67,108 mph to complete a full year in orbit around the Sun. The Sun treks at 492,126 mph in its orbital circuit around the Milky Way galactic center, and the Milky Way Galaxy speeds through the universe at a staggering 1,304,880 mph! Two hypothetical questions come to mind. Why don’t we ‘feel’ how fast we’re traveling? How is God keeping up with us; does Heaven travel at those speeds too? No answer required.
You’ve heard it said: “no two people are alike” … the same could be said of the Sun, at least within the hundred billion stars of the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG) – the Sun doesn’t appear to have a “twin”. In fact, it is “custom made” – completely unique – suited perfectly for the Earth and its occupants. The Creator has left his fingerprints all over the Sun! Let’s take a closer look.
Figure 1 Milky Way Galaxy (credit: Sky & Telescope)
Our “home”, the Milky Way Galaxy (see Figure 1), is a spiral galaxy, one of over one hundred billion galaxies in the Universe, each containing over one hundred billion stars. Our Sun is a very average star located about 27,000 light years from the galactic center, which contains a giant black hole named Sagittarius A. (One light year is the distance it takes light to travel in one year; by comparison, it takes light 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth, 93 million miles).
The Sun, a G-Dwarf star, is positioned in the Orion Arm, a very quiet spur of the much larger Perseus Arm, far away from the central black hole which would totally devour the Sun, and the much denser inner arms where harmful radiation would destroy all life. Just as God had a plan for Abraham – to move him from Ur to the Promised Land – it seems he had a migration plan for the Sun. You see, the Sun should not reside in its current location of safety in the Orion Arm; it is of a different composition (too high a metal content) and age (too old) than most of its neighboring stars. How the Sun ended up where it is within the MWG is called the “G-Dwarf Problem”. Scientists now believe the Sun was born some 5.6 billion years ago in the Crux-Scutum Arm, a metal-rich zone only 13,000 light years from the galactic center. Once birthed, the baby Sun was driven to the outer regions by one or all of three mechanisms of stellar migration:
- Scattering at a galactic orbital resonance
- Scattering by a giant molecular cloud
- Resonance overlap of the central bulge-bar
Note, I will not attempt to explain these star-driving mechanisms; feel free to research it on Google.
Figure 2 MWG Cross-Section I (credit: Wikipedia)
If one could observe the MWG from its side, it would appear as a disc with a central bulge and large halo; the diameter of MWG is a staggering 100,000 light years across. If you could travel at the speed of light, 670,616,629 mph, it would take 100,000 years to traverse the Milky Way; that’s way shorter than a journey to the nearest galaxy, Andromeda, which would take 2,500,000 years to accomplish! The Sun resides in the dark blue “Thin Disc” about two-thirds distance away from the galactic center. Younger stars and gas clouds are in the Thin Disc (100,000 light years wide and 1000 light years in thickness); they (Sun included) are less than 8 billion years old. The bulge (red) and Thick Disc (cream) contain stars 8 to 10 billion years old. Oldest stars, 10 to 13 billion years old, exist in the vast Halo region (grey).
Figure 3 MWG Cross-Section II (credit: VICE)
Science has provided us with a window into deep time; we have a glimpse of what our Creator was up to 4.6 billion years ago when he selected some Sun-stuff (gas and particles) from a region of the MWG that was rich in all the metallic chemicals needed to form the Earth and to support life. Once selected, he arranged to transport this Sun-stuff away from its deadly-for-life birthplace (near the black hole) to the safest-for-life location in the Orion Arm where most of its neighboring stars are metal-poor. It was then that our solar system began to form. First 98 percent of the gases and particles collapsed into a central high-gravity core – our Sun was formed. This was followed by the creation of the giant gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Shortly after this, the four rocky planets accreted – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Figure 4 Classification of Stars (credit VectorStock)
In my fiction novel, Countdown to Adam, there is a scene where God has sent teams of angels into the cosmos to take inventory of galaxies and stars. I can picture a room filled with angels having recently returned from their mission, presenting their findings in a chart like Figure 4. Our Sun is a very average star; astronomers would describe it as follows: “the Sun is a main sequence star of spectral type G2V. It is a yellow G-dwarf star that is halfway through its hydrogen nuclear burning period. It formed in an interstellar molecular cloud 4.57 billion years ago.” Stars come in different sizes and colors. Stars which are colder than the Sun become orange and then red as they age. White and blue-white stars are much hotter than the Sun. A supergiant star like Rigel is 100 times larger and 10,000 times brighter than the Sun; it would never have been a suitable candidate to host planet Earth. Figure 4 is a simplified version of the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram; those interested can go to Google for more in-depth information.
Figure 5 Anatomy of Our Sun (credit: pillars)
In 1864 Jules Verne published his classic science fiction novel “A Journey to the Center of the Earth”. Suppose you could take a journey to the center of the Sun, starting at its core. Like the Earth, the Sun has a core with a radius of 86,000 miles (Earth’s radius is a mere 3950 miles). The core is the Sun’s engine; this is where pressures and temperatures (27 million degrees F) are so great that it forces the nuclei of hydrogen, the simplest element, to fuse with each other and convert into helium while generating tremendous energy in the form of gamma rays. These gamma rays leave the core and enter the “radiative zone”, where they move about, colliding with other particles; it takes 100,000 to one million years for these energy particles to make their way through the cooler (only 720,000 degrees F) radiative zone and enter into the “convective zone” (at 24,740 degrees F) where gas becomes opaque and radiation can no longer travel through it; here the gamma ray energy is absorbed to heat up the gas of the outer Sun. The “photosphere” (the coolest place on the Sun at only 10,000 degrees F) is where the Sun’s atmosphere becomes transparent, allowing radiation from the convective zone to pass through and escape into the “chromosphere”. The chromosphere is a region of much thinner gas where the temperature rises again (to 17540 degrees F), shooting huge jets of hot material called “spicules” up into the “corona”, where temperatures can reach over 3,600,000 degrees F.
When God formed the Sun, he provided us with an amazing source of energy. The Sun releases energy at a conversion rate of 4.26 million metric tons per second, the equivalent of an unimaginable 2 billion thermonuclear bombs exploding per second! The energy emitted from the photosphere then propagates through space and reaches Earth in 8 minutes. By the time it has traveled 93 million miles, it is the perfect amount of radiation to sustain life on our planet. That’s why Venus (too close) and Mars (too distant) are unable to host life.
So, what does the future hold? Will Earth be destroyed and the Sun cease to shine? Have fun with that discussion! But science tells us a few things. Earth and Sun have coexisted for nearly 4.5 billion years. The Sun has burned about halfway through its hydrogen nuclear fuel; it will have converted all its hydrogen to helium in about five billion years. The Sun continues to grow in diameter and put out increasing amounts of energy. Within a few million years life will begin to diminish on Earth as temperatures rise. A hundred million years from now Earth’s surface will be too hot to host anything but the heartiest bacteria; oceans and lakes will evaporate. Five billion years from now the Sun will have expanded into a red giant star, engulfing Mercury, Venus, and Earth – then it will explode into a super-nova.
But God has a plan. He’s eternal. Stay tuned.
