 Hello everyone. Hopefully by now you know who I am because you've watched some of the other videos from the Foundations of Science Curriculum. I've hosted quite a few of these at this point, so if you've completed a unit on animals or plants or oceans or any of the others, you know who I am and what these videos are all about. But just in case we have some newcomers or in case you forgot, my name is Brian Cannelly and I'm the editor of 10 books Foundations of Science Curriculum. It's been my job to edit the textbooks and create the workbooks going behind Dr. Tim as he writes to make sure everything looks good and then trying to come up with fun activities to help reinforce the material. But I also host these videos and during them we'll be talking about some of the scientific elements of the material, yes, of course, and we'll be reviewing what you read in the text. But the point of these videos is a little different. Here it'll be my job to take something you learn from the text and use it to transition to a broader point about the world or more specifically about God and his truths that lay hidden all around us. We'll still be talking about outer space and it'll be a lot of fun. In fact, this unit on space was my own personal favorite. But we'll use these astronomical discussions as a platform to make deeper points about God, about the Catholic faith, about saints, about virtues and vices and so much more. The beauty of God's world is that everything, even the smallest things, point back to him and that includes a lot of the amazing things we learned about in this text. So without further ado, let's get set for launch and soar up into the cosmos. When it comes to learning about outer space, it can feel a little overwhelming at times. Space is just so vast, so big. Yes, of course, our oceans are huge and there are lots of animals and lots of plants in the world. But at least when we as a human species set out to learn about the ocean or animals or plants, we know there's a sample size that we can investigate, a finite sample size. In other words, there's a limit to what we want to study. There are lots of animals in the world, but at least we know there's a limit to how many there are. The ocean is enormous, but at least we know that it's all right here on earth with us. That's not so without our space. Without our space, it seems going forever. How do you study something when you can't even comprehend its full scope? To get a sense of how big space is, imagine a minnow about this big swimming in the sea. Think of how small he is compared to his environment, a little tiny fish in the giant ocean. He would need billions of lifetimes to go see everything in the ocean. Well, our entire planet, this huge thing that we call earth that we live on, when compared to the universe that we find ourselves in, is even smaller than that minnow in the ocean. Dr. Tim in the textbook said it another way. He said to imagine that you could travel all the way through space. Just imagine you could do that. Of course, we can't, but let's just imagine that you can travel all the way through space at the speed of light, which is unimaginably fast, over 670 million miles per hour. A plane goes a couple hundred miles an hour, by the way, for comparison. But even if you could move as quick as light, it would still take you billions of years, that's billions with a B, to reach the outer edge of the universe. And that's only the observable universe. It may in fact go beyond that, much farther than we can even know or see. Okay, so what do we do with this? How are we supposed to think about that? How are we to comprehend that, this vast universe that we live in? How do we make sense of it? And why would God create something so immeasurably big, if we here on earth, this tiny little planet, this little minnow, is all that matters? Some people speculate about there being intelligent life in other galaxies, that maybe there's another earth-like planet with a species like ours living out there. Some people say, of course there are, otherwise isn't that just a huge waste of space? Surely there are aliens out there somewhere, right? Now tell your parents you don't have to worry, I'm not going to make this video lecture series about aliens, or intelligent life in outer space, because that's just not why we're here. The truth is that we don't know. Our scientific abilities, our technology, these things can't give us that answer, at least not yet. And God has not chosen to reveal anything to us about the potential for intelligent life, at least not yet. What I want to focus on instead is what God's purpose might be in creating such a huge universe as it relates to us. There's something in the tradition of our Catholic faith called the Book of Nature. Just as we can read about God and come to know him in the Bible, an actual book, or group of books, we can also learn things about him from looking at the world all around us, since he's the author of the book, of that book of nature. So we know God is beautiful, for example, because he created a beautiful world with breathtaking sunsets and sunrises and other gorgeous scenes. We know he's powerful because of that rushing river that runs over the mighty waterfall. And we know that he's powerful because of a huge exploding volcano. We know he's meticulous, meaning he pays attention to small things, small details, because we know that he has given all his attention even to the tiniest insects of the world and the way animals live and protect themselves. Everywhere we look, we can see his fingerprints on the world. To me, anyway, I've always thought when we look up at the cosmos in the starry sky, the immensity of it points to just another aspect of who God is. It points to his boundless mystery. The human mind cannot comprehend all the wonder and power of the Holy Trinity, just like that little minnow that we talked about in the ocean can't comprehend, say, mathematics. There's a mystery to God that we will never be able to bridge until after we die and come face to face with him. In some ways, that mystery can be a little scary, it can be a little intimidating, even frustrating. We wish we could just see God, figure him out, look at him, ask him questions directly and have him answer us. Trust me, adults feel this way too, even more than kids probably. But God will always be a mystery. He's just so much bigger than us. And we see a reflection of this hugeness, this vastness, this mystery in the universe that he created. I believe that when we look up at the stars, even if there is no intelligent life or other worlds up there, there's still a purpose to them because they draw our hearts and our minds and our souls to another world. They inspire us to think about things bigger than ourselves and to ponder the great mystery of God. It's just another way to appreciate God's creation, just like we do with looking at a beautiful mountain range or the ocean or a beautiful forest. Okay, one final comment before we wrap up this first lecture. In the textbook, we briefly touched on a theory of how the universe was created. It's called the Big Bang Theory. This theory states that the universe was created in one intense explosion a very, very long time ago. And that from this bang, the universe expanded out. And all that matter, all the stars and planets and everything else spread out from this huge explosion. We don't have time here to go into great detail explaining this. You'll learn more about it when you're older. And there are other theories out there about how the universe was first created. We mentioned the Big Bang Theory in the textbook because it's just one of the ones that scientists believe and study, have studied the most and become most familiar with. What I want you to take away from this though is that it's important for you to remember that no matter what theory scientists can come up with about the creation of the universe, never forget that it was God who created it. We know this because the Bible tells us so. But the Bible is not supposed to be like a science book. It doesn't give us specific details about how God went about creating everything. It just tells us that he created it. Scientific theories are never going to change what we know to be true about God's power and His governance of all things. We're never going to discover something in science that disproves God's existence because you see science is not in opposition to God, quite the opposite. God invented science. Science is His thing. Science is the study of us trying to figure out how God works, of trying to understand the laws that He laid down when He created the world. In that way, studying science is actually another way to grow closer to God because we're studying Him. We're trying to crack open that mystery that is God. Just a little. Scientists in a sense are God chasers. They're trying to chase Him down, chase God down and capture Him and then study Him. Think of it this way. Maybe the universe was created with a Big Bang, a giant explosion a long, long time ago. But that doesn't mean the Big Bang took the place of God, that some lifeless force just exploded and created the universe. Because ask yourself this. Where did the original life force come from? What caused the Big Bang? Something can't come from nothing. We don't see that anywhere in the world. Only God can create from nothing. So if the Big Bang theory is true scientifically, it just means that God used the Big Bang to create His world. That's an important distinction to remember as you study all areas of science. Theories can be true and they can turn out to not be true. But whatever the case may be, remember that God is always the one behind the study of science. Okay, take a deep breath. That was a long first lecture. I do apologize. But we had a lot to cover as we start this journey. I promise you lesson two won't be quite so deep and long. So come back next time and I'll see you then.