Author: Steve Rosenoff

Steve Rosenoffhttps://rwt101.wordpress.comFor the past fifteen years, I have been teaching Apologia Science courses full-time. Eight years ago, I felt led to start a new ministry, Red Wagon Tutorials. When people ask me where the name comes from, I smile, and tell them the story of how my wife and I took hot meals downtown to the Olympia homeless in our little red station wagon. In addition to our online recorded classes and live-feed course programs, I now offer a thirty-two class lecture series recorded in MP4-HD format which can be downloaded and accessed through our e-Notebook product. These products are Red Wagon Tutorials exclusive productions. Each class in the series is sixty to ninety minutes in length, depending on how they are used. I currently have presentations available for General Science, Health & Fitness, Physical Science, Earth Science, Biology, Marine Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Advanced Biology, and Biochemistry. Also in the works are two additional high school course presentations: zoology and botany. I am a former research chemist and medical technologist, with 23 years of laboratory expertise . RWT is a sole-proprietor business, with a staff of three: my wife, Shelly; my dog, Cleo; and I, work as a family unit. I am endorsed by Dr. Jay L. Wile and have his full support in this venture. I also give away one free e-Notebook to a missionary family working overseas for each program sold. RWT is currently serving missionaries in sixty-six countries with free e-Notebook courses and curriculum support. We have 2100 students worldwide. Our Golden Retriever, Cleo, is featured on every product label to welcome your student to study. The General Science cover shows Cleo as a puppy and then she becomes increasing more mature on each subsequent course: basically, she grows up with your student. The presentations are recordings of our live classes, which we still stream daily to missionaries stationed stateside and serving overseas on our own internet cable channel: www.livestream.com/rwt1.

Our Father’s Design – Astronomy, Part 1

“The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship.” (NLT). This exquisite verse from Psalm 19:1 suggests one of the purposes of the designed universe: the universe shows the majesty of its Creator. In addition to the heavens, God’s glory can also be demonstrated in many other parts of His Creation. Consider the splendid intricacy of a living cell, the complex nature and the stunning diversity of life on earth, and the mathematical precision of the physical science laws. These are all indicative of the clever craftsmanship, immense intelligence, and perplexing power of the universe’s Creator.

M51HST-GendlerMConsider a typical galaxy teeming with about one-hundred billion stars.  Included in this star-cluster is more heavenly bodies than the total number of people who have ever lived on Earth. The whole assemblage is scattered across a massive expanse of space, over 100,000 light-years in diameter. Although a light-year sounds like a unit of time, a light-year is in fact the distance traveled by light in a year at a speed of about 300,000 kilometers per second. Calculating this out, it follows that a light-year is equal to 300,000 kilometers/second times 86,400 seconds/day times 365 days or about 10 trillion kilometers, or roughly 6 trillion miles. Predictably, galactic systems are accurately “astronomical” in size. For comparison, Earth’s roughly 13,000-km diameter is less than one-twentieth of a light-second.

To understand the scale of such immense distances, we must take a moment to understand the magnitude of these large numbers. The number one thousand is easy for us to understand. At the rate of one number per second, a person could count to a thousand in one thousand seconds, or about 16 minutes. However, if the same person counted to a million, he or she would need more than two weeks to complete the task of counting at the rate of one number per second, assuming he or she counted for 16 hours per day.  At the same rate of one number per second for 16 hours per day, it would take this person nearly 50 years – the better part of an entire human lifetime – to count from one to one billion.  At the rate of one number per second, it would take a person 11,570,000 days, or about 31709 years, to count to one trillion.

1-Trillion

The Milky Way is home to planet Earth. The Milky Way galaxy contains over 100 billion (1.0 x 1011) stars. It is by definition a “typical galaxy.” The Bible says that God calls each star by their names (Ps. 147:4; Isa. 40:26). How amazing is that! God has a name for each and every one of those stars! His knowledge is beyond our measure or comprehension. When one considers the vastness of the Milky Way, with its 100 billion stars, innumerable nebulae, and countless star clusters, the overwhelming supremacy of the Creator becomes clear. Yet, the Milky Way galaxy is not the only one. God has created a myriad of galaxies in a wide scope of shapes and sizes. Some galaxies are spiral, like the Milky Way. Others are elliptical in appearance, and some galaxies have configurations that can only be described as “irregular.” Many galaxies come in clusters. The Milky Way belongs to a cluster of a few dozen galaxies called the “Local Group.” Some star clusters are much larger than this. The Virgo cluster has about 2,000 galaxies. Clusters of galaxies are organized into even larger superclusters – clusters of clusters. Superclusters show God’s organization on the largest scale; they form an intricate web of strings and voids through-out the observable universe – and He knows all of them (and all of us) by name.  Certainly, the universe demonstrates His omniscience.

PeopleWhen one contemplates all this which God created, it brings to mind Psalm 8:3-4: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” It is amazing that the God who created such a universe would be concerned with something as small as human beings. Yet, Scripture makes it clear that human beings are very important to God, and our place in the Universe is very significant to Him.  It is my hope that through this series of blog posts you will come to realize the uniqueness of His cosmic design as we explore the wonders of His universe together.