Saturday, November 2, 2013

Celestial Music


This new Hubble telescope image reveals our beautiful Milky Way galaxy...a gigantic pinwheel that we call home. I think most of us have seen images from Hubble that are simply breathtaking. I was reading the Psalms and then came across a video that connected the dots for me. Allow me to elaborate.

There are statements in the Bible that I think most of us just dismiss as poetry...but is it really? Psalm 148 claims that everything in creation praises the Lord:


Praise to the Lord from Creation
Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
Praise Him in the heights!

Praise Him, all His angels;
Praise Him, all His hosts!

Praise Him, sun and moon;
Praise Him, all you stars of light!

Praise Him, you heavens of heavens,
And you waters above the heavens!

Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For He commanded and they were created.
He also established them forever and ever;
He made a decree which shall not pass away.
Praise the Lord from the earth,
You great sea creatures and all the depths;
Fire and hail, snow and clouds;
Stormy wind, fulfilling His word;
Mountains and all hills;
Fruitful trees and all cedars;
Beasts and all cattle;
Creeping things and flying fowl;
Kings of the earth and all peoples;
Princes and all judges of the earth;
Both young men and maidens;
Old men and children.

Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For His name alone is exalted;
His glory is above the earth and heaven.
And He has exalted the horn of His people,
The praise of all His saints—
Of the children of Israel,
A people near to Him.
Praise the Lord!


"Most astronomers gaze at the heavens and see stars. William Chaplin hears an orchestra — a celestial symphony in which the smallest stars are flutes, the medium-sized ones are trombones and the giants are reverberating tubas. The sounds are internal vibrations that reveal themselves as a subtle, rhythmic brightening and dimming of a star, explains Chaplin, an astrophysicist at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a specialist in asteroseismology. These waves provide information that astronomers can't get in any other way: triggered by the turbulent rise and fall of hot gases on the star's surface, the vibrations penetrate deep into the stellar interior and become resonating tones that reveal the star's size, composition and mass. So by watching for the characteristic fluctuations in brightness, says Chaplin, “we can literally build up a picture of what the inside of a star looks like”. (
Article)

Different stars make different sounds and this is based on size, oscillations, etc. "A pulsar, for example, is a highly magnetised neutron star, with a radius of 10-15 km, having somewhat greater mass than the Sun which has a radius of approximately 1 million km. Radiation is beamed out along the magnetic poles and pulses of radiation are received as the beam crosses the Earth, in the same manner as the beam from a lighthouse causes flashes. Being enormous cosmic flywheels with a tick attached, they make some of the best clocks known to mankind. These sounds directly correspond to the radio-waves emitted by the brightest pulsars in the sky as received by some of the largest radio telescopes in the world." (Article)

So how does this all tie in together? When you put all these star sounds together, it literally sounds like an orchestra. I suppose the author of Psalm 148 understood that it was true...all living creatures praise the Lord.

If you want to hear what these sound like, click on the video below and prepare to be blown away.

As it was writen in Job 38:7 


"When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"




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