Tag Archives: astronomy

3 Ominous Harbingers Appear As We Draw Near To The End Of 2025 | End Of The American Dream

It is hard to believe that 2025 is almost done. This year has flown by, and it has been absolutely packed with historic events. Unfortunately, I fully expect 2026 to be even more chaotic. We are facing all sorts of economic challenges, terror attacks are becoming more frequent, and nations all over the globe are preparing for war. Meanwhile, the ground underneath our feet continues to shake with alarming regularity. In fact, the state of California was just hit by a significant earthquake swarm for the fourth day in a row…

California has been rattled by multiple earthquake swarms over the past four days, with the latest hitting on Tuesday.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported a 3.1-magnitude quake at 5.53am PT (8.53am ET) near San Ramon, the epicenter of the recent seismic activity.

This tremor followed a dozen smaller quakes ranging from 1.1 to 1.6 magnitude.

Just yesterday I was telling Sam Rohrer about the earthquake swarms that have been hammering California day after day, and now another one has struck today.

Interestingly, this latest series of earthquake swarms began just three days after California Governor Gavin Newsom made a very controversial statement about “trans kids”…

Newsom, 58, made his comments on “The Ezra Klein Show” in the Dec. 10 episode. The California governor told the host that, although he has suggested it’s unfair for transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports, he is still a supporter of the trans community.

“I want to see trans kids,” he said. “I have a trans godson. There’s no governor that signed more pro-trans legislation than I have, and no one’s been a stronger advocate for the LGBTQ [community].”

Newsom is currently considered to be the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2028.

So it was a really big deal for him to say something like this.

The entire California coastline sits directly along the Pacific Ring of Fire, and we have seen so much seismic activity along the Pacific Ring of Fire in recent months.

Is all of this activity leading up to something really big?

A USGS research geophysicist named Annemarie Baltay is warning that there is “a 72 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake occurring anywhere in the Bay Area between now and 2043″…

USGS research geophysicist Annemarie Baltay said she is not unusually concerned that the recent earthquakes signal anything larger on the horizon for San Ramon.

‘These small events, as all small events are, are not indicative of an impending large earthquake,’ Baltay told Patch.

‘However, we live in earthquake country, so we should always be prepared for a large event,’ she said. ‘There is a 72 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake occurring anywhere in the Bay Area between now and 2043. So we should all be aware and be prepared.’

It was certainly newsworthy for such a prominent geophysicist to make a statement like that.

Needless to say, I am far less optimistic than she is.

As our world continues to be shaken by an unusual level of seismic activity, comet 3I/Atlas is preparing to make its closest approach to our planet on Friday…

A stray comet from another star swings past Earth this week in one last hurrah before racing back toward interstellar space.

Discovered over the summer, the comet known as 3I/Atlas will pass within 167 million miles (269 million kilometers) of our planet on Friday, the closest it gets on its grand tour of the solar system.

NASA continues to aim its space telescopes at the visiting ice ball, estimated to be between 1,444 feet (440 meters) and 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in size. But it’s fading as it exits, so now’s the time for backyard astronomers to catch it in the night sky with their telescopes.

If you can believe it, the deadline for the government to release the Epstein files is also on Friday…

The deadline for the Justice Department to release records in its investigation into notorious convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is just days away.

By Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi must make the files publicly available “in a searchable and downloadable format,” per the Epstein Transparency Act signed into law by President Donald Trump last month.

Is the fact that these two things are occurring on the exact same day just some sort of really bizarre coincidence?

Hopefully all of the Epstein files really will be released in a “searchable and downloadable format” by the end of this week, because the American people deserve the truth.

There is one other thing about comet 3I/Atlas that is getting a lot of attention.

A comet typically has a “tail”, but comet 3I/Atlas also has an “anti-tail”…

Ever since NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope first gazed upon the object on July 21, scientists noticed a strange protrusion jutting out of the object, a second tail that counterintuitively points directly at the Sun, not away from it like the characteristic tails of familiar solar system comets.

This “anti-tail” could be the result of “enhanced mass loss in the Sun-facing side,” as Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb told Futurism earlier this year, which causes larger fragments to be broken off. These larger fragments are less susceptible to being affected by the Sun’s radiation pressure, causing them to move more slowly and accumulate on the Sun-facing side.

Over a month after its perihelion, or closest pass of the Sun, observations still clearly show 3I/ATLAS’ anti-tail, as Loeb noted in a new update on his blog. A December 13 image taken by the Teerasak Thaluang telescope in Rayong, Thailand “shows a prominent anti-tail, uncommon for comets, pointing in the direction of the Sun,” he wrote.

I have never heard of a comet having an “anti-tail” before.

And I think that it is kind of weird that this comet with an “anti-tail” will be closest to Earth just 6 days before Christmas.

On another note, on Monday a replica of the Statue of Liberty that was a total of 115 feet tall toppled over in front of a large retail store in Brazil…

A powerful storm toppled a 115-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty outside a Havan megastore in southern Brazil on Monday, December 15.

As the storm raged through the area, wind gusts reached 50 to 56 miles per hour, according to local authorities.

A lot of people are really freaking out about this.

And this happened just two days before President Trump is scheduled to deliver a major address to the nation from the White House…

President Donald Trump will give an address to the nation live from the White House on Wednesday night, he announced on Tuesday.

Trump teased the address in a statement on social media, saying the speech will take place at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday. He has not clarified a topic for the address.

“My Fellow Americans: I will be giving an ADDRESS TO THE NATION tomorrow night, LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, at 9 P.M. EST. I look forward to ‘seeing’ you then. It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” Trump wrote.

If the president is going to interrupt prime time television, that usually means that something really big is going to be announced.

Is President Trump going to tell us that we are going to war with Venezuela?

If so, that will certainly be a very ominous sign.

Of course it is entirely possible that President Trump wants to talk to us about something else.

Wednesday night will be here before we know it, and then we will find out what is on his mind.

Global events are moving at a breathtaking pace, and I have a feeling that the weeks ahead are going to be quite momentous.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

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The Earth Has Been Shaken By 466,742 Earthquakes So Far In 2025 | End Of The American Dream

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Have you noticed that our planet has been shaking a lot lately? The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that just hit Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula is just one of the 466,742 earthquakes that have rattled the giant space rock that we all live on this year. Simultaneously, dozens of volcanoes have been erupting and there have been all sorts of very unusual events in the heavens. If you think that what we are experiencing is “normal”, you probably have not been paying much attention.

Earlier today, I went to Volcano Discovery, and I learned that there have been 466,742 earthquakes so far in 2025…

1 quake above magnitude 8
11 quakes between magnitude 7 and 8
105 quakes between magnitude 6 and 7
1,545 quakes between magnitude 5 and 6
11,611 quakes between magnitude 4 and 5
45,692 quakes between magnitude 3 and 4
98,979 quakes between magnitude 2 and 3
308,798 quakes below magnitude 2 that people normally don’t feel.

It has particularly been a banner year for large earthquakes.

Normally we see between 110 and 125 earthquakes of at least magnitude 5.0 during a 30 day period, but earlier this summer we witnessed 494 in just 30 days.

That is crazy.

The Pacific Ring of Fire has been more active than anywhere else, and it just got hit by another huge earthquake…

A massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Russia’s Kamchatka region at around 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, sparking concerns of a potential tsunami along the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii.

NOAA and the National Weather Service’s U.S. Tsunami Warning System has since confirmed that a Pacific-wide tsunami is not expected and that, “there is no tsunami threat to Hawaii.”

We should be very thankful that there was no tsunami.

Next time we might not be so fortunate.

Following the initial quake, there were more than 30 aftershocks of at least magnitude 4.5.

A few days earlier, on Monday, Alaska was rattled by a couple of very large quakes…

A powerful earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands early Monday, stirring concerns of a potential tsunami among residents on the mainland.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) detected a 5.2-magnitude quake at 1am local time (5:02am ET) near the uninhabited community of Nikolski.

Less than two hours later, the USGS recorded a 4.8-magnitude aftershock in the same region.

Sadly, even though the entire west coast of the continental United States sits directly along the Pacific Ring of Fire, most of those that live there simply do not care about all of this seismic activity.

But mark my words, it is just a matter of time before “the Big One” strikes.

Speaking of the west coast, the fact that volcanic ash was spotted in the vicinity of Mount St. Helens the other day caused a bit of a stir.

The story that authorities are giving us is that volcanic ash from the 1980s “is being lofted back into the air” by very strong winds…

Folks in the Northwest shouldn’t panic: Mount St. Helens is NOT erupting, government scientists said on Sept. 16.

The concern arises because commercial pilots reported seeing ash in the vicinity of the mountain, site of the infamous eruption of May 18, 1980, that killed 57 people.

So what’s going on? “Volcanic ash from the 1980s is being lofted back into the air from the strong east winds,” the National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, reported.

Do you buy that story?

I am not sure that I do.

In any event, that is what they want us to believe.

Meanwhile, all sorts of very strange things have been happening in the heavens.

On September 13th, an extremely bright fireball violently exploded over central Argentina…

A fireball with an impact energy of 0.38 kilotons (380 tons of TNT equivalent) was detected at 22:26 UTC on September 13, 2025, at an altitude of 22.8 km (14.2 miles) over central Argentina. The event was observed from multiple provinces and produced a persistent trail and visible fragmentation.

A bright fireball was detected at 19:26 local time (22:26 UTC) on September 13, over central Argentina.

The object entered the atmosphere near latitude 38.0°S and longitude 64.8°W, at an altitude of 22.8 km (14.2 miles), releasing an estimated 0.38 kilotons (380 tons of TNT equivalent) of energy, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

Two days later, an asteroid that was just discovered zipped past our planet at a distance of just 0.78 LD…

A newly discovered asteroid designated 2025 RJ2 will fly past Earth at a distance of 0.78 LD (0.002 AU / 301 334 km / 187 241 miles) at 20:18 UTC on Monday, September 15, 2025.

Since the beginning of the year, observatories worldwide have detected 96 asteroids passing within one lunar distance of Earth.

Asteroid 2025 RJ2 was first observed by Catalina Sky Survey on September 14 — one day before its close approach to Earth.

Then on Thursday morning, a “city-killing asteroid the size of a major skyscraper” came flying along…

A city-killing asteroid the size of a major skyscraper will scream past Earth in just hours – and scientists have warned that it could return in the future.

The asteroid 2025 FA22 will come within 520,000 miles of Earth at approximately 3:40am ET early Thursday morning.

That’s roughly twice the distance of the Earth to the moon, meaning it poses no immediate threat to the planet.

We should be very glad that rock did not hit us, because it would have done serious damage.

Coming up, there will be a very odd solar eclipse on September 21st…

The moon will appear to take a “bite” out of the sun during a deep partial solar eclipse on Sept. 21.

Globally, September’s partial solar eclipse will begin at 1:29 p.m. EDT (1729 GMT), with the maximum eclipse phase — when the moon covers the largest portion of the sun — occurring at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT). However, exact timings vary by location.

It is not often that we see two eclipses in a single month.

First we had the “blood moon eclipse” on September 7th, and now this partial solar eclipse on September 21st will be able to be seen across much of the Southern Hemisphere…

Skywatchers in the Southern Hemisphere will witness the year’s second and final solar eclipse on Sept. 21/22, just one day before the equinox. Though only a partial solar eclipse, it promises some spectacular views, especially across New Zealand, Antarctica and the South Pacific islands, because it occurs just after sunrise — as did the previous solar eclipse in March in North America.

Unlike a total solar eclipse, where the moon blocks the entire sun, a partial solar eclipse creates the striking image of a crescent sun in the sky — in this case, at sunrise just one day before the September equinox.

To me, things will get even more interesting once we reach the month of October.

On October 3rd Comet 3I/ATLAS will make an uncomfortably close approach to Mars, and then on October 5th it is being projected that Earth will actually pass through the orbital debris field of an absolutely gigantic comet that was just discovered known as C/2025 R2 (SWAN).

Astronomers are telling us that there is a chance that we may get to experience a pretty dramatic meteor shower as we pass through that orbital debris field.

I wanted to put all of this into a single article so that everyone can understand that we are in an extremely unusual time.

So much is happening, but most people are simply not paying attention.

What is it going to take to get the general population to finally wake up?

The post The Earth Has Been Shaken By 466,742 Earthquakes So Far In 2025 appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

How the WMAP satellite confirmed nucleosynthesis predictions and falsified atheism | WINTERY KNIGHT

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How the WMAP satellite confirmed nucleosynthesis predictions and falsified atheism

Prior to certain scientific discoveries, most people thought that the universe had always been here, and no need to ask who or what may have caused it. But today, that’s all changed. Today, the standard model of the origin of the universe is that all the matter and energy in the universe came into being in an event scientists call “The Big Bang”. At the creation event, space and time themselves began to exist, and there is no material reality that preceded them.

So a couple of quotes to show that.

An initial cosmological singularity… forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity… On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.

Source: P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (Berlin: Springer Verlag ).

And another quote:

[A]lmost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.

Source: Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, The Isaac Newton Institute Series of Lectures (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 20.

So, there are several scientific discoveries that led scientists to accept the creation event, and one of the most interesting and famous is the discovery of how elements heavier than hydrogen were formed.

Nucleosynthesis: forming heavier elements by fusion

Here’s the history of how that discovery happened, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) web site:

The term nucleosynthesis refers to the formation of heavier elements, atomic nuclei with many protons and neutrons, from the fusion of lighter elements. The Big Bang theory predicts that the early universe was a very hot place. One second after the Big Bang, the temperature of the universe was roughly 10 billion degrees and was filled with a sea of neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), photons and neutrinos. As the universe cooled, the neutrons either decayed into protons and electrons or combined with protons to make deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen). During the first three minutes of the universe, most of the deuterium combined to make helium. Trace amounts of lithium were also produced at this time. This process of light element formation in the early universe is called “Big Bang nucleosynthesis” (BBN).

The creation hypothesis predicts that there will be specific amounts of these light elements formed as the universe cools down. Do the predictions match with observations?

Yes they do:

The predicted abundance of deuterium, helium and lithium depends on the density of ordinary matter in the early universe, as shown in the figure at left. These results indicate that the yield of helium is relatively insensitive to the abundance of ordinary matter, above a certain threshold. We generically expect about 24% of the ordinary matter in the universe to be helium produced in the Big Bang. This is in very good agreement with observations and is another major triumph for the Big Bang theory.

Moreover, WMAP satellite measurements of mass density agree with our observations of these light element abundances.

Here are the observations from the WMAP satellite:

Scientific observations match predictions

And here is how those WMAP measurements confirm the Big Bang creation event:

However, the Big Bang model can be tested further. Given a precise measurement of the abundance of ordinary matter, the predicted abundances of the other light elements becomes highly constrained. The WMAP satellite is able to directly measure the ordinary matter density and finds a value of 4.6% (±0.2%), indicated by the vertical red line in the graph. This leads to predicted abundances shown by the circles in the graph, which are in good agreement with observed abundances. This is an important and detailed test of nucleosynthesis and is further evidence in support of the Big Bang theory.

“An important and detailed test”.

For completeness, we should learn how elements heavier than these light elements are formed:

Elements heavier than lithium are all synthesized in stars. During the late stages of stellar evolution, massive stars burn helium to carbon, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, and iron. Elements heavier than iron are produced in two ways: in the outer envelopes of super-giant stars and in the explosion of a supernovae. All carbon-based life on Earth is literally composed of stardust.

That’s a wonderful thing to tell a young lady when you are on a date: “your body is made of stardust”. In fact, as I have argued before, this star formation, which creates the elements necessary for intelligent life, can only be built if the fundamental constants and quantities in the universe are finely-tuned.

Now, you would think that atheists would be happy to find observations that confirm the origin of the universe out of nothing, but they are not. Actually, they are in denial.

Here’s a statement from the Secular Humanist Manifesto, which explains what atheists believe about the universe:

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

For a couple of examples of how atheistic scientists respond to the evidence for a cosmic beginning, you can check out this post, where we get responses from cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, and physical chemist Peter Atkins.

You cannot have the creation of the universe be true AND a self-existing, eternal universe ALSO be true. Someone has to be wrong. Either the science is wrong, or the atheist manifesto is wrong. I know where I stand.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

How the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation falsified atheism | WINTERY KNIGHT

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How the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation falsified atheism

So a couple of quotes to show that.

An initial cosmological singularity… forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity… On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.

Source: P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (Berlin: Springer Verlag ).

And another quote:

[A]lmost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.

Source: Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, The Isaac Newton Institute Series of Lectures (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 20.

So, there are several scientific discoveries that led scientists to accept the creation event, and one of the most interesting and famous is the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Here’s the history of how that discovery happened, from the American Physical Society web site:

Bell Labs radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using a large horn antenna in 1964 and 1965 to map signals from the Milky Way, when they serendipitously discovered the CMB. As written in the citation, “This unexpected discovery, offering strong evidence that the universe began with the Big Bang, ushered in experimental cosmology.” Penzias and Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 in honor of their findings.

The CMB is “noise” leftover from the creation of the Universe. The microwave radiation is only 3 degrees above Absolute Zero or -270 degrees C,1 and is uniformly perceptible from all directions. Its presence demonstrates that that our universe began in an extremely hot and violent explosion, called the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

In 1960, Bell Labs built a 20-foot horn-shaped antenna in Holmdel, NJ to be used with an early satellite system called Echo. The intention was to collect and amplify radio signals to send them across long distances, but within a few years, another satellite was launched and Echo became obsolete.2

With the antenna no longer tied to commercial applications, it was now free for research. Penzias and Wilson jumped at the chance to use it to analyze radio signals from the spaces between galaxies.3 But when they began to employ it, they encountered a persistent “noise” of microwaves that came from every direction. If they were to conduct experiments with the antenna, they would have to find a way to remove the static.

Penzias and Wilson tested everything they could think of to rule out the source of the radiation racket. They knew it wasn’t radiation from the Milky Way or extraterrestrial radio sources. They pointed the antenna towards New York City to rule out “urban interference”, and did analysis to dismiss possible military testing from their list.4

Then they found droppings of pigeons nesting in the antenna. They cleaned out the mess and tried removing the birds and discouraging them from roosting, but they kept flying back. “To get rid of them, we finally found the most humane thing was to get a shot gun…and at very close range [we] just killed them instantly. It’s not something I’m happy about, but that seemed like the only way out of our dilemma,” said Penzias.5 “And so the pigeons left with a smaller bang, but the noise remained, coming from every direction.”6

At the same time, the two astronomers learned that Princeton University physicist Robert Dicke had predicted that if the Big Bang had occurred, there would be low level radiation found throughout the universe. Dicke was about to design an experiment to test this hypothesis when he was contacted by Penzias. Upon hearing of Penzias’ and Wilson’s discovery, Dicke turned to his laboratory colleagues and said “well boys, we’ve been scooped.”7

Although both groups published their results in Astrophysical Journal Letters, only Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the CMB.

The horn antenna was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. Its significance in fostering a new appreciation for the field of cosmology and a better understanding of our origins can be summed up by the following: “Scientists have labeled the discovery [of the CMB] the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century.”8

It’s the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century.

In the New York Times, Arno Penzias commented on his discovery – the greatest discovery of the 20th century – so:

The best data we have [concerning the Big Bang] are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the bible as a whole.

Just one problem with the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century: atheists don’t accept it. Why not?

Here’s a statement from the Secular Humanist Manifesto, which explains what atheists believe about the universe:

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

Are We Alone in the Universe? | Stand to Reason

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Four thousand years ago, when God made a covenant with Abraham, he led him outside and told him, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them…. So shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15:5). The stars in the night sky were innumerable, the heavens vast beyond measure.

More recently, the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope have given us even clearer portraits of just how immense the heavens are, and they have helped shed light on some of the mysteries of the universe. This has also raised the age-old question: Are we alone in the universe?

Considering the vastness of the cosmos, many conclude there must be life out there. Just considering the Milky Way Galaxy alone, there are billions of planets roughly the same size as Earth. One science writer states that “the ingredients in the recipe for earthly life—water, elements associated with life, available sources of energy—appear to be almost everywhere we’ve looked…. While the chances of finding life elsewhere remain unknown, the odds can be said to be improving.”

Yet while advanced life exists on Earth, an incredible number of factors in the cosmos and on Earth are exquisitely fine-tuned for this to be possible. The more data we have, the more we find that the best location for life to exist in the vast cosmos is where Earth is located—in our particular solar system, in our particular galaxy, in our particular supercluster of galaxies, and in our particular super-supercluster. Conditions in outer space are hostile to complex life everywhere else we look.

For example, consider our galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral galaxy, which means it doesn’t experience gravitational disturbances from nearby stars and molecular clouds. The Milky Way Galaxy is the right size to prevent a supermassive black hole from forming in the nucleus, and the length of the co-rotation radius both allows for the formation of heavy metals in adequate quantities for the existence of life and prevents planetary systems from facing fatal radiation. Most galaxies have been found to resemble the Andromeda Galaxy, which has a significantly larger stellar mass and angular momentum than the Milky Way Galaxy, which affects the galaxies’ habitability. These are a few features that make the Milky Way Galaxy able to support life.

Further research is revealing that our planet specifically is unique in its habitability as well. When scientists search for planets in the “habitable zone,” what they’re often referring to is the liquid water habitable zone. Habitable zones refer to regions around a star where life could potentially exist. The liquid water habitable zone is the region around a star where liquid water can be sustained on a planet’s surface.

But much more than water is required for life. At least eleven known habitability zones must overlap in order for a planet to be hospitable to advanced life: the liquid water, ultraviolet, photosynthetic, ozone, planetary rotation rate, planetary rotation axis tilt, tidal, astrosphere, atmospheric electric field, Milankovitch cycles, and stellar magnetic wind habitable zones. No planet other than Earth is known to possess all these habitable zones. Astronomer Hugh Ross has concluded that “when one takes into account that the existence of aerobic complex life requires a planet that simultaneously resides in all eleven habitable zones, the number of planets in the universe capable of sustaining such life most probably is just one.” The degree of fine-tuning required for this overlap of habitable zones that permits the possibility of life is indicative of design, not “cosmic accident.”

Over 400 parameters of a planetary system and its galaxy must fall within a narrow range to permit the existence of complex life. Taking into account the parameters required for simple life, Ross calculated that the requirements for a planet to sustain bacteria for just a few months is less than 1 chance in 10³¹¹. When speaking of “intelligent physical life in a globally distributed high-technology civilization,” which is the popular picture we have of alien life (just think of Hollywood movies like Independence Day or Edge of Tomorrow), the chance of a life-supporting planet becomes less than 1 in 10¹⁰³².

Such a vast amount of coincidences required to permit life exceeds the bounds of credibility. Instead, it speaks of design. The evidence we have suggests that advanced physical life doesn’t exist elsewhere in the universe—unless, of course, it’s the result of purposeful design.

https://www.str.org/article-feed?p_p_id=com_liferay_journal_content_web_portlet_JournalContentPortlet_INSTANCE_VXWGAytvGtxR&p_p_lifecycle=0&_com_liferay_journal_content_web_portlet_JournalContentPortlet_INSTANCE_VXWGAytvGtxR_groupId=20123&_com_liferay_journal_content_web_portlet_JournalContentPortlet_INSTANCE_VXWGAytvGtxR_articleId=1017442

Source: https://www.str.org/article-feed?p_p_id=com_liferay_journal_content_web_portlet_JournalContentPortlet_INSTANCE_VXWGAytvGtxR&p_p_lifecycle=0&_com_liferay_journal_content_web_portlet_JournalContentPortlet_INSTANCE_VXWGAytvGtxR_groupId=20123&_com_liferay_journal_content_web_portlet_JournalContentPortlet_INSTANCE_VXWGAytvGtxR_articleId=1017442

The peril of AI and the path to transcendent hope | Denison Forum

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The peril of AI and the path to transcendent hope

NOTE: Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president and Nobel Prize recipient, died yesterday at his home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of one hundred. We will be publishing a Daily Article Special Edition this morning in response.

I am focusing today on hope that transcends every challenge we face. But to get to the good news, we need to set the stage.

Today’s headlines illustrate the fragility of life: from the passenger plane that skidded off a South Korean airport runway yesterday, killing all but two of the 181 people on board; to the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash for which Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized; to a weekend storm system that killed at least four people across the South; to the death of longtime sports announcer Greg Gumbel at the age of seventy-eight.

And there’s this: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” is warning that AI could wipe out the human race within the next decade. He said the technology is developing “much faster” than he expected and could make humans the equivalents of “three-year-olds” and AI “the grown-ups.”

In his view, “We’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”

Is that so?

“Dark matter” and “dark energy”

Scientists tell us that the universe began around 13.8 billion years ago with an event called the Big Bang that suffused space with light. In that moment, they say, the universe was a septillion (one followed by twenty-four zeroes) times hotter than the center of our sun today. However, they still do not know what caused the Big Bang. Nor do they know how the universe will end.

They also note that the galaxies of our universe are “rotating with such speed that the gravity generated by their observable matter could not possibly hold them together; they should have torn themselves apart long ago.” They theorize that unknown matter is giving them the mass and thus the gravity they need to stay intact, calling it “dark matter.” They calculate that it outweighs visible matter roughly six to one.

Since “dark matter” by definition does not absorb, reflect, or emit light, physicists can only infer its existence from the gravitational effect it seems to have on visible matter.

Then there’s “dark energy,” comprising approximately 68 percent of the universe, which they credit for causing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate. Once again, they do not know what it is or exactly how it works. A new paper claims that dark energy doesn’t even exist, proposing other explanations for our expanding universe.

From the macro to the micro: scientists tell us that the strongest force in the universe, aptly called the “strong force,” binds together the nuclei in the atoms that comprise the physical universe. It is one hundred trillion trillion trillion times stronger than the force of gravity and accounts for around 99 percent of the mass in the visible universe. Without it, nothing we can see would exist.

“Greeted by a band of theologians”

The event science theorizes as a Big Bang is described in Scripture this way: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). The New Testament adds the trinitarian note, “All things were made through [Christ], and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). It adds, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (v. 5).

So we have a biblical explanation for the light that began the universe. What about the rotational forces that should tear the universe apart, the energy that theoretically causes it to expand, and the “strong force” that binds mass together?

Consider this statement: “By [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17, my emphasis).

I am reminded of the NASA physicist Robert Jastrow, who famously wrote in God and the Astronomers:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

“Is anything too hard for the Lᴏʀᴅ?”

It is obviously very bad news if an intelligence greater than ourselves wishes us harm. If, however, such an intelligence wishes us well, that is outstanding news. It means that this entity has the knowledge and ability to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Now, suppose that this power can work not only on us but also in us, transforming both our external universe and our internal lives in ways we cannot even imagine.

This is just what the Bible proclaims:

To him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever (Ephesians 3:20–21, my emphasis).

Here’s the catch: Unlike the forces that hold our physical universe together or an artificial intelligence that could one day surpass us, “the power at work within us” requires our cooperation to experience his best. For example:

“He himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), but we must admit that we are at war with God, others, and ourselves, and seek what he alone can give.
He assures all who know him personally, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34), but we must admit our sin and seek his forgiving grace.
“He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6), but we must settle for nothing less than his perfect will for our lives (Romans 12:2).

Here’s the bottom line: We experienced God’s best in 2024 to the degree that we sought his provision and submitted to his Spirit. The same will be true in 2025.

Our omniscient, omnipotent Father still asks,

“Is anything too hard for the Lᴏʀᴅ?” (Genesis 18:14)

The answer depends not on him but on us.

Monday news to know:

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.” —Charles Spurgeon

The post The peril of AI and the path to transcendent hope appeared first on Denison Forum.

How many evidences do you know for the origin of the universe? | WINTERY KNIGHT

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How many evidences do you know for the origin of the universe?

It’s very, very important to get a conversation about spiritual things started off on the right foot. My favorite place to start is with the origin of the universe. I always use the same 3 evidences, but I found an article that has even MORE. First, let me talk about the ones I like, then I’ll send you the link to the article with the bigger list. Once you get the beginning proved, the next question is: who caused it?

Here’s the article from J. Warner Wallace.

He writes this:

My career as a Cold Case Detective was built on being evidentially certain about the suspects I brought to trial. There are times when my certainty was established and confirmed by the cumulative and diverse nature of the evidence. Let me give you an example. It’s great when a witness sees the crime and identifies the suspect, but it’s even better if we have DNA evidence placing the suspect at the scene. If the behavior of the suspect (before and after the time of the crime) also betrays his involvement, and if his statements when interviewed are equally incriminating, the case is even better. Cases such as these become more and more reasonable as they grow both in depth and diversity. It’s not just that we now have four different evidences pointing to the same conclusion, it’s that these evidences are from four different categories. Eyewitness testimony, forensic DNA, behaviors and admissions all point to the same reasonable inference. When we have a cumulative, diverse case such as this, our inferences become more reasonable and harder to deny. Why did I take the time to describe this evidential approach to reasonable conclusions? Because a similar methodology can be used to determine whether everything in the universe (all space, time and matter) came from nothing. We have good reason to believe our universe had a beginning, and this inference is established by a cumulative, diverse evidential case.

Here is his list of evidences:

Philosophical Evidence
Theoretical Evidence
Observational Evidence
Thermal Evidence
Quantitative Evidence
Residual Evidence

Now, if you listened to our podcast with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, I mentioned the ones that I like, which are #3, #5 and #6. And I like these, because they are scientific, and because I have clever ways of explaining them using simple terms.

Here’s what he says:

3. Observational Evidence (from Astronomical Data)

Vesto Slipher, an American astronomer working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, spent nearly ten years perfecting his understanding of spectrograph readings. His observations revealed something remarkable. If a distant object was moving toward Earth, its observable spectrograph colors shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. If a distant object was moving away from Earth, its colors shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Slipher identified several “nebulae” and observed a “redshift” in their spectrographic colors. If these “nebulae” were moving away from our galaxy (and one another) as Slipher observed, they must have once been tightly clustered together. By 1929, Astronomer Edwin Hubble published findings of his own, verifying Slipher’s observations and demonstrating the speed at which a star or galaxy moves away from us increases with its distance from the earth. This once again confirmed the expansion of the universe.

5. Quantitative Evidence (from the Abundance of Helium)

As Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle studied the way elements are created within stars, he was able to calculate the amount of helium created if the universe came into being from nothing. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe (Hydrogen is the first), but in order to form helium by nuclear fusion, temperatures must be incredibly high and conditions must be exceedingly dense. These would have been the conditions if the universe came into being from nothing. Hoyle’s calculations related to the formation of helium happen to coincide with our measurements of helium in the universe today. This, of course, is consistent with the universe having a moment of beginning.

6. Residual Evidence (from the Cosmic Background Radiation)

In 1964, two American physicists and radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected what is now referred to as “echo radiation”, winning a Nobel Prize for their discovery in 1978. Numerous additional experiments and observations have since established the existence of cosmic background radiation, including data from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite launched in 1989, and the Planck space observatory launched in 2009. For many scientists, this discovery alone solidified their belief the universe had a beginning. If the universe leapt into existence, expanding from a state of tremendous heat, density and expansion, we should expect find this kind of cosmic background radiation.

So, I’ve made simple analogies for these, so that I can explain them to people from every background.

For #5, for example, I use the story of leaving you in a room with beads and strings and then watching you make one necklace of beads, and timing you, and then leaving you for an hour, and coming back and estimating how many necklaces you will have made, and how many beads you have left. With respect to the beginning of the universe, at the very beginning, it’s all hydrogen (beads). But there is nuclear fusion going on, and the beads are being fused into heavier elements like helium and carbon and oxygen (necklaces). Well, astronomers made predictions about HOW MUCH helium you could fuse during the very hot period, according to the standard cosmology, and the prediction was for 75% hydrogen (beads) and 24% helium (necklaces), and that’s exactly what we see today.

And for #6, I talk about baking a cake. Suppose you heated up your oven and put a ban full of cake batter in there for an hour. You notice that the room is 68 Fahrenheit (20 Celsius) when the cake went in. Then you take the cake out to cool, but you leave the oven open. An hour later, you notice that the oven is cool, but the temperature of the room has gone up to 72 Fahrenheit (22 Celsius). When you have a source of heat in a small area, then you open it up in a bigger area, the smaller area cools down, and the bigger area warms up a bit. Astronomers made a prediction that the very hot creation event would leave a small 3 degrees Kelvin “cosmic microwave background radiation” everywhere in space, and when they were finally able to measure it, they found that the predicted 3 Kelvin temperature was found exactly as predicted.

So, if you don’t know all of these evidences for a beginning, read the article, pick your favorites, and be ready to explain them.

Why We Know Our Universe, And Everything In It, Had A Beginning first | Cold Case Christianity

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My career as a Cold Case Detective was built on being evidentially certain about the suspects I brought to trial. There are times when my certainty was established and confirmed by the cumulative and diverse nature of the evidence. Let me give you an example. It’s great when a witness sees the crime and identifies the suspect, but it’s even better if we have DNA evidence placing the suspect at the scene. If the behavior of the suspect (before and after the time of the crime) also betrays his involvement, and if his statements when interviewed are equally incriminating, the case is even better. Cases such as these become more and more reasonable as they grow both in depth and diversity. It’s not just that we now have four different evidences pointing to the same conclusion, it’s that these evidences are from four different categories. Eyewitness testimony, forensic DNA, behaviors and admissions all point to the same reasonable inference. When we have a cumulative, diverse case such as this, our inferences become more reasonable and harder to deny. Why did I take the time to describe this evidential approach to reasonable conclusions? Because a similar methodology can be used to determine whether everything in the universe (all space, time and matter) came from nothing. We have good reason to believe our universe had a beginning, and this inference is established by a cumulative, diverse evidential case:

Philosophical Evidence (from the Impossibility of Infinite Regress)
Imagine a linear race track with a start and finish line. Now imagine you’re a new police recruit and I’ve asked you to put on your track shoes and step into the starting blocks for a physical training (PT) test. The finish line is one hundred yards away. As you place your feet in the blocks and prepare to run, I raise the starting pistol. Just before I fire it, however, I stop and tell you to move the start line and blocks back six inches. You reluctantly do that. Again I raise the pistol to the sky—only to command you, once again, to move the line back six inches. You grudgingly comply. Imagine this continues. Question: Will you ever reach the finish line? No. Unless there is a beginning, you’ll never get to the finish. In a similar way, time also requires a beginning in order for any of us to reach a finish; unless time has a beginning, we cannot arrive at the finish line we call “today.”

Theoretical Evidence (from Mathematics and Physics)
Albert Einstein’s calculations related to the general theory of relativity 1916 indicated the universe was dynamic (either expanding or contracting). The notion of a static universe was so common at the time, however, that Einstein applied a mathematical “constant” to his calculations to maintain the unchanging, uniform nature of the universe he hoped for (he later referred to this effort as “the biggest blunder he ever made in his life” ). Einstein’s calculations suggested the universe was not eternally old and unchanging. Alexander Friedmann, a Russian mathematician working with Einstein’s theories in the 1920’s, developed a mathematical model predicting an expanding universe. This conclusion inferred the universe must have had a beginning from which it was expanding.

Observational Evidence (from Astronomical Data)
Vesto Slipher, an American astronomer working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, spent nearly ten years perfecting his understanding of spectrograph readings. His observations revealed something remarkable. If a distant object was moving toward Earth, its observable spectrograph colors shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. If a distant object was moving away from Earth, its colors shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Slipher identified several “nebulae” and observed a “redshift” in their spectrographic colors. If these “nebulae” were moving away from our galaxy (and one another) as Slipher observed, they must have once been tightly clustered together. By 1929, Astronomer Edwin Hubble published findings of his own, verifying Slipher’s observations and demonstrating the speed at which a star or galaxy moves away from us increases with its distance from the earth. This once again confirmed the expansion of the universe.

Thermal Evidence (from the Second Law of Thermodynamics)
Imagine walking into a room and observing a wind-up toy police car. The longer you watch it roll, the slower it moves. You realize the car is winding down—that is, the amount of usable energy is decreasing. It’s reasonable to infer the car was recently wound up prior to your entry into the room. The fact the toy car is not yet completely unwound indicates it was wound up recently. If the car had been wound much earlier, we would expect it to be motionless by the time we entered the room. In a similar way, the fact our universe still exhibits useful energy—even though the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates we are on our way to a cosmic “heat death”—indicates a beginning. Otherwise, and if the universe were infinitely old, our cosmos should have run out of usable energy by now. We can reasonably infer it was once tightly wound and full of energy.

Quantitative Evidence (from the Abundance of Helium)
As Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle studied the way elements are created within stars, he was able to calculate the amount of helium created if the universe came into being from nothing. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe (Hydrogen is the first), but in order to form helium by nuclear fusion, temperatures must be incredibly high and conditions must be exceedingly dense. These would have been the conditions if the universe came into being from nothing. Hoyle’s calculations related to the formation of helium happen to coincide with our measurements of helium in the universe today. This, of course, is consistent with the universe having a moment of beginning.

Residual Evidence (from the Cosmic Background Radiation)
In 1964, two American physicists and radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected what is now referred to as “echo radiation”, winning a Nobel Prize for their discovery in 1978. Numerous additional experiments and observations have since established the existence of cosmic background radiation, including data from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite launched in 1989, and the Planck space observatory launched in 2009. For many scientists, this discovery alone solidified their belief the universe had a beginning. If the universe leapt into existence, expanding from a state of tremendous heat, density and expansion, we should expect find this kind of cosmic background radiation.

The evidence for the beginning of the universe is decidedly diverse
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There are numerous, diverse lines of evidence pointing to the same reasonable inference. As we assemble the philosophical evidence from the impossibility of infinite regress, the theoretical evidence from mathematics and physics, the observational evidence from astronomical data, the thermal evidence from the second law of thermodynamics, the quantitative evidence from the abundance of helium, and the residual evidence from the cosmic background radiation, we quickly recognize the different nature of these varied forms of evidence. That’s what makes the case so powerful. Just like my criminal cases, when multiple divergent lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion, you can trust you’re making a proper inference. The evidence for the beginning of the universe is decidedly diverse:

I’ve briefly excerpted this case from one chapter in my book: please read God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for A Divinely Created Universe.

For more information about the scientific and philosophical evidence pointing to a Divine Creator, please read God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe. This book employs a simple crime scene strategy to investigate eight pieces of evidence in the universe to determine the most reasonable explanation. The book is accompanied by an eight-session God’s Crime Scene DVD Set (and Participant’s Guide) to help individuals or small groups examine the evidence and make the case.

The post Why We Know Our Universe, And Everything In It, Had A Beginning first appeared on Cold Case Christianity.

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“Dark matter” and “dark energy”

“Greeted by a band of theologians”

“Is anything too hard for the Lᴏʀᴅ?”

Monday news to know:

Quote for the day:

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