Galaxy’s Discs and Halos and Astronomy or Cell Phones? | Stars, Cells, and God ep12

Join Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, as well as new discoveries that point to the reality of God’s existence. Galactic archaeologists analyzed recently updated surveys of stars in our galaxy that assembled the largest, by far, database of subgiant stars—a total of 250,000. Galactic archaeologists used the 250,000 subgiant stars to determine an outstanding feature of the Milky Way Galaxy—specifically that, throughout the past 11 billion years, our galaxy hasn’t suffered any merger events of sufficient magnitude to alter its spiral structure in any life-threatening manner. How does this feature point to our galaxy’s unique ability to sustain its life-essential spiral structure and to host advanced life? Providing cheap Internet access around the world requires tens of thousands of satellites, but those satellites will degrade our capacity to make the observations necessary to better understand this universe. How should we think about situations like this where taking care of people seems to stand in opposition to advancing science? How does the Judeo-Christian worldview provide a robust framework that expects good solutions exist that both take care of humanity as well as help us learn more about the universe in which we live? In this episode, Hugh and Jeff discuss these important topics. References: “A Time-Resolved Picture of Our Milky Way’s Early Formation History,” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04496-5, Maosheng Xiang et al. (article) “A Stellar Clock Reveals the Assembly History of the Milky Way,” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00768-2, Timothy C. Beers (article) RTB book: Designed to the Core, chapter 7, Hugh Ross (release date 7/22)