"Only a Few of His Works Have We Seen"

I plan to be back later today, with a post about part of "Caritas in Veritate."

Meanwhile, here's something I was introduced to yesterday.

Quantum Foam to the Observable Universe: And Beyond

This is a reduced-size still image from a very impressive interactive graphic.

"The Scale of the Universe 2"

An interactive graphic by Cary Huang, on http://htwins.net (© Cary and Michael Huang)

The link takes you to Cary and Michael Huang's graphic - push 'start,' and use the slider to go from the scale of things we're used to seeing, down to the quantum foam that's our current known limit of how small anything can be - or go the other direction to zoom out past the observable universe, to a picture showing the estimated size of the universe we're in.

"Beyond These, Many Things Lie Hid"

Folks have learned a few things about this world, in the 22 centuries that have passed since this was written:

"Beyond these, many things lie hid; only a few of his works have we seen.

"It is the LORD who has made all things, and to those who fear him he gives wisdom."
(Sirach 43:34-35)

I'd be very surprised if there isn't more to learn about this creation. My guess is that we're just starting to learn about the scale - in space, time, and other aspects of reality - of the world God is putting together.

I've run into folks who seem convinced that God gets upset when we show curiosity about His handiwork. That doesn't make sense to me.

We live in a world of wonder, with beauty and order to be found in any direction, and at every scale: from forces holding elementary particles together, to sheets of galaxies spread like soap bubbles across the cosmos; and from events so ephemeral that 'a blink of an eye' would seem like frozen motion, to a universe that took somewhere around 13,750,000,000 years to get to where it is today.

I probably wouldn't have made things so big, so small, so ephemeral, or so ancient: but I'm quite willing to accept the idea that God can.

Related posts:

• "Science isn't a Four-Letter Word"
  (January 29, 2012)
• "Clay, Elementary Particles, Photons, and God"
  (January 25, 2012)
• " 'In a State of Journeying' "
  (January 18, 2012)
• "Mephistopheles, Cosmology, and Doctor Faustus"
  (November 7, 2011)
• "God's Creation: He Seems to Think Big"
  (September 23, 2010)

A tip of the hat to FatherTF, on Twitter, for the heads-up on his post:

• "The magnificence of God's creation"
  The hermeneutic of continuity (February 26, 2012)