What Is The Most Astounding Fact About The Universe?

Forbes/Science ^ | 8 Apr, 2016 | Ethan Siegel

[MtnClimber]

Back in 2008, Time Magazine interviewed Neil de Grasse Tyson, and asked him, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” His answer was indeed a very good, true, and astounding fact about the Universe: that all the complex atoms that make up everything we know owe their origins to ancient, exploded stars, dating back billions of years. It’s a great fact, and it’s definitely on the short list of the most remarkable things we’ve learned about the Universe. But if I were to choose the single most astounding fact about the Universe, I’d want you to consider something else: something far more fundamental and profound. Consider that the Universe — with everything in it the way it is — didn’t have to be this way. It didn’t have to even be close. We could have had a Universe without trees, without mountains, without our skies and without oceans. We could have had a Universe without planets like Earth, or planets at all. We could have even had a Universe where nothing that we know of — no particles, forces or interactions — exists as it does right now.

[trebb]

That some people actually want Hillary to be President. How is that even possible?

Yep - you can tell some of them by their "Cruz or Lose" motto. They, like him, have dropped all pretense of actual conservative values and are unable/unwilling to see how they are giving the whole deal away.

[ops33]

Most astounding fact about the universe is that God made it so I can have a place to live.

[doldrumsforgop]

To see the hand of God in action.

[infool7]

Absolutely ASTOUNDING!

[DungeonMaster]

It is 6000 years old.

[xp38]

So your beeber has been stuned.

[ctdonath2]

I’m about to make a scale model of the Solar System with my daughter.
The Earth will be represented by a bead 3mm wide, Jupiter will be 32mm, and all the objects will be proportionally spaced on a string 1km long. We’ll stretch it out on a mile long sidewalk, and see if that stunes her beeber.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Cyman: "That one could look upon its majesty and not recognize the hand of God."

PGR88: "That the universe is “fine-tuned” for the existence of life."

heights: "The Universal Constants; if you know them, you know there is a God."

Gideon7:"I would vote for the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field (UDF), which is is one of the strongest empirical 'tells' that the Universe is in fact created."

Romans 1:19b-20:

"...what may be known about God is plain to [you],
because God has made it plain to [you].
For since the creation of the world
God’s invisible qualities—
his eternal power and divine nature—
have been clearly seen [by you],
being understood from what has been made,
so that people are without excuse."

[Hebrews 11:6]

My vote for the single greatest photographs ever taken are the Ultra and the Xtreme Deep Fields. I have it as the desktop on my laptop and marvel at it and, more importantly, at Him several times daily.

God designed the universe very carefully because I think that He wants us to marvel at the sheer majesty of His creation and see what He hath wrought. He wants us to see it.

Recently, Dr. Hugh Ross has been stressing the strategic current location of Earth, far from the galactic center and between the spiral arms, as being ideal for seeing exactly that, thereby constituting an additional evidence for God's design.