Most of us wake up and go through our day without ever taking note of the sun, except perhaps to complain about it either being obscured by clouds or too hot to stay outside very long. What we rarely if ever consider is the fact that hundreds of billion billion billion billion (that’s 10 with 38 zeros) fusion reactions take place every second in our sun.
A week or so ago I was alerted to a video (https://vimeo.com/275908702) that focused on the amazing creative power of God, both in terms of the massive size of the universe as well as the incredibly small world of molecules and atoms. It may be helpful here at the start to remember that we count from million to billion to trillion to quadrillion to quintillion to sextillion.
So, here are ten things that should leave you in awe of your God.
(1) On a clear night, perhaps best in the desert, the human eye can see upwards of 5,000 stars. That may seem like a lot until you realize that the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy is approximately 400,000,000,000 (400 billion). Some would place the number a bit lower, but certainly not less than 100,000,000,000 (100 billion).
(2) Although that many stars may in itself be overwhelming, we must remember that our galaxy is only one of approximately 2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion galaxies). Of course, this estimate is based on what is in the observable universe. What we can currently discern, largely through the Hubble Telescope, should not be taken as the limit of what is actually present.
(3) Now, for the sake of our analysis, let’s dial it down to the a much more conservative estimate and draw our conclusion based on only 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies. That’s a whole lot less than 2 trillion! OK, if we multiply only 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies times 10,000,000,000 (10 billion stars in each one), and 10 billion stars is an extremely low, conservative estimate, we come to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 1 sextillion stars in the universe!
(4) Now consider all the grains of sand on the earth. There are approximately 135,000 grains in one cubic inch of sand and 235,000,000 in one cubic foot. That’s a lot of sand!
