Quantum mechanics, relativity and all that!

What does modern physics actually tell us about why we are here?

Well, an awful lot actually. As a physicist I am proud of the achievements of my colleagues who work in astrophysics, particle physics and related disciplines, as they enable us to understand more and more of what is going on in pictures like the one above, or at the very most micro of microscopic frontiers of our knowledge. The suite of quantum field theories and Einstein's theories of relativity (Einstein actually contributed one of the key early findings to quantum theory as well) enable us to write down the fundamental theories of science in a very few equations and explain the nature of all matter and forces in terms of a single set of 61 elementary particles in the Standard Model. Essentially, all physical phenomena and other concepts in biology, chemistry, geology, medicine etc can ultimately be derived from these equations and particles to a very high degree of accuracy - except under very extreme conditions. We understand a great deal about human beings and the world around us.

Extreme conditions include black holes, very high energy interactions between elementary particles and the state of the Universe its very early stages of development according to the most commonly accepted theory of its origin - the Big Bang. That doesn't mean that everything else is understood under less extreme conditions, but we pretty much have a handle on them and know what it is that we don't know in most cases.

To get to this stage is an amazing achievement of human minds. Some would say that God has allowed us this knowledge and made us in a way that we can figure it out, or even guided us to some extent; many others, though, see this just as an incredible outcome of the human brain as it evolved from the Big Bang. It is fair to say that the odds are stacked against the latter interpretation, for many reasons, but today I want mainly to celebrate what we have been able to achieve by way of fundamental knowledge and the understanding of what we have discovered. Surely we can all marvel at the Crab Nebula shown below and the fantastic detail in which we can observe something that lies about 6,500 light years distant from the Earth (38,211,060,000,000,000 miles).

So what about the extreme conditions? Therein lies quite a big can of worms, which should not be opened today. More important at the moment than what we don't know is what we do actually know about what we don't know. In this case we are talking about unknown unknowns, because we do not yet have a successful handle on how to investigate the missing knowledge, so we don't really quite know what we are looking for. The amazing fact that we do know though, is that we have no idea what 95% of the Universe comprises. That is a massive whole in our knowledge, but it is an incredible fact that we can be so sure about how much we don't know, given that we have never detected or experienced it, or come up with a theory that looks as if it is likely to be successful. The dark matter and dark energy that keep on turning up in the news these days are essentially still just words and until, if ever, things progress beyond that, we remain a very long way from a scientific theory of everything that explains our existence.

So let's celebrate this amazing Universe and all the wonderous things that we know about it, and enjoy the fabulous pictures from the Hubble telescope that we can find on the web!

Have you ever wondered?

Who put the majesty into the morning?

Allowed seeing eyes to capture the glisten on the water?

Who provides food for the birds and clothes the flowers of the field?

Who flung the stars into space, unfathomable beauty given on the depths of the night?

Who breathed life into the newborn, potent, latent wonder, full of future's hope?

Who whispers in the gentle breeze or can tame the roar of a mighty hurricane?

The glory of a heavenly sunset giving a window into another world.

God would walk with 'man'.

Open your eyes and ears and hearts and embrace the all-seeing, all-knowing God of Heaven and Earth. Breathe Him in and know that all is well.

The all-sufficient One is here.

Make peace with God; the time is right.

He calls out your name.

Fear has no place where perfect love dwells.

We are forgiven, let the Prince of Peace reign.

Jesus is His name.

I am God of the night as well as the day

Whether we see it or feel it or not, God is always with us

I sat down quietly by the river at the end of the day. The light was fading and the pheasants arguing about who was going to sleep where. Suddenly it came to me very clearly, almost as if spoken - I am the God of the night as well as of the day.

We like to think of God as the powerful force who can answer our prayers and turn the dark times in our lives into light, as he rises over us like the morning sun. And he does that - time and again. However, he is not a spiritual vending machine: we cannot decide how things should be, when, how and where. God knows the bigger picture: He knows what is happening to us, how we are feeling, what the outcome will be. When we go through difficulties, pain, suffering and heartache, we can learn that He walks through those times with us - carries us when necessary. The Bible tells us that God works all things together for good for those who love Him.

The night falls and then there are several hours of darkness. Those hours have purpose. We can use them to sleep or look at the stars; some people work night shifts. We all embrace that time in one way or another and God is with us through them. When the darkness falls on our lives, God does not go away then either. It is more difficult to embrace the difficult times in our lives than the periods when all is going well, but if we don't find God in them we miss out on what he has been trying to do in us. I recently heard a talk by Gill Gifford about treasures in the darkness, a phrase which encapsulates this nicely.

I was at the height of my career when I suddenly was struck with chronic fatigue syndrome. I went from being a head of department in a University and actively involved in a church to sleeping 22 hours a day and only waking up to eat when prompted by my wife. For several months I could do nothing about this and was at the mercy of the illness - and God. I was desperate to get better and pick my life up again where it had left off. With a lot of prayer and some help from the medical profession, I gradually recovered and am now well again. However, during that time I was completely changed. I decided not to go back to work, but embrace what God had been doing with me during that time. I am happier, healthier, and more fruitful than at any previous point in my life. That doesn't mean that I regret what I had done before: I had had a fulfilling career which in itself was fruitful. However, the time was right to move on, not hold onto what had been the 'good times' and walk into the future with God as the new person into which he had turned me.