It’s nearly impossible to take in a night sky of glittering stars, and not be in awe of the wonder of creation. As a celebrated astronomer, Dr. David Bradstreet says the careful study of these wonders has only deepened his appreciation for God’s creative brilliance. He shares a window into his celestial exploration in his contribution to the new book, The Story of the Cosmos, in which he pens a chapter on binary stars.
“Binary stars – which most people have never even heard of – are an awful lot of fun because they’re two stars that orbit each other. And in this dance they do you can determine just about everything there is to know about the stars. Their sizes. Their masses. Their shapes. Their temperatures. All kinds of interesting things that, if they weren’t in pairs, you would not be able to determine.”
The way God crafted these stars in relation to each other allows astronomers & astrophysicists to unlock mysteries they could never have explored otherwise. Their uniqueness offers amazing insight.
“It’s interesting that we’ve been taught so many times the sun is an average star, that most stars are like our sun. There’s nothing special about our sun. And that’s completely a lie! It’s completely wrong.”
“Most stars – at least sixty percent of all stars – come in pairs. So the fact that the sun is by itself already puts it in the minority. Most stars are binary stars, and there are triple star systems, quadruples, quintuples! But the binary stars are the most common configuration for stars. Of course, when you tell people that they look at you like they’ve never heard of this. Well there’s lots of stuff people have never heard of!”
There’s a point of real fascination here for all of us – no matter the depth of our scientific knowledge.
“Even a guy named Albert Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it’s comprehensible! The universe could have been made in such a way that it would be impossible for us to understand. That it would be so complicated and such a mess that we would just couldn’t figure it out, and for thousands of years that was the case.”
“Yet the more you study it, the more you start to realize that it’s almost as if God is saying, look, I’m giving you all these clues. If you just work hard enough you can learn things you never dreamed of learning! Like what a star is made of. What are their temperatures. What’s going on inside them. The more I study the universe, the more it looks like God has made the universe in such a comprehensible way that, as Kepler said, he took great joy in thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”
Dr. David Bradstreet is a beloved professor at Eastern University, a celebrated astronomer with an asteroid named in his honor & contributes to the new book The Story of the Cosmos: How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God.