Our planet is spinning twice as fast as a jet travels

Did you know that our planet is spinning on its axis from west to east at approximately a thousand miles an hour? (It’s faster at the equator and slower at the poles.) This is twice the speed of a commercial jet.

How, then, does a westbound jet get to its destination? The answer is that the jet, the air through which it travels, and its destination are all part of the same rotating system as our planet. 

If you think our planet’s rotation is fast, consider that we are orbiting our Sun at around 67,000 miles per hour. And our solar system is moving through space at around 450,000 miles per hour.

Why don’t we feel all this motion? Because we are stationary with respect to our surroundings, like traveling on a smoothly moving train where you don’t feel the movement if you don’t look outside. But our lack of perception does not make reality any less real.

Now we have another motion to consider: a new study reports that our planet’s inner core is changing.

What is the largest structure in the universe?

Earth is composed of four distinct layers:

• Our crust is like the shell of a hard-boiled egg and extremely thin, measuring as little as 3.1 miles in some places.
• The mantle comes next; at close to 1,865 miles, it is our thickest layer.
• Next comes the outer core, made of iron and nickel in liquid form. This liquid churns in huge, turbulent currents, generating electrical currents that in turn generate Earth’s magnetic field.
• The last is the inner core, a solid metal ball made mostly of iron and nickel with a radius of 758 miles (about three-fourths that of the moon). It spins faster than the rest of the planet and is almost as hot as the surface of the sun. Pressures here are well over three million times greater than on Earth’s surface.

Now, we’re told that this inner core is less solid than previously thought and is disturbed by the turbulence of the outer core. According to a new USC study, the inner core’s rotation began decreasing around 2010. This “backtracking” relative to the planet’s surface might even alter the length of a day by fractions of a second.

As amazing and mysterious as our planet is, remember that it is just one of at least one hundred billion planets (some say as many as four hundred billion) in our galaxy. And our galaxy is just one of as many as perhaps two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Speaking of the skies above us: astronomers have now identified what seems to be the largest confirmed structure in the universe. This “filament” (a network connecting galaxies) measures about 1.3 billion light-years across and holds the mass of roughly two hundred quadrillion suns.

And our Father measures everything you just read about with the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).

Why do we name trees and planets?

Considering the incomprehensible magnitude of the universe illustrates the comparative finitude of human beings. David was right to ask the Creator:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? (Psalm 8:3–4).

And yet, the shepherd poet was quick to add:

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas (vv. 6–8).

Here’s the problem: our secularized society embraces the latter while forgetting the former.

The more our scientific and medical discoveries advance, the more “dominion” over God’s creation we feel we achieve. The more we have learned about the world, the more we think we have mastered the world.

This is basic psychology: We somehow feel more agency over that which we can name. When we call a tree an “oak” or a “maple” and identify a planet in the nighttime sky as “Mars” or “Venus,” we subconsciously feel more empowered than we did. But our knowledge does not change our frailty. Passengers on a train who ignore its motion are just as endangered by a collision as those who do not.

It is worth noting that many of history’s greatest scientists were also committed Christians. Their knowledge of creation enhanced their appreciation for its Creator. And their faith provided a humility that enabled them to embrace their role as creature rather than creator, fulfilling our assigned task of protecting and improving our world for God’s glory and our good (Genesis 2:15).

“Now I think we are small enough”

President Theodore Roosevelt and his good friend, the naturalist William Beebe, would sometimes stay together at Roosevelt’s family home where they would often discuss the world and its great problems. Then, on occasion, they would go out on its lawn at night. They would search the skies until they found the faint spot of light behind the lower lefthand corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. Then they would remember together the words:

That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.

It is as large as our Milky Way.

It is one of a hundred million galaxies.

It consists of one hundred billion suns,

Each larger than our sun.

Then President Roosevelt would grin at Mr. Beebe and say, “Now I think we are small enough. Let’s go to bed.”

Are we small enough to go to God today?