NOT BY CHANCE !
Astronomy and God
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament sheweth his handy work.
(Psalm 19:1)
Ranko Skoric
Copyright 2012 © Ranko Skoric
Original written in Croatian
Translated into English by the author
Cover design by Kerri Eaton
Edited by Patricia Salisbury
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0729-6
Images used with the following permission:
Fig. 1: National Research Council of Canada
Fig. 2: Russian Federal Space Agency, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
Fig. 3-10, 12-14, 17,18: NASA
Fig. 11: Dr. Robert Gendler
Fig. 15: April Hobart, Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Fig. 16: FORS Team, ESO (European Southern Observatory - Chile)
Fig. 19: Inga Skoric
Bible quotes: The King James Study Bible, published by Thomas Nelson, Inc, 1988
To my dearest Minka, who almost half a century ago
trustfully put her hand into mine as we were departing
across the ocean into the unknown.
I have a special joy in knowing that her hand
will remain there through all eternity.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Figure 1: The Algonquin Radio Telescope, Largest in Canada
Figure 2: The Other Cheek Unmasked
Figure 3: First Footprint on the Moon
Figure 4: Horse Hoof Prints on Mars?
Figure 5: A head on Mars!
Figure 6: Earth or Mars?
Figure 7: Honeycomb? Or Sponge?
Figure 8: Hubble – A Space Photographer
Figure 9: Expert Has Arrived
Figure 10: Run Away From This One!
Figure 11: Andromeda Galaxy
Figure 12: Seahorse
Figure 13: Three Elephant Trunks
Figure 14: The Oldest Photograph in the World
Figure 15: All Hope Abandon….
Figure 16: The Crab Nebula
Figure 17: Sleep Well, Our Native Earth
Figure 18: A Cosmic Speck
Figure 19: Author in Front of the Sun
Introduction
They say that once you have an encounter with a bear, you will never forget it. The image of your experience will forever be indelibly fixed in your mind. Having encountered a black bear this summer when hiking in the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, I seem to have bears on my brain. Headlines of other bear encounters in the news readily catch my eye. I was particularly struck by the case of a jogger in British Columbia who I read about recently. Running in the woods near Vancouver, he heard a sound and looked behind him. Shocked, he spotted a large black bear running after him. Eager to get away from his pursuer, he ran as fast as he could, but to no avail. Stopping to catch what he thought would be his last breath, the jogger sought refuge between two logs. The bear caught up with him and stood on his hind legs, menacingly eyeing his prey, eager to strike. At that exact moment, the raucous cry of barking dogs pierced the stillness of the forest. Caught by surprise, the bear dropped down on all fours and ran off. A dog walker with three large dogs just happened to be going down the trail in the forest, when the dogs spotted the bear, thereby saving the jogger. Lucky guy! But was this just a coincidence or was it part of a master plan?
We hear everyday of incidents too good to be true, too improbable to have occurred only as the result of chance. In many instances our knowledge is very limited and we can only describe these cases as being a fluke. However, in the realm of science, we are able to use facts and probability to calculate the likelihood of an event occurring. This book was born as a means of exploring a growing number of strange cosmic “coincidences” which enable our existence on this planet. Many of these facts came to light only recently as a result of ongoing space exploration.
My own foray into the area of space research began in the 1960`s in Canada. A graduate of electronics engineering from the University of Zagreb in Croatia, I was awarded the National Research Council Fellowship in Radio Astronomy. This Fellowship was a special government grant designated for use in scientific research and graduate studies in this branch of astronomy. It turned out that I found myself the only graduate student working and studying with Professor Iizuka at the University of Toronto. The professor and I spent entire nights making observations and taking measurements. The subject of the final thesis was a spectral analysis of the signals coming from pulsating radio stars, or pulsars.
It is hard to forget the excitement that came over me when the giant dish-like antenna of the Algonquin radio telescope (Figure 1) for the first time obeyed the commands of my fingers on the control board and began to adjust its large ear skyward, looking for the constellation Taurus. Just a few seconds later, the first radio signals from a distant pulsar started to show up in the form of a very regular stream, like the ticking of a clock, or the beating of a remote, but very strong and healthy heart. I wanted to pinch myself, so difficult was it to believe that the whole event was not merely a long-cherished dream. My brain struggled to register the fact that these radio signals, having originated in an incredibly remote transmitter, had been travelling through the cosmic void for thousands upon thousands of years, rushing toward the planet Earth. They were not just casually walking as some old retirees, but speeding with an incredible velocity of 186 thousand miles per second! Eight minutes earlier they had zoomed past our Sun, and only a single second before the end of their long trip, they were in the vicinity of the Moon. And finally – impact! They silently and invisibly crashed into the metal dish of the Algonquin observatory in northern Canada. The whole thing was almost impossible to believe!
Much water has passed over Niagara Falls since that event of more than four decades ago. The cosmos has since faced an onslaught of scientists, like never before in history. Thanks to an explosive development in technology, especially in the fields of electronics and telecommunications,
