hydrogen bomb Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

We are appalled at the devastation caused by the CORONA virus. We do not wish to minimize the horror of this pandemic, but we hope that some good can come from it. You would think that world leaders would realize the tenuous nature of life on Earth. You would think they should realize that getting along with one another and joining forces to combat all the evils in our world must be a high priority. There is another way in which humans should be motivated to get along. That is the massive nuclear destruction potential in the weapons around the world.

Since the first nuclear explosion in July of 1945, nine nations have detonated 2056 atomic devices. No one fully understood what would result from all of this testing and weaponry. America’ s 15-megaton Castle Bravo test in the Pacific Ocean produced a fine, chalky material that rained down on ships and their crews in the area for three hours, sticking to human skin and piling up on the decks. Later known as shi no hai (ashes of death), they later learned that the dust was highly radioactive coral debris. It caused the entire crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru fishing boat to fall ill with radiation sickness.

Today some 15,000 nuclear weapons exist. They are held by the United Kingdom, China, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Russia, The United States, and possibly Iran. If a nuclear war broke out, 270 million people would die in the first hours of the conflict. Remember that 70,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima, and 35,000 died in Nagasaki. That was from eleven pounds of plutonium. Imagine the destruction potential of what nations have now.

Is it possible that all of this nuclear destruction potential can be disposed of without war? Can the message of peace, tolerance, love, and respect possibly come out of the horror of COVID-19 and the “black lives matter” movement? The world needs the Christian message of love now more than ever. It is not just a matter of political correctness and common sense. It is a matter of survival for us all.

Interesting Sun Facts We all know some things about the Sun. We know it is powered by thermonuclear fusion, that it is a G-2 type spectral star, and that it is the primary energy source for the Earth. Many of us have seen a solar eclipse when the Moon blocks out the photosphere of the Sun and lets us see its corona. We know that the Sun is not just a ball of fire but a complex globe. Here are some more interesting Sun facts that are relatively new to us:

The light that we see coming from the Sun is from its photosphere. The photosphere is a thin incandescent layer that is just 200 miles (322 km) thick. That is less than one four-thousandth of the Sun’s diameter and is like the outer skin of an onion, only thinner than that.

The energy of the Sun is created in its core, which is a very small sphere, just one two-hundredth of the Sun’s volume. Every second that small ball emits the energy of 96 billion 1-megaton hydrogen bombs. The Sun’s weight decreases by 4 million tons every second as mass is turned into energy and radiated from the photosphere.

The Sun spins on its axis once a month, just as the Moon does. The center 70% of the Sun spins uniformly like a solid ball. The remaining 30% has different spins with the poles turning more slowly than the equator. These zones spinning at different speeds meet in a recently discovered zone 130,000 miles (209,000 km) below the surface. That zone is called the tachocline, and it’s where the Sun’s magnetic field originates.

Sunspots are areas where the local magnetic field is 5,000 times stronger than on the rest of the surface. The stronger magnetic field constricts the Sun’s plasma. When sunspots are rare, it seems that Earth’s climate becomes colder. Starting in 1645 there were few sunspots for 70 years. During that time, Earth became colder, people abandoned fishing colonies in Iceland and Greenland, and the Thames River and Venice canals went through periods of freezing solid.

As scientists probe more in-depth, they learn many interesting Sun facts. Just as in many other areas, the more we learn, the more questions we have. What effect do sunspots have on life on Earth? How can they affect our climate? What will happen in the next sunspot cycle? Tomorrow, we will look more into questions about sunspots. As we learn more interesting Sun facts, we realize the amazing design wisdom of the Creator to make life on this planet possible.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

Data from Astronomy magazine, July 2019, page 20.