Bursting the Bubble
Our solar system exists in a bubble within the Milky Way Galaxy aptly named the Local Bubble. It’s a region of space containing the Sun and a few nearby stars like Antares, the bright red star you see in the southern sky in the summer. Usually, the space between stars contains a fair bit of gas and dust— you can typically see gigantic dust lanes in pictures of any spiral galaxy you choose.
In this Hubble composite image of the Whirlpool Galaxy and its companion dwarf galaxy, the dust lanes are the thin, dark lines in the spiral arms of the galaxy, which also extend over to and splay in front of the smaller galaxy on the right.
But the Local Bubble is comparatively and surprisingly empty, which means that when we look out into the nighttime sky, we’ve got a pretty clear view of what’s out there.
Some would say that our location in the Milky Way is for this reason quite fortunate, even providential--after all, everything we know about stars and galaxies and nebulae comes from the light our telescopes can gather from them. If we were in a more opaque area, we wouldn’t know that the calcium in our bones and the iron in our blood were formed in the hearts of massive stars. It would be more difficult to understand how planets form. Because of the transparency of the Local Bubble and the technologies that allow us to take advantage of it, we have greatly expanded our understanding of our place in the universe.
Of course, it doesn’t take a detailed understanding of the space around us in order to question where we come from, how we were made, or our place in the universe— humans have been doing that for millennia and we continue to come up with varied and profound answers. But while the existential questions have remained the same, the roles that science and technology play in our thinking, our society, and our everyday lives haven’t.
That’s why we study science and religion. As we advance in scientific discovery, our new knowledge brings up age-old questions and offers new angles from which to consider them. Our Local Bubble hasn’t changed, just our understanding of it. And as with any new perspective, change brings both excitement and conflict. For every advance that allows to genetic engineering prevent disease and heal the wounded, there’s an uncomfortable discussion about what it means for humanity to be made in God’s image. Science and religion touch every aspect of our lives in very personal, life-or-death ways, so questions of every kind abound.
Which brings us to this blog. As students of science and religion, we aren’t interested so much in eliminating conflict and uncertainty altogether, as if that were possible. Instead, we aim to improve the quality of our disagreements by clarifying the storied and heated histories of the issues and suggesting the most productive ways of considering and discussing them. We won’t be breaking new ground with the information we share here, nor completely answering well-established questions, but we do want to share what we’ve found to be the most helpful questions to ask of ourselves and others when it comes to science and religion.
We also want to hear from you! If you have questions about science and religion, send them our way! We’ve got a plan that will last us through June, but we’ll do our best to answer what comes our way, or point you to a source that can.
If you’re reading this, you’re more than likely a friend, family member, or other acquaintance of one of the two authors, but allow us to close out this first post by introducing ourselves. Each post will be a joint effort, seamlessly blended we hope, so this may be the last time you hear from us individually.
I’m Jo. My undergraduate degree is in physics and astronomy with a concentration in education and a minor in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’ve been a United Methodist all my life and have been given grace upon grace as I’ve bumped up against and struggled with questions of faith, including many of the ones we’ll tackle here. I spent several years working in informal science education at Morehead Planetarium and Science Center before attending the University of Edinburgh last year, earning a masters in Science and Religion. My dissertation focused on awe and wonder in the work of astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Sir Arthur Eddington. If you couldn’t tell, I kinda like space. I’m currently working on my masters of divinity at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC.
And I’m Melanie. I’m the first graduate of Samford University’s Science and Religion undergraduate degree program, the first program of its kind. I was raised in the Baptist Church and struggled a lot with my faith as I worked through my major, but I am a much stronger, more at peace Christian because of it. I took my concentrations in religion and computer science with me to The University of Edinburgh where I met Jo in our Science and Religion Masters program. My dissertation centered on network technologies —like smart phones, personal identification implants, or even brain to brain connectivity— and how Christian theologians might best prepare for an increasingly interconnected future.
We’re excited to start this series with you, our intrepid followers! Send us questions, thoughts, and support and watch this space in the coming weeks for another post explaining more about what we mean when we talk about Science and Religion and how we’ll be approaching these questions. We don’t have all the answers, but hopefully we can shift through the dust of our own bubbles in order to see the universe around ourselves a little more clearly.
