Question: I am a firm believer in God, but I am disconcerted when I see the bashing of science and exploration in articles such as "Cosmos and Creator." I am a young student, and I one day hope to explore space and witness the amazing universe....

QUESTION: I recently read your article titled "Cosmos and Creator" (6/06). In that article, you say the Voyager space probe would take thousands of years to reach the closest star system, Alpha Centauri. This information is true...but you must consider the near-term possibilities of reaching nearby star systems in much shorter amounts of time. Proposals for nuclear-powered spacecraft and laser-driven ships [could result] in travel times to Alpha Centauri on the order of a few decades....I am a firm believer in God, but I am disconcerted when I see the bashing of science and exploration in articles such as "Cosmos and Creator." I am a young student [17 years old], and I one day hope to explore space and witness the amazing universe God has created. But the publication of articles [like yours] ridiculing the God-instilled desire to explore and expand only aid in the darkening of an otherwise bright future.

RESPONSE: Voyager I and II are about to run out of power, soon to become very expensive junk drifting in space. If Voyager I retained its power, it would take 77,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri. You say that with new propulsion systems on the horizon it could be done in decades.

How many "decades"? Two or three? When do you think this might be accomplished, given the design engineering and financing involved? One hundred years? It's taken the world 50 years since Sputnik to get to where we are today. Because Alpha Centauri is only four light years away, and the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across, if it took only one week to get to Alpha Centauri, it would take 25,000 weeks, or about 500 years, to cross our galaxy with your new propulsion system. How will the crew stay alive?

I don't want to dampen your youthful enthusiasm and optimism, but some things are impossible. Even at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to cross our galaxy and trillions of years to reach the farthest star systems. You say you "hope to explore space." Even at ten times the speed of light, it would take you 10,000 years to cross our galaxy--to say nothing of the question of how the crew could live that long. Even at 50 times the speed of light, it would still take 2,000 years to cross the Milky Way, and you would scarcely have touched the fringe of space!

I did not "bash" either science or exploration; I simply gave the facts as I am giving them to you now. Sit down, take a deep breath, and finally admit that although "with God all things are possible" (Mt 19:26) the same cannot be said for man. The old joke may be apropos right now:

Far from "ridiculing the God-instilled desire to explore," I commended what has been accomplished in exploration of our solar system--and the future possibilities available. But I pointed out the simple fact that there are an estimated 200 billion star systems like ours in this galaxy and a trillion galaxies in the cosmos, many of them larger. So if we eventually understood perfectly every detail about our solar system, we would only have in our computers one-two-hundred-billionth-of-a-trillionth of a sample of the cosmos, rather too small to be of any value.

Let's say you broke the world record in the 100-meter race. With that feat accomplished, you decide that you are going to high-jump 100 meters. You chide those who attempt to tell you that to jump that high is impossible, as you have just chided me: "The publication of articles like yours ridiculing the God-instilled desire to jump ever higher only aid in the darkening of an otherwise bright future."

People would tell you to get real! But the ambition to explore even the tiniest part of the universe is more like believing that one day high jumpers could clear the bar at 1,000 meters. Some things are simply impossible.