Big Stretch

A bit in this month’s Astronomy magazine about 21-centimeter tomography caught my eye—not because I know anything about 21-centimeter tomography, but because it contained an astronomy word from the Bible.

The bit I read was by Max Tegmark of MIT. He explained that space is full of hydrogen gas, and neutral hydrogen gas gives off radio waves measurable by radio telescopes. This makes possible an ambitious project to map the universe in 3-D.

If nearby, these radio waves are 21 centimeters (thus the name 21-centimeter tomography), but if they’re far away they're longer because, he wrote, the expansion of the universe has stretched them.

In 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, and that apparently other galaxies are rushing away from us. More recently this was replaced by the idea that the fabric of space itself is expanding—stretching—and the galaxies are moving with it.

Hundreds of years before Christ the prophets wrote:

Isaiah 40:22. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

Isaiah 42:5. This is what God the LORD says—he who created the heavens and stretched them out

Isaiah 44:24. I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens

Isaiah 45:12. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts.

Isaiah 51:13. the LORD your Maker, who stretched out the heavens

Jeremiah 10:12. But God . . . stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

Jeremiah 51:15. He stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

Psalm 104:2. He stretches out the heavens like a tent.


God doesn’t tell us everything about the universe, but what He does say is true.