While you’ve probably never heard of Hanny van Arkel her name is becoming well known in the scientific community because she discovered a giant green blob—a blob that is important to our understanding of the universe.

In 2007, van Arkel was a 24-year-old Dutch elementary school teacher who was participating in the worldwide Galaxy Zoo project where everyday people can look at archived star photographs—many of them taken by the Hubble Space Telescope—in order to catalog new objects. In one of the photographs, van Arkel noticed an odd object that appeared blue, smudgy and fairly small. In subsequent photos astronomers have observed that it has turned green and is growing larger.
The mysterious giant green blob has been named Hanny’s Voorwerp (pronounced “for-verp,” the word is Dutch for object.) It exists deep in outer space and seems to be strangely alive. It is giving birth to new stars, some only a couple million years old. It is in a remote area of the universe where stars don’t normally form. Parts of the green blob are collapsing and the resulting pressure is creating the stars. All of this is taking place outside of a normal galaxy, which is where stars usually exist. There are two things about Hanny’s Voorwerp that I find mind-bogglingly fascinating. The first is its size. It is approximately the same size as our own Milky Way galaxy. The second is its distance from where we are. It is 650 million light years away, which when written in that form doesn’t seem all that impressive until you consider that a light year (in simple terms—the distance light can travel in a year) is actually 6 trillion miles. I did the math, multiplying 6 trillion miles times 650 million and a came up with a number that I don’t have a name for: 3,900,000,000,000,000,000,000. Hanny’s Voorwerp, the giant green blob in space that is birthing new stars, is that many miles away from earth! A University of Alabama astronomer who examined the blob said, “These are very lonely newborn stars that are in the middle of nowhere.” Indeed.
I can’t help but think of all of this in theological terms. Knowing that new stars are being born out there, so far away reaffirms my faith that God is greater than we can imagine with the limitations of the human mind. Furthermore, I think such a discovery is a reminder that God is still at work creating in the universe. We are privileged to be witnesses to the creation, even from this distance. I am humbled by the vastness of the universe.
By the way, since van Arkel’s discovery, astronomers have looked for similar gas blobs elsewhere in the universe. So far, they’ve found 18 more. I have a feeling that God isn’t finished yet.
Grace and peace to you!

—Brent Criswell