Our sound files are in RealAudio format.  For more information click here.

The Universal Speed Limit

Click here to listen to this feature

Despite the impression you get from watching Star Trek adventures, you can't really zip around the Universe faster than the speed of light!  Light always obeys the speed limit. In the vacuum of outer space, it hurtles along at three hundred thousand kilometres a second.  The speed of light is nature's speed limit - the fastest anything can travel!

Light can be slowed down by transparent materials like air, water, glass or diamonds, but it can never break the speed limit.  The slowing down of light causes it to bend or refract.  The more that light slows down in its travels from one material into another, the more it bends.

Diamonds are more brilliant than other substances because they are more effective at slowing light, causing it to bounce around inside and sparkle.  The lens in your eyeglasses works by slowing light down to half of its air speed, bending it to focus on the eye's retina.

Even though light travels at such fantastic speeds, it still takes significant time to go places.  When you see the sun rise at 7 a.m. you are actually seeing something that happened at 6:52 a.m.  If the sun suddenly exploded, you wouldn't notice it for eight minutes.

So next time you see a space ship zipping between galaxies in a movie, remember that it would really take thousands of years travelling at nature's speed limit to make the trip.

MOVING BEYOND MATTER
with Ron Hughes

One of the things that fascinates the human mind is limits.  Several theoretical limits have been established.  Nothing gets colder than absolute zero (- 273.16 degrees Centigrade).  Nothing goes faster than the speed of light (2.998 x 108 m/sec. in a vacuum).

Besides these theoretical absolute limits, there is a host of practical limitations.  

What happens when we move beyond matter?  Are there limits which do apply, or should apply, universally to human ambition and behaviour?  Has humanity plumbed the depths of good and evil?  How would one even begin to measure such things?  While debates rage about what is "good" or "right," it's worth noting that humans are generally significantly concerned about these things.

The rub comes not in whether we should pursue those things which are "good" or "right," but in what the standard should be for defining them.  One that society labels a "criminal" may be quite able to justify his behaviour according to his own standards of justice.

It is worth noting that regardless of what standard we apply, nearly all human beings have both a general moral sense (they can talk about right and wrong) and a specific moral sense (they can identify when their standards have been violated).  Those who genuinely have no moral sense are identified as pathological.

We shouldn't really be surprised by this built-in moral sense.  If we accept that we were designed and created by an intelligent, moral Being, it only makes sense that there are signs of design, order, intelligence and morality in the natural world.  Whether we look within ourselves or at the world around us, we run into indications of the One behind it all.  

But what do we do when we are confronted with this evidence?  If you really look for God with sincerity and diligence, you will find Him.  At the same time, if you only pretend to look for Him, you will never find Him.  But He is there just the same and ready to reveal Himself to those who truly seek Him.