The “Just Right” Strongest Force in Nature Part I

“[Christ upholds] the universe by His word of power.” (Hebrews 1:3)

The strongest force in the universe is not the gravity that keeps planets in orbit or holds huge galaxies together.  Not even by a very long shot.  The strongest force in nature is manifest only in the very tiny nucleus of the atom (though what happens there has a huge bearing on the largest structures in the universe).  And that force is 10 to the 36^th power (that is, a 10 followed by 36 zeros) stronger than gravity.  The strong nuclear force holds protons together in the nucleus of the atom.  The challenge relevant to today’s posting is that all protons are positively charged which means that they naturally repel each other.  Just a few days ago as I set up my presentation for a luncheon, I grabbed a stack of magnets in order to hang a poster on the board.  Having unconsciously separated the stack into two parts in my hands, the laws of nature immediately reminded me that magnets don’t join back together just any old way you shuffle them around.  The positive ends of each set of magnets would not be joined at all.  For the same reason, the positive charge of separate protons will neither attract nor even accommodate the other, but will, again, powerfully repel one another.  They always repel except by means of the overcoming power of the Strong Nuclear Force.

The strong nuclear force is absolutely essential to meet the high demands for the existence of life, not to mention for the very existence of the cosmos as we know it.  The mass within the universe consists of atoms.  Not just many of one kind of atom, but of a whole range of atoms of different kinds, indeed 92 different atoms naturally occur in nature so far as we know.  In the beginning that was not so.  Hydrogen was the only element at the very, very beginning of the universe.  Almost immediately Helium came into existence through nuclear fusion.   In the course of the time that followed, by the same processes, every other element in turn came to exist.  Each successive atom consists of one more proton joining in the nucleus (for example, Carbon has 6 protons, Nitrogen has 7, Oxygen 8, and so on).  But for the reason described above, this increase in number is only possible because of the strong nuclear force.  Conservatively understood, the human body requires at least 25 of the elements that appear on the periodic table of elements in the universe.

to be continued...