For years, we figured we understood the universe.

Release something in midair; it falls to the ground. Drop something buoyant enough into the water; it floats. Put something close enough to a massive ball of flame; gravity sucks it in and charbroils it to the consistency of a briquette.

Simple stuff—so we thought.

Atypical planet

But WASP-18b, a planet that whips around its sun in the equivalent of one earth day, has scientists scratching their heads.

The problem isn't the planet's incredibly short orbit as much as our current understanding of physics, which dictates that any planet as close to its sun as WASP-18b should have been sucked in and burnt up ages ago. Yet it continues its dizzying revolutions in spite of all our painstakingly formulated concepts of how the universe is supposed to work.

The continued existence of WASP-18b tells us is that our theory of how and when planets formed may be flawed—or our information is incomplete. "Perhaps we really are missing some key bit of physics," wrote Douglas P. Hamilton, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, in a commentary accompanying the report in the journal Nature.

By watching what many are calling "a planet that shouldn't exist," scientists hope to figure out just what exactly the flaw is.

Science misunderstood

This isn't the first time something like this has happened, though. Our human race boasts a long and impressive history of drastic course corrections in our continuing quest to understand the universe around us.

Not long ago we were certain that living beings were constantly growing out of inanimate objects—mice out of dirty hay, maggots out of leftover meat, worms out of cheese and so on. Once we had no doubt that the whole of the cosmos rotated around the earth. And we were absolutely positive that the world was flat.

We're forced to conclude that, although man's ability to observe the universe continues to grow more and more advanced, his understanding of it remains perpetually incomplete. There is, however, a Being who understands the universe perfectly—the same Being who crafted it by hand.

A mindful God

A young sky-watching shepherd, grown into the great King David, wrote in awe about God's creation in the Psalms. He asked the Creator, "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?" (Psalm 8:3-4).

Good question. Why does the Creator of a universe so bafflingly complex that its inhabitants still struggle to understand it pay any attention at all to mankind?

Why and want?

The simple answer is that He cares. He created humanity with the desire to incorporate us into His own family, and He has been actively working toward that goal to this very day. To learn more, see "Why Were You Born?"

The apostle Paul writes of God's unfailing love in his letter to the Romans, where he says, "I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).

The God who created the universe wants to create a profound and personal relationship with you. The question to ask yourself: Do I want it? VT