The Mysteries of Strong Nuclear Attraction

Hebrews 1:3a
“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power”

The Apostle Thomas famously dismissed initial reports of Jesus’ resurrection, saying, in effect, “seeing is believing”. Of course, Thomas was wrong, and in science, too, we know that we do not have to see something with our eyes to believe. Instruments can carry out observations for us, and accurate inferences made. By this suggestion, we do not justify the wild imagination of evolutionary conjectures. But one example would be that we cannot directly see the effects of the Strong Nuclear Attraction with our eyes, but observations by instruments show that it is there.

Objects with the same electrical charge will repel each other by the Electrostatic Force. Therefore, two protons – each with positive electrical charge – should repel; and on a macro scale, they do indeed do so. But aside from hydrogen, the nucleus of an atom contains many protons (as well as neutrons), so one might expect this atomic nucleus to fall apart. Therefore, we infer that there is a force holding these protons together, which, at the short distances in the nucleus, is much stronger than the electrostatic repulsive force, but this force decays rapidly with distance, so that at a scale that we are used to, it has no observed effect.

At the beginning of Hebrews, we read that the universe is upheld by God’s power – in fact, specifically by Jesus. It is He who put this important force into place, and the more we learn about such scientific principles, the more we praise Him.

Prayer: We stand amazed, Lord, that not even a single atomic particle escapes your notice, but it is all upheld by your power. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: Encyclopaedia Britannica, < https://www.britannica.com/science/strong-force >, accessed 2/29/2020. Image: Abstract impression of high energy in atomic nucleus from Shutterstock, licensed to author.

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