Sometimes it seems like the sun☀️ is moving. It is not the sun that moves; it is the planets that move. We move, for example, and Mars moves also. Within one to two months, it can move quite far from one part of the sky to the other.
Mars is a planet that has seasons like we do. Not all planets do. Mars actually had water (we found that out in the 1950s and 1960s). Could there have been life? Mars also has two small moons🌕🌖. We have one.
As you know, the rover that recently landed on Mars, Perseverance, made a huge breakthrough by landing on such a rough terrain. It was a first time event that will mark history. It happened last year in August.
It gets so cold on Mars it can be like -100 Fahrenheit. The air is very thin. Your weight on Mars would be one third of what it is here. Mars is called the red planet. There is no “blue” or water anymore.
Mars is actually small. It’s only one fourth of the diameter on earth. It has low gravity. However, billions of years ago Mars was covered in water. So what happened? On earth, wherever water appears, life appears🌊🐃.
Was there life on Mars that disappeared and dried up? The dinosaurs on earth became extinct 65,000,000 plus years ago. The rover, again, Perseverance is searching to see if there was ever life on Mars.
The mission is using a special device to explore the soil. Perseverance will leave tubes of soil on Mars for eight years and then bring them back to earth to detect if there was ever life there.
The sky in Mars is kind of pinkish. Mars is just one sibling planet, though. There are many other planets, so we can begin by looking at planets nearest to the sun🌞. Mercury and Venus are close by.
One difference between Venus and Mercury is that Mercury can get really hot and cold at the same time. There can be a 1000 degree difference between night and day. Mercury is not even the hottest planet. Venus is the hottest.
It’s not as close to the sun as Mercury, but it’s hotter at times. Venus is always 860 F. It doesn’t change. The air is thick; it’s like being half a mile down in the ocean. The pressure is intense. NASA observes Venus from orbit through a radar map.
Most of Venus consists of rolling planes, and it’s kind of like Iowa. There are no oceans. But there are volcanoes. Venus is sometimes called the sister of the earth, but it is incredibly different.
Which planet would you want to go to first, if the time ever comes to send humans to other planets? Let’s take a look at some more planets near the earth. Saturn is famous for its rings around it. Jupiter🪐 is famous for the clouds.
Juno is a mission that’s orbiting Jupiter by NASA. There is at least one mission to every single planet in the solar system. They are all robots; we haven’t sent a human yet. The storms on Jupiter go on for decades and hundreds of years. We suspect there was a storm even going on for millions!
That is a little background on our solar system in our galaxy, the Milky Way🌌. Marvel at all the Lord has done. There are about 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe that we know of so far. But I’m sure there’s more! I believe it’s infinite and that there are multiverses.
The Milky Way is just one galaxy. Scientists estimate that there may be tens of billions of solar systems in our galaxy, alone, perhaps as many as 100 billion. Think about that. Ponder on God’s grandeur! Never doubt his power and magnificence. He holds the galaxies and stars in place; he will hold you together also!
Here is the course offered by Liberty Science center in New Jersey as part of the Varsity Tutors StarCourse series:
About Zina
Zina Hermez authored the best selling book, Not Without God: A Story of Survival. She’s been featured in numerous articles, guest posts, podcasts, websites, newsletters, and magazines. Recently she was featured on ESPN’s ‘Solutions from the Huddle’ broadcast. Zina’s written hundreds of articles and has taught students from all over the world spanning many different backgrounds and cultures. She’s appeared in Christianity Today, the Suite T blog and Southern Writers magazine among other places. She writes on faith, science, and overcoming adversity. Her goal is to help others. You can connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, Linked In, or Twitter.
You may recall this oblong rocklike object found flying in space by astronauts looking through NASA’s telescope. When people studied the trajectory of this object (it was not a comet or an asteroid!), it was the size of a football field and flew past the sun. Some astronauts believe it could’ve been sent to us from alien life, so we know they exist. It definitely came from another galaxy. When people studied it, they found that it was not a comet or an asteroid through evidence. This is not your “grandfather’s comet.” So scientists asked themselves, what if this object IS from another planet. They realized if you had a type of EXO planet, and if a piece of it got knocked off, it would appear like this rocklike object. It doesn’t seem to be some form of extraterrestrial life. I’ve had a vision before. I had a dream that two UFOs visited me, and they looked nothing like this. They were glowing, peaceful, and looked like spaceships. They did not look like a rocklike feature, but they looked very beautiful. I can’t quite explain them or find a photo that is fitting enough. But they came to visit me in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. I believe people were in there, or aliens, I should say. And when I ‘woke up,’ it did not feel like a dream at all. As a matter of fact, I remember feeling myself getting up out of bed to look out the window. In my opinion, if there is extraterrestrial life out there–and I believe there may be, especially due to this experience, I think they are more like us than we realize. I say that because all of the universe(s) follow the same laws of physics, so I imagine that the ‘beings’ on another (potential) planet where this life would be are more like us than we know. However, they would be way more advanced. Brian Greene, world famous author and physicist, has confirmed that if there is other life out there, they are at least 2-3 billion years ahead! We are a new planet. A new earth. Physics even tells us, in an eternal universe, anything can happen. This universe is eternal. And the more scientists learn that this universe could very well be infinite, almost with certainty, the greater the chances that we are not the only ones here. We are not the only ones in the universe(s), in my opinion. It’s the magic of math. The greater the universe expands (we know it is increasingly getting larger), the more galaxies there are (100-200 billion) that we have noted so far. The greater the chance there is “other life” out there. I believe my dream was more of a vision because I felt it was so real when I woke up. I think I was visited. They are out there. They are harmless. They know God as Holy Father, and even Jesus. They don’t necessarily follow our values or have our cultural taboos, but they are peaceful and kind.
We are told that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 13.8 billion years old per the Big Bang! We’re only a handful of billions of years old. It’s not that long in comparison to other galaxies. What I mean is, they could be a few billion years ahead of us. So, think about if we were to move from now into a few billion years into the future, it could be radically different. It’s not likely that if there is other life, they are only 10,000 years ‘older’ than us. We are a young universe and planet! We can’t all be at the same starting point. It’s unlikely that some alien world has observed us. And ‘UFO means an unidentified flying object; it doesn’t necessarily mean alien,’ says Neil deGrasse Tyson. However, I did have a ‘dream’ that I was visited by two UFOs once. And it felt so real. To this day, I question whether it really happened or not and think about it! I never thought I would find myself saying this, but I do believe there can be life on other planets!🪐🛸👽🌌✨🌠🌟
Abraham 3:2 reads: “And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God: and there were many great ones which were near unto it.” The name of the one nearest to God’s throne is Kolob. Abraham tells us that Kolob “govern[s] all those [worlds] which belong to the same order as that upon which [Abraham] standest.” 
Zina Hermez 