Thought for the Week by Rev David Watson, Clark Memorial Parish Church.

Fifty year ago this week Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon. He spoke those famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” We saw grainy black and white images of the momentous event on television. I am a child of the Space Age, literally a few days before I was born Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut was the first person to orbit the earth. He was the first person to see our planet from space. Satellites including the space station have enabled us to see images of our planet in glorious detail and I never tire of looking at them. Instruments such as the Hubble telescope and the radio telescope at Jodrel Bank have allowed us to look deeper into space than ever before.

The recent BBC series The Planets, presented by Brian Cox, showed stunning images of the planets in our solar system. It has been known for some time that our planet occupies the “Goldilocks Zone” around the sun where it is neither too hot nor too cold to sustain life, but just right. Our solar system is unusual because in other solar systems which have been observed, the planet in “the Goldilocks zone” is much bigger than the earth and has an atmosphere which could not sustain life.

The configuration of the other planets in our solar system all play a part and have played a part in making life on earth possible. To allow just the right combination of chemical elements to create an environment which sustains life. Even the moon, its size and orbit has a role to play in creating the right conditions for life on earth.

We know that there are billions of stars in the universe and theoretically each could all have its own solar system. In each of there could be a planet which is similar to earth. What astronomers have observed up until now is that our own solar system far from being similar to many other solar systems is unusual, maybe even unique.

Our planet is fragile and beautiful, that it exists at all is a result of an amazing combination of factors. Either it was a very lucky accident or it has the fingerprints of the creator all over it.