In History, there have been many human approaches to hell. We can go from philosophy, with Dostoyevski, to the same religion, Catholicism, and from one extreme to another we will find different notions about hell. Even NASA has said that it has found hell, and maybe it is different from what you thought.
Thanks to another great discovery from the James Webb telescope, NASA has captured new data from 55 Cancri e, a world that lies like a veritable hell due to its massive lava cover.
[Photo: ESO/L. Calçada]
According to NASA, the surface temperature of 55 Cancri e is higher than the melting point of minerals, which are abundant on planets like Earth. However, the most valuable of these discoveries is that this exoplanet has a dynamic atmosphere, which means that there are heat disturbances on its surface.
This simple but valuable fact points directly to the fact that the atmosphere of this super-Earth could contain large amounts of oxygen or nitrogen, making it essentially a super-Earth and a cosmic object worthy of investigation due to its similarities to Earth.
What’s Hell for NASA and the Church?
At first glance, 55 Cancri e seems like a true infernal planet, and this is exactly how NASA referred to this super-earth, a fact that caused some controversy among members of the Catholic Church, who considered it necessary to specify that hell is not a place, but a state of “eternal and definitive deprivation of God,” according to Mario Arroyo, a priest, and Doctor of Philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.
Although defining hell as such is complex, the thought of the scientist, theologian, and writer Emanuel Swedenborg is a little closer to a more universal idea about hell and heaven.
[Photo: James Webb Telescope]
For Swedenborg, both the notion of heaven and hell rest in the spirit world or intermediate realm. That is, in our main world or the thoughts of people. In that intermediate realm, the intention and understanding of heaven and hell depend on one’s thoughts.
This leads us to the fact that there can be as many infernal and celestial worlds as the mind allows it. From this sense, we can understand that the infernal world of NASA may differ from any other, but that does not make it invalid, since it is part of scientific thought.
Then, we can understand that each being carries with it the idea of hell and heaven or of so many other worlds. NASA may not have essentially wanted to define a Catholic hell, but rather one that lies spectacularly in space and is made up of as much fire as has ever been seen.
Story originally published in Spanish in Ecoosfera
