One Sunday morning a certain Galileo Galilei of Pisa, Italy became bored in church, and rolling his eyes to the ceiling of the cathedral, he noticed that the candlelighter had left one of the huge chandeliers swinging. As he watched it swing, he suddenly realized that the time of swing seemed to remain the same as the arc decreased in length or amplitude. He timed it with his pulse, not having a watch, and sure enough, the time remained constant. This rather trivial observation led to discoveries that shook the scientific world and changed our view of the universe forever. As a result of this observation, Isaac Newton produced the law of universal gravitation and Albert Einstein the general theory of relativity.
Galileo went home to his laboratory and began experimenting with pendula. He found that only one factor influenced the time of swing, not the mass of the bob, not the amplitude of swing, only the length made a difference. He reasoned that the only force working on the bob was gravity, so this would mean that objects of different mass would fall at equal velocities. However, he didn't have a timing device that was accurate enough to test his theory by dropping objects in the lab. So he resorted to a trick; he used an inclined plane that slowed down the falling objects. He found that balls of the same size but different mass rolled at the same speed. This proved that his theory was correct, but no one would believe him because everyone knew that heavier objects must fall faster. So he devised a dramatic demonstration by dropping balls of different weight from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the rest is history; they all hit the ground at the same time. Galileo explained what happened by inventing a mysterious property of matter which he called inertia; the more mass, the more inertia. But what is this strange force that exactly counters gravitation? Actually, no one knows. It is one of God's mysterious ways.
Another natural phenomenon that puzzles science is the nature of light. There were the corpuscular theory and the wave theory, and there was evidence for each. Refraction, diffraction, and polarization were wave properties. Straight line travel, sharp shadows, reflection, and propagation through a vacuum were particle properties. So the controversy raged for many years until a compromise was reached with the photon, a wave-particle. But how does this wave-particle travel across billions of miles of space without any loss of energy? Oh, they say, it's an electromagnetic vibration, but what is vibrating? This is another of God's mysterious ways. How do stem cells differentiate? How do we remember? Why does the earth wobble? What is gravitation? What are dark matter and dark energy? What are strings? What causes the earth's magnetic field and why is it decreasing? These are only a few of "God's mysterious ways."
