Although we will see specifically the Christian version of these beings, angels are an object of study and admiration in many cultures and religions around the world. In their variant recorded in the Holy Bible, these creatures are described as beings of extreme power and strength, responsible for performing tasks entrusted by God to fulfill His divine will.

It is true that for skeptics, these stories are hard to believe. But remember that the books of the Bible were written in ancient times, when knowledge about universal phenomena was very limited. So if we look for solid, logical explanations of the angelic accounts and compare them with scientific and empirical discoveries, the resulting conclusion might surprise us. In this list, we will see that, in fact, angels could be actual life-forms living out there, right now, beyond our current knowledge.

10 They Are Not The Kind Of Life-Forms Scientists Are Looking For

One of the main questions posed by humankind is whether there is life outside our world, and we now live in a time when this question is being taken very seriously.

To date, the scientific community has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in finding potentially habitable planets in space, which are currently counted in a few tens. However, it happens that despite detecting habitable planets, scientists’ search for alien life-forms is very limited: Their plan is to identify carbon-based life forms.

All life-forms known to humans (including us) are carbon-based, so the reason for using that filter in the search is obvious. The problem is that by doing so, any living being with a different composition will probably go unnoticed, and that includes the plausible angelic creatures.

While angels are not abstract forces but actually have bodies,^[1] studies on the sacred texts show that angels are represented with a nature closer to that of God. We know that God is described in the Bible as a spirit, the “spirit” being a kind of ethereal, presumably energetic force.

In short, angels seem to be life-forms composed of an unknown substance, superior to any known type of matter or energy. With such characteristics, it is evident that scientists would not be able to locate this type of being, even with their best technological achievements.

9 The Angelic World Is Outside The Visible Universe

The Bible states the expansion is composed of three different zones called “heavens.” The first one is our atmosphere, the second heaven is outer space, and the third one is God’s dwelling place. Given the immaterial characteristics attributed to God, it is understood that the last heaven refers to a place separate from the physical universe.

It is also said that angels stand before God, so, logically, these creatures also live in the same divine abode or “Heaven.” If we interpret these stories, the abode of the angels could be an extra-dimensional realm, from which the entire material creation (including Earth) can be seen but not vice versa. How possible can this be?

A few decades ago, science formulated the string theory. One of the results of this theory is the possibility that there are multiple “cosmic bubbles”: parallel universes cohabitating within a larger expansion.^[2] Each of these universes could have different physical laws, challenging our understanding of reality. More recently, a posthumous publication of famous physicist Stephen Hawking stated there could be only a few coexisting universes.

Perhaps, one of these universes is actually the divine abode inhabited by the angels. And the fact of its unknown physical nature is consistent with the description given by the Bible about this place, being unreachable for humans. In turn, the idea of the angels’ world being outside our material universe supports the argument that humans have no means of detecting these creatures, if they exist.

8 Angels Move Faster Than Light

And continuing on the basis that angels are not limited by our physical laws, there is another spectacular ability these creatures have: they can move at superluminal speeds.

Indeed, the fact of being immaterial creatures superior to our physical world frees them from having a speed limit. They are thus differentiated from matter in our universe, which cannot travel faster than light in a vacuum.

For example, there is an occasion contained in the ninth chapter of Daniel’s book. The prophet Daniel was praying to God, when even before he finished doing so, an angel traveled from his dwelling place outside this universe to where the prophet was. In comparison, light takes more than a second to travel from Moon to Earth, but this angel traveled incalculable distances (from one universe to another; you do the math) in a blink.

It has been speculated for decades that perhaps there is a type of matter capable of surpassing the speed of light. Theoretical particles called tachyons could move faster than light in a vacuum, which makes it difficult for scientists to detect them.^[3] If these particles leave the light behind—similar to an airplane breaking the sound barrier—they are impossible to perceive in real time with the currently available means.

The same would apply to angelic creatures; maybe they are moving from one place to another right now, and we cannot even notice it.

7 They Interact With Human Race Only When Necessary

Chapter 19 of Genesis describes the famous story in which two angels destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, with a rain of fire and brimstone. Interestingly, scientists at University of Bristol (England) deciphered an ancient Assyrian star map, which points to the fall of a supposed meteor over the Alps in 3123 BC. Using computer simulations, scientists also noted that the burning debris from the impact could have rained over the Middle East. This is the area where it is believed Sodom and Gomorrah existed.

On the other hand, Isaiah 37: 36, 37 records an occasion when an angel destroyed the Assyrian army of King Sennacherib, after which the latter ceased to besiege the city of Jerusalem.^[4] About this situation, Jewish historian Flavius Josephus mentioned during the first century: “God had sent a pestilential distemper upon his army: and on the very first night of the siege a hundred fourscore and five thousand [ . . . ] were destroyed.” In turn, the famous Sennacherib’s Prism, written in the seventh century BC, records the victories of the king over enemy cities, except against Jerusalem.

These and other archaeological findings show that the biblical accounts of angels on Earth have a very real component in their stories. Such things leave open the possibility that these beings have really interacted with our race. In addition, in both stories, the angels acted as a last resort in situations that required an urgent solution. Clearly, angels manifest only on specific occasions in human history when the situation requires it, after which they disappear again.

6 The Stealth Mode Of The Angels

Numbers Chapter 22 tells the story of a man named Balaam, who, by order of a foreign king, was going to curse the army of Israel. Then, when he went to meet the king, an angel got in his way and did not let him continue traveling. Without seeing the angel, Balaam blamed the animal he was riding on, and hit it. Suddenly, the angel became visible in front of the man, and then Balaam understood the seriousness of the matter.

So it seems that angelic creatures prefer to observe human actions in secret, hidden in plain sight thanks to a superior physical ability that allows them to enter or leave the visible spectrum. This is not so far-fetched, since scientists have discovered that there are several ways to truly achieve invisibility.

An object can be made invisible, for example, by covering it with layers of materials (specifically called “metamaterials”) capable of bending light or by making it resonate at certain frequencies with the use of electromagnetic waves.^[5] So if invisibility is plausible to humans, it is evident that the mentioned angelic race could also develop an ability of that kind.

5 They’ve Existed Since Long Before Us

Both the previous point and the following one are related to a scientific formulation known as the zoo hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that perhaps an advanced alien race deliberately avoids contact with humans while secretly watching us evolve over time.

In Job 38: 4-7, God explains to His human servant that when the Earth was formed, the angels, described as “morning stars,” celebrated with joy at such an event. This statement shows that angels are creatures different from humans, unique in themselves and in existence long before the emergence of the first human beings on Earth.^[6]

This also seems to be another reason why angels do not manifest themselves before the human race. Everything points to the fact that the angels have seen us during our entire history, and therefore, they know human behavior very well. In a way, we are already predictable to them, so they know well how to remain hidden from our sight.

4 They Comprise A Species Of Their Own

Sacred texts mention at least four different types of angels, each one with particular physical features and a specific purpose.^[7]

First, we have the seraphs, the angels closest to the presence of God. They have six wings, and their name (Hebrew: seraphim, “burning ones”) implies that seraphs may have an incandescent appearance, like fire.

Then there are the cherubs, protective angels of the divine abode. Their wingspan is equivalent to the height of the angel himself, and it is also said that they are beautiful in appearance.

Angelic messengers represent the rest of their population and perform all kinds of tasks across the cosmos—from sending divine messages to protecting or destroying people.

Above all the described types of angels, there is the archangel. This type of creature is explicitly mentioned only twice throughout the Bible, and in the singular. By this and by the etymology of his name (“chief angel”), we understand that there is only one archangel at a time, whose presence gives him the right to rule all other angels.

Based on this classification, we can see that the angels are divided into groups according to their appearance and position. Just as there are humans with variations in their genetics and their sex, it seems that the angels also have remarkable differences among themselves. This is an aspect that describes them more as a real species instead of being an isolated group of creatures.

3 The Angelic Population Could Be Huge

Following the line of the previous point, another piece of evidence for the angels being a true species is their population number. Many species are limited in their growth by things like the environment or genetics. And yet, we have already seen that angels do not seem to have a problem with that. In the Bible, angels are mentioned fewer than 300 times, but how many of them are there, actually? Well, the Bible itself also gives the answer.

In the fifth chapter of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, the apostle John has a vision of the celestial kingdom in which the angelic creatures live. As far as John can see, the number of such creatures amounts to “thousands of thousands.” Certain versions of the Bible that translate the original texts in a literal way use the term “myriads of myriads.” This phrase originates from Greek and is literally translated as “ten thousand times ten thousand.”

This proves that the so-called “invisible region” is inhabited by at least hundreds of millions of individual angelic beings.^[8] So from the biblical material, it can be interpreted that angels do not exist in small quantities, as if their purpose was limited. Rather, they seem to be an individual species or some other type of population, with freedom of development and free will.

2 Is Their Form Of Communication Superior To Ours?

Repeatedly throughout the Bible, it is shown how angels had conversations with humans in earthly languages. But it is to be expected that, as extraterrestrial beings, angels have their own form of communication different from the languages of Earth. Does the Bible offer evidence that this is the case? Yes, and it also points out that their way of communicating is far beyond our reach.

In Isaiah 55:9, God said that His “ways and thoughts” are superior to those of humans, which obviously includes His language. And in his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul—who claimed to have had direct contact with angels—made a distinction between the “tongues of men” and the “tongues of angels.” This denotes that angels have a language that does not belong to human nature.^[9]

So, having established that angels have their own language, what would it be like? Well, one answer might be the visions recorded in several parts of the New Testament, when fully lucid people contemplated images impossible to recreate in reality. Such events sound similar to the effects of a process known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which can be utilized to deliberately introduce images into the human mind through the use of electromagnetic radiation.

So angelic creatures not only communicate with each other in a different language, but such language is beyond the learning capacity of humans.

1 Angels Could Protect Our Universe In Secret

In recent years, scientists have discovered that some kind of mysterious force called “dark energy” is accelerating the expansion of the universe. However, even more recent research shows that this dark energy decreases or increases, depending on the moment, defying even well-known physical laws. It seems that this force “plays” with the universal structure in a certain sense, and the scientific community still does not know what exactly this energetic manifestation is.^[10]

In the biblical text of Job 38:31, God asks His servant, “Shall you be able to join together the shining stars of the Pleiades?” By the context, the Creator affirms that He is the one who maintains the order of the universe at will, with the possibility of modifying it as necessary.

The holy scriptures also state that angels are able to control natural elements at their discretion. So, could angels be the so-called dark energy that baffles scientists and controls the cosmic expansion? It is unclear, but if so, that explains why the unknown force that shapes the universe fluctuates almost deliberately. Maybe the angels are out there keeping the order of the material universe, and we do not even realize it.

Economy student, passionate about Graphic Design, an avid enthusiast of the art of writing.

The space race was an intense faceoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. The undeclared competition started right after World War II but began winding down after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. The US had won. It came to an abrupt end after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

While we probably know some common facts about the space race (like the time the US tried nuking the moon), there are several other facts we have never heard about. Like how Zambia joined the space race, the Soviet offered to help the US space program and the Soviet Union’s own attempt to nuke the moon.

SEE ALSO: 10 Incredibly Mysterious Things We Have Discovered In Space

10 Zambia Joined The Space Race

Zambia is one country you do not hear about often. It is a landlocked country tucked somewhere in south-central Africa. In 1964, it joined the space race and planned to land a man on the moon before the US or the Soviet Union ever did. This was five years before Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.

The Zambian space program was the private project of Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, a schoolteacher and founder of Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. Mukaka recruited twelve prospective astronauts including a 16-year-old girl called Matha Mwamba for the planned moon landing.

Mukuka lacked funding for his space project. The Zambian government was not interested in a partnership and the United Nations, United States, Soviet Union and Israel had ignored his funding requests. Nevertheless, he continued to train his astronauts using an old drum he had found.

The trainee astronauts entered the drum, which was then rolled round a tree or down a hill to imitate flight conditions. The astronauts also learned how to walk on their hands, which Mukaka claimed was the only way a human could ever walk on the moon.

The whole thing was so hilarious that international reporters started to consider it a joke. Mukaka never clarified his intention even though he seemed to be serious about it. He once told an interviewer “I’ll be laughing the day I plant Zambia’s flag on the moon.”

The space program fell apart when the trainee astronauts started asking for money. Two of Mukaka’s top astronauts also got drunk and never for returned for training. A third joined a movie troupe. The program finally ended when the only female trainee astronaut got pregnant.^[1]

9 Astronaut, Cosmonaut Or Taikonaut?

Why does the US, Soviet Union and China have different names for space travelers? NASA calls its space travelers astronauts, Russia calls them cosmonauts and China says they are taikonauts. (This article uses “astronaut” for astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts).

The whole thing started during the space race. The US and Soviets were such stiff competitors that they could not agree on a single name for space travelers. The US settled for astronaut (“star sailor”) while the Soviets preferred cosmonaut (“cosmos sailor”). International astronauts hitching rides on Russian or American spacecraft identify with the term used by the host nation.

China also came up with a name for its astronauts when it started sending humans into space. It initially considered calling them Chinanauts before settling for yuhangyuan (“space navigator”). However, taikonaut (“space sailor”) is more common because it ends in “naut” and is easier for non-Chinese speakers to pronounce.^[2]

8 Children Playgrounds Were Designed To Stoke Interest In Space Travel

The space race was extended to playgrounds. Throughout the period, the US and Soviet Union designed school playground equipment to stoke children’s interest in space travel. Playground equipment were built to imitate rockets, satellites, towers, submarines and even planets.

Space-inspired playground equipment in the US started disappearing in 1973 when Congress created the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The commission took interest in playground accidents and asked playground equipment manufacturers to develop safer equipment. This saw safety and practicality overtake design.

A second blow was delivered two decades later when further guidelines demanded that sand and rubber replaced asphalt, dirt and grass in playgrounds. Several schools destroyed their playgrounds instead of complying.^[3]

7 The Soviet Union Offered The US Technical Aid Intended For Developing Nations

The Soviet Union started the space race when it launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. Thirty days later, it followed it up with the launch of Sputnik 2, which had a dog called Laika on board. The launches startled the US, which considered itself the global leader in science and technology. The US then decided it was going to launch its own rockets.

That almost happened on December 6, 1957, when the US attempted launching the Vanguard 1A rocket. Over 100 reporters and television were on ground to report the event. The Vanguard 1A barely rose three feet into the air before it lost power and crashed in a fiery fireball—all on live television.

The US immediately became the butt of jokes. US journalists used words like “flopnik” and “kaputnik” to describe the incident. The New York Times even dedicated an editorial to criticize the US space program. Not one to miss a good opportunity, the Soviet Union offered the US technical assistance intended for developing nations. The US ignored the offer.^[4]

6 The Soviets Also Planned To Nuke The Moon

Most people would have learned about the infamous project A119. It was the US’s attempt to nuke the moon. Interestingly, it appears that the Soviet Union had similar ideas. Either nation had no practical reason for nuking the moon, other than proving that they were the leaders of the space race.

The Soviet Union planned to nuke the moon right after landing on it. The idea was to put a man on the moon and have him plant a flag. Then they dropped a nuclear weapon just to prove that they landed on the moon first. The flash and mushroom cloud formed from the explosion would be visible to people watching from earth.

The Soviets later agreed that nuking the moon was a terrible idea. The nonexistent atmosphere meant the mushroom cloud would never form. The flash of the explosion would also be so brief that people watching from earth would not even notice that anything happened. The Soviets later opted to send turtles to the moon instead.^[5]

5 Some Think The Soviet Union Won The Space Race

The US won the space race when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. However, some observers say the Soviet Union was the real winner considering the moon landing was just one of the few space firsts the US ever achieved. The Soviets reached more milestones than the US ever did.

The Soviet Union launched the first satellite into orbit in 1957. It also sent the first animal to space the same year. Four years later, on April 12, 1961, the Soviets sent the first man to space. That man was Yuri Gagarin.

Gagarin’s flight was followed by another, which had two cosmonauts on board. This was the first time two humans traveled to space in the same spacecraft. In 1963, the Soviets sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, to space. Two years later, Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk.

The Soviet Union could not maintain its head start for financial reasons. The state required money for more important things like food and homes for its citizens. This threw its space program into decline and it was quickly overtaken by the US. It finally lost out after the US landed on the moon.^[6]

4 Buzz Aldrin Should Have Been The First Man On The Moon

As the world awaited the launch of Apollo 11, journalists and NASA officials speculated that Buzz Aldrin would be the first man on the moon. This should have been true considering that the astronaut in the right seat of the earlier Gemini spacecraft (which Apollo replaced) was always the first to leave the spacecraft.

Aldrin was in the right seat of the Apollo 11. However, the door of the Apollo had been moved to the left side. This meant the man in the left seat—Neil Armstrong in this case—would alight first. Aldrin would need to climb over Armstrong if he was ever going to be the first man on the moon.

Aldrin did try climbing over Armstrong during trials here on earth. He was unsuccessful and ended up damaging the test module. Some NASA higher-ups also thought that Neil Armstrong should receive the privilege of stepping foot on the moon first because he was the module commander.^[7]

3 The US Air Force Bungled The Space Shuttle

The space shuttle was supposed to revolutionize space travel. The first spacecraft were single use rockets. The space shuttle is reusable. NASA bragged that the shuttle would spaceflight cheaper. It even predicted launching a spaceflight every week at the cost of $20 million per flight with the shuttle.

That was like $1 billion for 50 flights a year. That is dirt cheap for a spaceflight. Unfortunately, that never happened. The space shuttle only flew 134 times in 29 years. That was between 1981 and 2010. The entire program cost NASA $209 billion. That is around $1.6 billion per flight.

The shuttle’s maximum range was also limited to a few hundred miles above the earth’s atmosphere. This was why astronauts never returned to the moon. If that was not bad enough, the shuttle was deadlier than the rockets it replaced. Two of the 134 flight crashed, killing 14 astronauts. That is a poor record for an aircraft.

The US Air Force was blamed for the failure of the space shuttle. The original design was perfect, until the air force requested for a shuttle that could launch US satellites and capture Soviet satellites. These meant the shuttle required larger fuel tanks and cargo bay than originally planned.

The Air Force also wanted the shuttle to fly above the poles so they could spy on the Soviet Union. This made NASA build a $4 billion launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. That facility was never used.

The modified space shuttle later proved beneficial to the US space program. It was large enough to launch the Hubble Space telescope and deliver parts to the International Space Station. The original one would never launch the telescope or deliver many parts since it was smaller. It also helped wreck the Soviet space program as we will discuss below.^[8]

2 The Space Shuttle Wrecked The Soviet Space Program

While Russia prefers keeping it hush, the Soviet Union did build a space shuttle. The shuttle even looked exactly like an American space shuttle. That part was no coincidence because the Soviets built it using plans stolen from NASA.

The US left design plans of the space shuttle plans unclassified. This permitted NASA to upload it on publicly accessible online databases. All the KGB (the Soviet equivalent of the CIA) needed to do was to find them, which it did. Their reward was a space shuttle they called Buran.

The Soviets planned to use Buran to dock on the Soviet-owned Mir space station. However, the shuttle only flew once in 1990 before it was abandoned. It never docked on the Mir space station and was decommissioned in 1994.

As we mentioned in the previous entry, the space shuttle program was expensive for the US. Its effect was worse for the cash-strapped Soviet Union. Their space program went bust soon after they expended the little they had on the failed shuttle project. The fact that the Soviet Union collapsed a year later did not help issues.

The theft of the shuttle plans later proved beneficial to the US when a NASA shuttle docked on the Mir space station in 1995. The shuttle used the same facilities the Soviet Union had intended to use for Buran.^[9]

1 The Space Race Was Actually An Arms Race

Rockets are dual-use technology. That is, they have both peaceful and military applications. Put a space capsule or shuttle on it and it becomes a spacecraft. Replace that capsule with a warhead and you have an intercontinental ballistic missile. The space race was a spin-off of the nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union.

The US and Soviets upped their nuclear weapon programs after World War II. At the same time, either nation developed the means of delivering its weapons to the other. The US designed long-range bombers while the Soviets opted for long-range rockets.

Those Soviet rockets turned useful when the space race came along. In fact, they were the reason the Soviet Union had the upper hand at the beginning of the space race.

The US only started taking its rocket program seriously after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 in 1957. The launch startled President Eisenhower, who feared the Soviets could use one of the rockets to deliver a warhead to US mainland. Those fears led to the space race.^[10]