No one is too sinful‚ broken‚ or tarnished to receive the gift of salvation and live a new life devoted to the Lord. The women in Jesus’ genealogy demonstrate that truth.

Let’s pause each day to thank God for the wonders around us – both big and small.

During the holidays‚ we are easily convinced with marketing strategies that we need to spend a lot of money to make holiday gatherings special‚ provide lavish gifts‚ and shop all the holiday deals.

Damn‚ I feel for Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville Jaguars — it pains me as a 'Florida Man'

This year’s excavation of the ancient Hasankeyf mound in southeastern Turkey has uncovered an 800-year-old bronze healing bowl and two archery rings made of agate and bone from the same period. Healing bowls were used in medieval Islamic folk medicine to protect against animal bites. The inside of the bowl is engraved with talismanic verses‚ seals and images of a double-headed dragon‚ a dog‚ a snake and a scorpion. The dragon had apotropaic powers‚ providing protection from evil in two directions. The folk belief was that drinking water from a healing bowl would heal the drinker from dog‚ snake and scorpion bites. The engraving on this bowl makes the association specific. There are only 22 medieval healing bowls documented in museums and private collections around the world. Archery rings (zihgirs in Arabic) were worn on the finger to protect the skin from damage from a bowstring. They were held in high value and were culturally significant artifacts in the Turkish-Islamic arts of the Middle Ages. These are the first zihgirs unearthed at Hasankeyf. One of them was found in a tomb of an adult male. The presence of the valuable ring indicates the deceased was someone of note‚ but no references to his identity have been found in the grave. Built on the banks of the Tigris‚ Hasankeyf is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world‚ with evidence of occupation going back 12‚000 years. The bowl and rings have been transferred to the Hasankeyf Museum Directorate for conservation and display.

Planet Earth is full of some truly awe-inspiring spectacles‚ but few are as intriguing as a sprite‚ which are officially known as a Transient Luminous Event (TLE) and consist of large-scale electric discharges that shoot upwards while occurring above the cloud tops in the Earth’s mesosphere at approximate altitudes of 50-90 km (31-56 mi). In October 2023‚ European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut‚ Dr. Andreas Mogensen‚ who is currently onboard the International Space Station (ISS) as Commander of the Expedition 70 mission‚ took an incredible image of a red sprite with the Davis camera as part of the Thor-Davis experiment and his Huginn mission. Sprites have been observed from the ground and aircraft. However‚ the preferred observation method is from outer space due to the sprites occurring above the cloud tops and the low altitude of the ISS offering pristine views of these unique lightning features. While they are observed above cloud tops‚ they are hypothesized to originate from normal lightning near the Earth’s surface and act as a “balancing mechanism” used by the Earth’s atmosphere to distribute vertical electrical charges. Since red sprites are essentially lightning strikes and visible for only a fraction of a second‚ specialized event-based cameras such as the Davis camera are required to precisely capture them. The Davis camera contrasts with a normal camera in that it does not take direct photographs‚ but instead creates images by sensing light and contract variances. Through this‚ the Davis camera capabilities are analogous to a normal camera taking 100‚000 images per second. Images of a red sprite taken by the Davis camera from the International Space Station in October 2023 by Expedition 70 Commander‚ Dr. Andreas Mogensen. (Credit: ESA/DTU/ A. Mogensen) “These images taken by Andreas are fantastic‚” said Dr. Olivier Chanrion‚ who is a senior researcher at Danish Technical University (DTU) Space and lead scientist for this experiment. “The Davis camera works well and gives us the high temporal resolution necessary to capture the quick processes in the lightning.” The Thor-Davis experiment builds off the Thor experiment also conducted by Dr. Mogensen during his first mission to the ISS in 2015. During that experiment‚ Dr. Mogensen shot a 160-second video displaying 245 blue jets‚ which are another type of lightning event that shoots up towards space‚ with results from those findings being published in a 2016 study in Geophysical Research Letters. The earliest recorded report of sprites—though they weren’t called that right away—occurred in November 1885 from the R.M.S. Moselle as it was leaving port in Jamacia with the sprites then being described as a “meteorological phenomenon” while “sometimes tinged with prismatic hues‚ while intermittently would shoot vertically upwards continuous darts of light displaying prismatic colours in which the contemporary tints‚ crimson and green‚ orange and blue‚ predominated.” It took more than 100 years for the first photographic evidence of sprites to happen‚ when a team of scientists from the University of Minnesota accidentally imaged electrical discharges using a low-light-level television camera in 1989‚ with their findings later being published in Science the following year. It wasn’t until a 1995 study published in Geophysical Research Letters that these electrical charges were officially dubbed “sprites”. In the last several decades‚ sprites have been observed from all continents except for Antarctica‚ along with being observed from the ground‚ aircraft‚ and even outer space. Image of red sprites taken in 2022 from the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile. (Credit: Zdenek Bardon/ESO) What new discoveries about sprites will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell‚ and this is why we science! As always‚ keep doing science &; keep looking up! The post Red Sprites are Best Seen from Space appeared first on Universe Today.

Wha?!

How can this be happening?

US Navy Sends a Ship to Second Thomas Shoal‚ Angering China Once Again

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