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Worship and Service of Creation It is easy to read what Paul says in Romans 1:25—“they exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen,” in a purely negative light as describing the very basis of paganism and the worst form of idolatrous narcissism. However, we cannot deny the seductive beauty and power of such a creation. A new study has found that merely watching nature documentaries boosts people’s emotions of awe, contentedness, joy and amusement. By the same token, such activity reduces “feelings of nervousness,...

HE was an astronaut on the second manned mission to the moon and the fourth man to walk on its surface. Alan Bean, 85, is one of only 12 people to have taken “one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind” on the moon.

The Earth’s continuously changing magnetic field surrounds the planet like an invisible force field – deflecting highly charged solar particles. Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal, the Brunhes-Matuyama, that occurred around 780,000 years ago. A temporary reversal, the Laschamp event, occurred around 41,000 years ago, and lasted less than 1,000 years with the actual change of polarity lasting around 250 years. Our planet’s history...

Life on Earth may have made its mark on the moon billions of years before Neil Armstrong’s famous first step.Observations by Japan’s moon-orbiting Kaguya spacecraft suggest that oxygen atoms from Earth’s upper atmosphere bombard the moon’s surface for a few days each month. This oxygen onslaught began in earnest around 2.4 billion years ago when photosynthetic microbes first flourished (SN Online: 9/8/15), planetary scientist Kentaro Terada of Osaka University in Japan and colleagues propose January 30 in Nature Astronomy.The oxygen atoms begin their incredible journey in the upper atmosphere, where they are ionized by ultraviolet radiation, the researchers suggest. Electric...

For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven significantly by the additional force of heat drawn from the Earth’s core. The new findings also challenge the theory that underwater mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges are passive boundaries between moving plates. The findings show the East Pacific Rise, the Earth’s dominant mid-ocean ridge, is dynamic as heat is transferred. David B. Rowley, professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, and fellow researchers came to the conclusions...

One of NASA’s satellites orbiting Mars has looked back home to record a Martians-eye view of the Earth and moon from 127 million miles (205 million kilometers) across the solar system.

Deep within a mine in Canada, there is a pool of water bubbling out of the ground. It’s close to 2 miles below the surface of the earth and, according to the scientists who discovered it, it’s been there for 2 billion years, making it the oldest pool of water in the world.Previously that record was held by a pool further up in the mine, about 1.5 miles down, which was discovered in 2013 and given the age of 1.5 billion years.The scientists date the water by analysing the gases trapped inside. As the CBC explains, gases like helium...

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.(Psalm 2:5-6)The LORD shall speak unto the Kings of the earth in wrath, He will trouble them, addressing the true heart of the controversy, which is Lordship. Who is the true Lord of the earth? He speaks directly to those elites, the so called ‘Kings of the earth and their Rulers’ who would construct for themselves a new godless world order, an updated Tower of Babel, a godless world Unity, “I have appointed my...

On Saturday, astronomers discovered a new asteroid, just a few hours before it almost hit us. The asteroid is called 2016 QA2, and it missed the Earth by less than a quarter of the distance to the moon. That puts it about three times as far away from Earth as our farthest satellites. And we never saw it coming. So how did 2016 QA2 sneak up on us like that? For this particular asteroid, the answer seems to be that it has a very peculiar orbit. It's highly elliptical, which means it can usually be found hanging out by either...

Our solar system is in a unique area of the universe that's conducive to life, says John Webb and his colleagues at the University of New South Wales, who have carried out intensive study that threatens to turn the world of theoretical physics upside down. The team studied the fine structure in the spectral lines of the light from distant quasars from data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile with stunning results that showed that one of the constants of nature --the Alpha appears to be different in different parts of the cosmos, supporting the theory that our...

NASA has provided a perspective on our planet previously unthinkable for the earthbound. By creating a time-lapse video consisting of thousands of photos taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCVR) satellite from a million miles away, it allows everyone stuck on the third planet from the sun to watch Earth cycle through a year in a remarkably striking way. To read more about the process of making the video click here or just watch the video below.

Paging Bruce Willis! NASA is planning to launch a probe to study an asteroid that could one day pulverize the Earth. The asteroid, named Bennu, crosses Earth’s orbit once every six years and has gotten ever closer since it was discovered in 1999, astronomers told the Sunday Times of London (paywall). In 2135, Bennu will fly between the moon and Earth — a hair’s breadth in space terms, the Times reported. That’s so close that gravity from the Earth could effect Bennu’s orbit, “potentially putting it on course for the Earth later that century,” said Dante Lauretta, a professor of...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The earth is on track for its hottest year on record and warming at a faster rate than expected, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday. Temperatures recorded mainly in the northern hemisphere in the first six months of the year, coupled with an early and fast Arctic sea ice melt and "new highs" in heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels, point to quickening climate change, it said. June marked the 14th straight month of record heat, the United Nations agency said. It called for speedy implementation of a global pact reached in Paris last December to limit...

Explanation: What's older than these ancient trees? Nobody you know -- but almost everything in the background of this picture. The trees are impressively old -- each part of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest located in eastern California, USA. There, many of the oldest trees known are located, some dating as far back as about 5,000 years. Seemingly attached to tree branches, but actually much farther in the distance, are the bright orbs of Saturn (left) and Mars. These planets formed along with the Earth and the early Solar System much earlier -- about 4.5 billion years ago. Swooping down...

If Martians exist, they'll be closer to Earth on Memorial Day than they have been in 11 years. This Monday, around 5:34 p.m. EDT, when many Americans may be enjoying a holiday barbecue, the Red Planet will be the closest it has been to Earth in more than a decade, coming within 46.8 million miles, according to NASA. The relatively close encounter with Earth comes a week after the Martian opposition, when Mars and the sun lined up on exact opposite sides of the Earth.

Since both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sander are quite keen to talk about climate change and carbon taxes, let’s take a brief break from the campaign trail and check in on how Mother Gaia is doing these days. We’ve recorded what some climate scientists claim is a string of record warmest months over the past year and if I were judging by the almost snow-free, mild winter we just enjoyed in upstate New York and the rest of the northeast (watch out for the bears) I’d have to agree. So I assume this means we’re all doomed. But oddly...

Back in 1970, when the world celebrated the first Earth Day, environmentalists were worried that without dramatic measures, the future would be catastrophic for the Earth and civilization. But their grim predictions haven’t come true, The Daily Caller News Foundation pointed out today, assembling a list of seven incorrect predictions of doom regarding the planet and civilization. The following are highlights from their list. The end of civilization within three decades Nobel laureate George Wald prophesied in 1970 that civilization would end “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” The Daily Caller reported. Civilization is still here. Hundreds...

Washington (AFP) - Global warming could make the planet far hotter than currently projected because today's scientific models do not correctly account for the influence of clouds, researchers said this week. The study in the journal Science was led by researchers at Yale University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When climate scientists look ahead to how much the planet's surface temperature may warm up in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide -- a byproduct of fossil fuel burning -- they typically predict a rise of between 2.1 and 4.7 degrees Celsius (3.75 to 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit). But these models...

'Laser Cloak' Could Hide Earth from Evil Aliens A new paper describes how laser beams could disrupt measurements of Earth's orbit around the sun, potentially deceiving inquisitive aliens. Here, a 22W laser used for adaptive optics shines from the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Credit: ESO/G. Hüdepohl A simple laser beam could disrupt aliens' observations of Earth, making it look like there's nobody home on the third rock from the sun, a new study suggests. David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University in New York, said he first considered this idea when he heard about the strangely dimming star that...