Heaven and Space, shared interest

The more I think about heaven, the more I think about space. Stars, solar systems, galaxies, nebulas, pulsars, quasars, black holes, all I find really fascinating.

So I’ve been reading up, trying to wade through some basic physics that I never learned in school and get to the “juicy” parts. Like, how do you make a star? How big is the universe?! What’s on the other side of a black hole?

With all that in mind, I have re-purposed my first blog (Talk With Bette) in order to use it for space-related articles: http://bettecox.wordpress.com. Talk With Bette has its own home now, http://talkwithbette.com.

But speaking of heaven, I was thinking out loud in prayer the other night and commented on how important, how big, how complex the universe is. And the Lord commented right back to me, “Man is my most important creation.” Wow.

He reminded me that before I brought Smokey (the cat) to her new home, I prepared her habitat: food, water, toys, litter box. Before God brought Adam to his “home,” he prepared his habitat: Earth. Solar System. Galaxy. Universe.

A while back the Lord told me that to exist and survive in heaven, humans have to be adapted to its environment. That’s the why of conversion. He explained that Heaven is like the control tower for the universe. Boggles the mind…

Technology from heaven “dropped” onto earth

As I read an article online this week from Science Daily, I immediately thought about a particular house the Lord showed me in heaven. The wall colors changed before my eyes; a rheostat on the wall could change them to any color of the rainbow.

I didn’t mention it in the August 2009 blog post I wrote about that house (http://wp.me/pB5LS-e), but the same was true of the texture of the wall covering and the fabric on the furniture. From smooth to bumpy, slick to velvety in an instant. However you preferred your surface materials, you could have it.

The Lord reminded me that every invention, every discovery, happens in heaven first. When He’s ready to reveal it to mankind He “drops” the information somewhere, to someone. I think this article demonstrates one of those little “droplets…”

Process Makes Polymers Truly Plastic, Changing Textures On Demand
ScienceDaily.com
March 15, 2012

Just as a chameleon changes its color to blend in with its environment, Duke University engineers have demonstrated for the first time that they can alter the texture of plastics on demand, for example, switching back and forth between a rough surface and a smooth one.

By applying specific voltages, the team has also shown that it can achieve this control over large and curved surface areas.

“By changing the voltage applied to the polymer, we can alter the surface from bumpy to smooth and back again,” said Xuanhe Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. “There are many instances, for example, when you’d want to be able to change at will a surface from one that is rough to slippery and back again.”

Scientists have long been able to create different patterns or textures on plastics through a process known as electrostatic lithography, in which patterns are “etched” onto a surface from an electrode located above the polymer. However, once the patterns have been created by this method, they are set permanently.

“We invented a method which is capable of dynamically generating a rich variety of patterns with various shapes and sizes on large areas of soft plastics or polymers,” Zhao said. The results were published online in the journal Advanced Materials.

“This new approach can dynamically switch polymer surfaces among various patterns ranging from dots, segments, lines to circles,” said Qiming Wang, a student in Zhao’s laboratory and the first author of the paper. “The switching is also very fast, within milliseconds, and the pattern sizes can be tuned from millimeter to sub-micrometer.”

The findings follow Zhao’s earlier studies, which for the first time captured on videotape how polymers react to changing voltages. Those experiments showed that as the voltage increases, polymers tend to start creasing, finally leading to large craters. This explained in physical terms, for example, why polymers used to insulate electric wires tend to fail over time. The new lithography strategy takes useful insights from this failure mechanism.

On a more fanciful note, Zhao described the possibility of creating rubber gloves whose fingerprints could be changed on demand.

“The changeable patterns we have created in the laboratory include circles and straight and curved lines, which are basic elements of fingerprints,” Zhao said. “These elements can be dynamically patterned and changed on a glove surface that covers fingertips.

“A spy’s glove may be cool, but probably not for everyone,” Zhao said. “However, the same technology can produce gloves with on-demand textures and smoothness tuned for various applications, such as climbing and gripping. Furthermore, surfaces capable of dynamically changing patterns are also useful for many technologies, such as microfluidics and camouflage.”

Other potential usages of the new method include creating surfaces that are self-cleaning and water-repellant, or even as platforms for controlled-release drug-eluting devices.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120315161437.htm

How’s the weather up there?

Or over there – wherever heaven is physically. I asked this question, and got a fascinating answer.

It’s however you want it to be, you just have to go where it is. Snow for skiing? Go to the snowy region. Water skiing? Choose that area instead. Heaven is a big, big place – there’s plenty of room for weather locales.

Weather in heaven doesn’t depend on planet angle, rotation and orbit around the sun. There are no seasons such as here on earth. Instead there are areas designed for cold, for warmth, for every “seasonal” variation human beings could desire. From snorkeling to mountain climbing, trekking across sand dunes to deep sea exploration, there is a region for that.

Why? I wondered. Why even have such locations for winter-like cold or summer heat, spring or fall-like “seasons” (for want of a better word)?

Why have mountains or oceans? Wilderness or rain forests? For all those exist there… Images passed through my mind of lakes and beaches, fishing streams and sand dunes, pine forests and lagoons. Too many pictures to count!

By then I was very curious indeed. Why design and create all this variety?

For our enjoyment. Rest. Recreation. Fellowship. Discovery. Education. Not to mention training. Exercise. Discipline. Teamwork.

We may learn of other reasons once we’re there, but love is the primary one. God loves us and it is His good pleasure to give us the kingdom, in its many facets, physical and spiritual.

It was an extraordinary answer to my ordinary question.

Choreographed worship in three dimensions

Looking today for a different article, I came across this one that I had not added earlier.

One night in May, 2008 I awoke in the wee hours of the morning worshiping God in my spirit – singing to Him about how wonderful He is, how magnificent, how merciful, how loving, exalting and praising him in poetry set to music.

I could see myself doing this, like watching a television set, as part of a group of worshipers in heaven. But it did not resemble any sort of worship service I’ve ever been a part of or seen in my life!

Some were up high in the room, in rows, some low, every space filled with exquisite movement and sound. You’d think some would crash into others, falling in tangles of arms and feet. But no-one did.

We were singing and dancing as we flew around in perfectly synchronized three-dimensional twirls and swirls and bows and leaps. In my mind’s eye I continued to watch all of this, yet also continued to worship and praise and magnify God myself. It was the most amazing experience.

I enjoyed and participated in this heavenly worship for some time, then fell sound asleep again. The next morning I remembered it all very clearly and wrote it down. I thought about it and prayed, wondering about what I had experienced.

“Remember Esther Williams and her troupe’s synchronized swimming routines in the movies?” the Lord reminded me. They were so graceful and lovely, those three-dimensional movements in the water that are not possible on land. That’s what it was like in that heavenly scene, except without water. Indeed, those graceful 3-D movements were in the atmosphere of heaven, where worshipers are not limited by earth’s gravity.

What an awesome experience this is to look forward to. And what an incredible gift this was, this glimpse of heaven’s worship from our awesome God who is so very worthy of our worship!

If you thought space was empty

… think again!

APOD from NASA 12 Feb 2011: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant
Credit & Copyright: Nobuhiko Miki

It’s easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed mosaic image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147.

Also cataloged as Sh2-240 and seen towards the constellation Taurus, it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky. That corresponds to a width of 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud’s estimated distance of 3,000 light-years.

The remarkable composite includes image data taken through narrow-band filters to highlight emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms tracing regions of shocked, glowing gas.

This supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years – meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago.

But this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star’s core.

City concept

The self-contained city of Masdar (under construction) is a beautiful concept. It reminds me a bit of the city and landscape of heaven. The only problem with building this on earth is SIN. Still, it’s fascinating and intriguing, a place I’d certainly like to tour one day.

In Arabian Desert, a Sustainable City Rises
New York Times 27 Sept 2010

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Back in 2007, when the government here announced its plan for “the world’s first zero-carbon city” on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, many Westerners dismissed it as a gimmick — a faddish follow-up to neighboring Dubai’s half-mile-high tower in the desert and archipelago of man-made islands in the shape of palm trees.

Designed by Foster & Partners, a firm known for feats of technological wizardry, the city, called Masdar, would be a perfect square, nearly a mile on each side, raised on a 23-foot-high base to capture desert breezes. Beneath its labyrinth of pedestrian streets, a fleet of driverless electric cars would navigate silently through dimly lit tunnels. The project conjured both a walled medieval fortress and an upgraded version of the Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland.

Well, those early assessments turned out to be wrong. By this past week, as people began moving into the first section of the project to be completed — a 3 ½-acre zone surrounding a sustainability-oriented research institute — it was clear that Masdar is something more daring and more noxious.

Norman Foster, the firm’s principal partner, has blended high-tech design and ancient construction practices into an intriguing model for a sustainable community, in a country whose oil money allows it to build almost anything, even as pressure grows to prepare for the day the wells run dry. And he has worked in an alluring social vision, in which local tradition and the drive toward modernization are no longer in conflict — a vision that, at first glance, seems to brim with hope.

Click on the link to read entire the article and associated media – fascinating.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/arts/design/26masdar.html?_r=1&src=mv

Here’s a video aerial fly-through of the city:

Here’s a full-length video with voice narration:

Weapons

Joshua was a warrior. He spent many years with Moses, serving first as his aide de camp and eventually named as his successor.

Although serving in several roles, Joshua was primarily a soldier.  And more than a soldier, a warrior.

During their days in the desert in what today is Jordan, Joshua was training men for the battle ahead. He had to hand-pick the best, teach them how to fight and how to use their weapons. He was well aware that as soon as Israel crossed the Jordan River, they would be in enemy territory.

“About forty thousand armed for battle crossed over before the Lord to the plains of Jericho for war.” (Joshua 4:13 NIV) Joshua’s first major target was to be Jericho, a fiercely guarded walled city.

“Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” (Josh. 5:13-14 NIV) The Lord’s commander; captain of the Lord’s hosts, it says in the King James version.

He was there to give Joshua first an intelligence briefing, then his battle orders. (Those instructions may sound a little strange to us, marching around walls, but that’s what they were: battle orders.)

Who was he? An angel? Michael or one of his subordinates? Perhaps Jesus himself? We’re not told. But we are told that war, warriors and warfare were part of his mission on earth.

I was thinking about all this one evening and the fact that the scriptures describe another battle looming in Israel and probably other places in the middle east, in the not too distant future. Who will be trained well enough to fight and win in that war, I wondered? Most of the believers I know certainly aren’t.

The Lord began to answer that question by showing me an activity going on in heaven. Combat training. Arm to arm combat. Physical, mental, emotional – and spiritual – training. Weapons. Armor.

I thought at first I was dead wrong about what I saw. That simply could not be heaven, it had to be some sort of hallucination, a mistake. But it wasn’t. The Holy Spirit took me to several scriptures about the battles ahead, and explained in some detail what I was seeing.

Many believers will still be here on earth when that war needs to be fought. Untrained, ill-equipped believers who don’t know one end of a rifle from the other. They won’t know how to defend themselves, much less fight an enemy soldier. Like the children of Israel facing the Jordan River, most of them aren’t warriors.

But they aren’t called to be.

Out of a million or more, only forty thousand were called to be. They were chosen, trained, equipped and ready. And in the coming warfare, God’s warriors will be ready. They will be returning to earth with Jesus, fully trained and equipped. (See Revelation 17:14, 19:19)

Right now they are going through that training period.  I watched some of the training. I saw some of the weapons, both material and spiritual. I have never seen anything on earth exactly like them – not in any of those action and adventure and spy movies I’ve watched for years.

The Holy Spirit explained how some of them worked and how some are already working here on earth. Not technically weapons, some are designed to gather information, such as three-dimensional cameras that can see around solid objects. Invisibility cloaks for people and machines. I actually saw a news video about that one several months ago, being tested here on earth.

Not everyone in heaven is assigned to be trained as a fighter. Some are assigned to be designers of weapons, inventors or engineers or scientists. Or writers, composers, artists or musicians. But warriors will certainly be needed, and so some are chosen and taught how to be.

I am understanding more and more what heaven is like, and what it’s for. Worship. Work. And training for warfare.