Darrell Newton's Blog, page 4

3 Amazing Hubble and Webb Telescope Images Side-by-Side

Side-by-Side Comparison

Let’s compare some of the first images taken by the Webb telescope and compare it to images of the same location taken by Hubble.

Images of SMACS 0723 taken by the Hubble (left) and James Web (right) Space Telescopes.

The telescopes took the images above of a region known as SMACS 0723, a cluster of galaxies about 4 billion light years from Earth within the southern constellation of Volans.
Note the elongated galaxies and stars. Their light has been stretched and deformed by an effect called gravitational lensing.

Images of the Southern Ring Nebula taken by the Hubble (left) and James Web (right) Space Telescopes. The Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula taken by the Hubble (left) and James Web (right) Space Telescopes.A close-up of the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula

NASA and the other space agencies will release more images soon along with spectrographic analysis of exoplanet atmospheric composition.

In the end, it’s not just about the pretty pictures. It’s about the science.

Scott Manley

The Hubble and Webb Space TelescopesSide-by-side comparison of the Hubble and Webb Telescope designs

Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble): Launched by NASA in 1990 by NASA/STScI.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb): Launched in December 2021 by a consortium of international organizations that include:

STScI – The Space Telescope Science Institute, a division of NASA – the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, ESA – the European Space AgencyCSA – the Canadian Space Agency

In the months since its launch, the Webb Telescope has been cooling down, and the space agencies have put through a series of mirror adjustments and calibration routines. Since it has more sensitive infra-red detectors than the Hubble telescope, the agencies placed it in a higher orbit than Hubble. The orbit puts the Webb farther away from infra-red radiation from the Earth and Moon, but outside the zone that astronauts can service it.

Courtesy NASA

One of the key differences between the telescopes is the mirror size. The older Hubble telescope has a 2.4-meter mirror, whereas the Webb telescope is over two and a half times bigger at 6.5 meters. In the video below, note that the configuration of the mirrors is also different. Instead of one reflective surface, the Webb telescope uses eighteen hexagonal shaped mirrors. This gives it a larger reflecting surface but creates image artifacts as shown later.

Another major difference between the two space telescopes is how they gather light. The Webb telescope can peer farther into the infra-red end of the spectrum. This allows the images to show older objects in space, since light from older objects red-shifts over time.

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Abduction Leads to Slavery in the Iberian Frontier

“Slavery was the invariable result of captivity because those so taken were considered to be spoils of war to be used or sold to the profit of the captor.”

Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic,
Dr. James William Brodman, (The University of Pennsylvania Press), 1986.

Commonplace Capture

Capture threatened everyone in Iberia across the Christian-Muslim border from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. Abduction became so widespread that by the twelfth century, captives knew their religious enemy would probably treat them as a slave. It didn’t matter which side the captive came from, the Christian north or Muslim south.

So, why would your enemy abduct you? Most likely you were

Captured in a formal battle, orAbducted during a border raid, orTaken by pirates.Abduction Leads to Slavery – Historical Records

If you overlook the obvious exaggeration given to Medieval chroniclers, here are a few records of captives taken:

In a raid against Toledo in 1145, Murabit Sultan Tashufin killed three hundred of its Christian defenders and sent the rest to Morocco.In 1182, Castilian King Alfonso VIII took over two thousand Muslim captives and 2,775 dinars in ransoms.Men were not the only ones taken captive. In one of his raids against Lisbon in 1189, the Muwahhid caliph Ya’qub al-Mansur left with three thousand female and child captives.Muslim chronicles tell us the exalted Muwahhid caliph Ya’qub captured up to twenty-four thousand Leonese and Castilian soldiers at Alarcos in 1195.According to the thirteenth-century chronicler Pero Marín, Muslims captured travelers in the open countryside in what appeared to be a random pattern.As Islamic territory in Spain shrank the Balearics pirate attacks from African ports became more ferocious. Pirates, whether working independently or for Muslim sultans and emirs targeted, Christian shipping and ports.

Christians or Muslims near the wild west frontier borderlands in Iberia lived in perpetual danger of capture.

The Stuttgart Psalter, created at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 800-850.
Stuttgart Wüttembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. bibl. fol. 23, f.78v.

Source of Painting at top of article:
La Rendición de Granada (The Capitulation of Granada), Francisco Pradilla Ortiz (1882)

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Working for the Godfather Made Me a Pastor

The Godfather made me a pastor. No, really.

Working for the Godfather helped finance my theology degree. In an interview with Authority Magazine, I described how I worked for Marlon Brando, the actor who played the lead role in the 1972 hit movie The Godfather. I’m not going to tell you how or why. You’ll have to read the article to find out. I can say this. When I started working for him, I was as surprised as you.

Authority Magazine publishes feature interviews of people who are authorities in Business, Film, Sports and Tech.  In this article, I shared what I’ve learned about writing and publishing fiction. This would be a good article for anyone interested in becoming a writer or anyone addicted to writing.

In the interview, I also explain the five things you need to become a successful author:

PersistenceBalanceVisionPassionNetworking

When asked about the one habit I believe contributed the most to you becoming a great writer, I said,

“Networking contributed the most. Regular meetings provided a motivation to keep going. When you do that regularly, you keep up a vision and the passion follows. Pretty soon, a vision develops. Networking drove everything else.”

When asked about the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now, I said,

“The Shadows of Time novel series starts in the Middle Ages and ends in the present. Each of those books is about a young man or woman from Spain, Africa, Mesoamerica, India, and other places that are recruited to join an ancient temporal war. What’s fun about this series is history becomes alive through the eyes of the main characters. What happens to their world when they discover technology from the far future?”

Since 2018, Authority Magazine has conducted more than 50,000 empowering interviews with prominent Authorities like: Chris Evans, Shaquille O’Neal, Peyton Manning, Floyd Mayweather, Dr. Jane Goodall, and others.

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John Newton Interview on the Douglas Coleman Show

I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the Douglas Colman Show. This is my first video interview, and I found it easier than expected. About half of the questions were personal and half concerned his upcoming novel The Healing Stone and the Shadows of Time series.

When asked where my stories come from, I said,

“As a kid, I had a fascination with science fiction and history. Shows like the old Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who – these were the ones back in the late 70s and early 80s – these shows fascinated me. I wondered if I were to write an episode, what would it be like?”

Mr. Coleman asked questions about my early years and the influences on my writing. If you’re interested in seeing more videos, check out the eBook giveaway and reviews with Your Brother in Christ.

The post John Newton Interview on the Douglas Coleman Show appeared first on John Newton.

Darrell Newton Interview on the Douglas Coleman Show

I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the Douglas Colman Show. This is my first video interview, and I found it easier than expected. About half of the questions were personal and half concerned his upcoming novel The Healing Stone and the Shadows of Time series.

When asked where my stories come from, I said,

“As a kid, I had a fascination with science fiction and history. Shows like the old Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who – these were the ones back in the late 70s and early 80s – these shows fascinated me. I wondered if I were to write an episode, what would it be like?”

Mr. Coleman asked questions about my early years and the influences on my writing. If you’re interested in seeing more videos, check out the eBook giveaway and reviews with Your Brother in Christ.

The post Darrell Newton Interview on the Douglas Coleman Show appeared first on Darrell Newton.

Seeking the Best Villain in Your Story

To drive story tension and conflict, every main character (protagonist) should have a villain (antagonist) of equal or greater ability.

Ability

That ability could come in the form of raw strength, cunning, knowledge, or any other skill that pins them against each other in a battle on a knife’s edge. The skill doesn’t even need to match. They don’t both have to be equals in strength—it often works better if their skills aren’t the same—but what does matter is that the protagonist and reader aren’t sure of victory.

Nature

The antagonist doesn’t need to be a human being. It could be an animal or an aspect of nature like a tornado. That is the main question in my short story Death Has No Shadow–who is the villain?

Goal

The protagonist and antagonist could share the same goal instead of striving for opposite goals such as one wants to save the world and the other wants to destroy it. Think of two-track athletes competing for the same prize. They share the same goal. Who wins or how they win it becomes the conflict.

Moral Alignment

Matching a great antagonist to the antagonist doesn’t end at ability. Consider their goals and moral classification. The matrix below shows how a popular method of categorizing moral alignment. The role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons made this matrix popular. Players used it to label the moral alignment of characters and monsters.

Reading across changes the character’s views on rules from “lawful” (ridge adherence to a code of conduct) versus “chaotic” (rules? I don’t need no stinkin’ rules). Reading up and down changes the character’s moral distribution.

The chart above shows some characters you might recognize. Do you agree with their placement?

Challenging the Flaw

But, in my opinion, the best element in finding a good match for your main character is the antagonist challenging the main character’s moral or psychological flaw. The villain will achieve his goal only if the main character overcomes his inner demons. This is one of the approaches Johnn Truby takes in his book Anatomy of Story.

I could dedicate an entire series to balancing characters … but that’s for another blog.

Image attributes
Batman Villains by CelestialLion on DeviantArt –

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Three Reasons YaHWeH Is Not the Breath of God

Have you seen this post? Is YaHWeH breathing or the breath of God?

It’s a beautiful picture, but the message is wrong. (Reprint of the post is below.)

The post says that the Hebrew name for God (Yahweh) is an inhale and an exhale.

Three Reasons Why the Original Post Is a LieAll vowels are breathed. Consonants block the air breathed. Breathing in and out works for any two-syllable word.You could reverse the two sounds and it would still sound like breathing. Try it Weh-Yah.The vowels were there from the beginning. Someone did not arbitrarily put them there. For centuries, scribes wrote the Hebrew language without vowels. All of their letters are consonants. Of course, people spoke Hebrew with vowel sounds–you can’t really speak without vowels–but they assumed the vowels as they read the text. For example, if I write hwy mgmt, you might read that as the abbreviation for highway management. So, it was in ancient Hebrew.

The Masoretes, a group of Jewish scholars, added the vowel marks in about 500 AD. Because of the scattering of the Jewish people (the diaspora) and the natural shifts of languages over time, the Masoretes decided that they better somehow mark the vowels, so people pronounce Hebrew correctly. They honored the scriptures too much to create and insert new characters into the text. Instead, they added dots and dashes under the text to indicate vowel sounds.

I would not expect most Christians to know this about the Hebrew language, but I must point it out and stop this lie. It is dangerous for us to applaud something that sounds or feels good but is not based on truth. The concept that YaHWeH is breathing or the breath of God appears to have its origin in a cult-like mix of Jewish and eastern religions. A simple internet search for “yhwh breathing sounds” will show where this came from.

Example of Hebrew text with vowel points (Psalm 23:3b)Original Post

THIS IS INTERESTING…

There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what His name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and the name He gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH.

Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels.

But scholars and Rabi’s have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing.

YH (inhale): WH (exhale).

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.

A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.

Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breathe is giving constant acknowledgment to God.

Likewise, a person leaves this earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filing their lungs.

So when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Being alive means I speak His name constantly. So, is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs.

In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst.

In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down.

When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.

When I think about it, breathing is giving him praise. Even in the hardest moments!

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought. God chose to give Himself a name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive.

All of us, always, everywhere. are Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips. Amen

By Sandra Thurman Caporale

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Nanoparticle Drug Delivery for Cancer Treatment

Nanoparticle drug delivery for cancer treatment offers hope for faster remission.

Phenformin-loaded nanoparticles targeted both kinds of cancer cells in a mouse model of human lung cancer. ~ Yi Yan Yang, The Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore

Scorched Earth Treatment

We cure cancer with poison. Well, we don’t really cure it. Rather, we beat it into remission with the brute force of chemotherapy. The method is akin to attacking an enemy army with a nuclear bomb. Yes, it wipes most of them out, but it also makes the uninhabitable unless you’re a cockroach or a Twinkie.  Cancer stem cells tent to survive, which means that even after we nuke cancer with chemo, it can resurrect like an army of zombies. We need better weapons in our arsenal against cancer—something that just takes out the bad guys and leaves everything else alone. Instead of a nuclear bomb, we need snipers.

[image error]

Enter the Trojan Horse: Nanoparticles

Researchers at The Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore are using self-assembling polymer nanoparticles to deliver toxic drugs to only cancer cells and cancer stem cells. The nanoparticles released the drug in a sustained manner due to their hydrophilic shells, which “prevent enzymatic degradation of the cargo and protein adsorption onto the nanoparticles,” explains Yang. “This also prolongs blood circulation so that the cargo-loaded nanoparticles have enough time to accumulate in tumor tissues.”

In the Wrong Hands

[image error]Wouldn’t it be great if we could develop a first-aid device that uses nanotechnology to diagnose and cure injuries and disease? What would happen if this device were lost and someone in a primitive culture discovered it?

This happened the in short story Child of the Stone. When an old peasant in medieval Spain unearths an ancient box, he discovers a power that will change his life. A silver plate promises to bring him and his wife out of poverty, but the true treasure lies hidden in another artifact: a simple stone. Once he discovers the stone’s powers, he must either tell the truth and forfeit it to the authorities, or let his greed corrupt it.

Further reading:

Nano packages for anti-cancer drug delivery

Researchers watch in real time as fat-encased drug nanoparticles invade skin cells

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Child of the Stone – Short Story Released

 New short story Child of the Stone released as an ebook on Amazon.
Child of the Stone

Discovering a Relic of Time Travel
Avar-Tek Event 4


eBook – Short Story

When an old peasant in medieval Spain unearths an ancient box, he discovers a power that will change his life. A silver plate promises to bring him and his wife out of poverty, but the true treasure lies hidden in another artifact: a simple stone. Once he discovers the stone’s powers, he must either tell the truth and forfeit it to the authorities, or let his greed corrupt it.

Preview

     Mud, heavy and everywhere-clinging, fought against Juan with the vile tenacity of a demonic legion. Clumps stuck to the bottom of his boots when he lifted his leg. When he stepped down to guide the plow forward, the mud changed its mind and let go, slipping under foot. He caught his chin on the plow handles. Double-minded slime of hell. The ox pulled the plow and under the same curse, heaved its legs up and out of the mud with a slick-pop, slick-pop. There are no flames in hell, only mud. I’m sure of it.

     He should have avoided this low, wet spot, but he didn’t want to make short furrows. Blinking from the sweat that stung his eyes, he gripped the handles harder and ignored the pain. I am too old for this, fifty-two years too old. If I had a son, he would be out here. He looked up at the sky. “What did I do to be cursed with a barren wife?” Juan resumed his mud penance in solitude.

     His foot struck something in the mud, not a rock, but something with a squared corner. “Paras!” The ox stopped. Juan stooped down and traced the edge of the object with his fingers. He could only see one corner; mud covered the rest. He dug deeper, searching for another corner, scraping off clumps of soil. Freeing it from the mud’s grip would be more than hand work. Alone in the field and with no one else to tell of his discovery …

Click here to read more.

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Using Swear Words in Christian Literature

Swear Words in Christina Literature

I’ve always been a clean guy. Well, at least my language. And hygiene, I mean … I shower also. So, when it comes to writing a story, should we have our characters cuss or curse or use those words our mothers told us not to?

To a point, yes. Here’s my reasoning. If, for example, your character is in prison and he’s going to talk to someone, they’re going to cuss. Sorry. That’s the way you roll in prison. The most common word is Mutha-Fudga. What is a mutha-fudga? Honestly, I’m not sure. It must be something cold as in “It’s colder than a mutha-fudga.” At the same time, it steams with an inner fire as in “[Hoover] Dam, it’s hotter than a mutha-fudga out here.” It’s a term used when you’re mad at someone like, “Sitsu, some mutha-fudga stole my socks.” Yet you can use it to address someone you care about, spoken with deepest endearment and a tear in the eye: “Merry Christmas, mutha-fudga.”

So, if all convicts in a novel say things like, “Darn, it’s cold out there,” he ain’t in prison and the reader knows it.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe we should keep our language clean, and our thoughts on things above. When we do, people may think we’re weird. They may think we’re too good for them, but if we listen to them and show concern and interest in them, most will change their minds. When they go through a rough time, they’ll quietly ask for your advice or even prayer. Yeah, you’ve seen it happen.

So, let’s paint that prison scene again but this time put a Christian in it. Yes, a Christian in prison with all the crud and anger and petty selfishness around him. Everyone cusses around him, but he keeps it clean. Doesn’t it make the contrast between light and dark more apparent? Doesn’t it make the light shine?

I believe we should keep our language clean and our thoughts on things above, but not everyone does. And if we clean up all our characters to make them good examples, where then does redemption lie? Where is the contrast between good and evil if all is good?

What are your thoughts?

 

Further Reading

The Christian Cuss Word Flowchart

Tim Hawkins Christian Cuss Words

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