Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Fire tornado

Really. A tornado made of fire:



At The Telegraph, via Bad Astronomy.

3 comments:

James Hanley said...

They may say it's rare, but the Bible mentions one that lasted for 40 years. Damn lying liberal media.

Scott Hanley said...

Are you thinking of the pillar of fire that led the Israelites out of Egypt? That was only fire at night; during the day, it was a pillar of smoke. In other words, it sounds a hell of a lot like a volcanic eruption, with just enough glowing magma to illuminate the ash when it was dark, but not so much during daylight. I'm not sure what volcano the writers of the Bible would have ever witnessed - maybe they only heard descriptions from travelers and never saw one themselves.

But see, that was always one of the threats to my faith: I looked for naturalistic explanations for the miracles. Never was comfortable with a world where the laws of nature weren't observed scrupulously.

James Hanley said...

Well, you sure know how to take all the air out of a joke.