These decisions, in my view, don’t go far enough. The idea that the government, by the mere order of an unelected functionary, can shut down churches is antithetical to the American experience. The Supreme Court needs to move beyond the “if they do it to Costco, they can do it to you” rule to a handling stance that says the state cannot, under any circumstance, regulate church attendance.

“This is not about airing your grievances,” Peters pushed back. “I don’t know what rabbit hole you’re going down.”

Johnson blasted Peters for his denial, where a shouting match ensued.

“You talked about Russian disinformation,” Johnson repeated, before moving on to grant Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul the floor.

Johnson’s Wednesday lecture comes as the committee opened up a hearing to consider the voting irregularities that took place in the recent November election which featured record turnout in the form of mail-in voting.

Sen. Paul called for hearings that included state lawmakers to shore up security in subsequent elections and criticized those dismissing claims of voter fraud entirely.

“We can’t just say it didn’t happen,” Paul said at the hearing with the nation’s former cybersecurity chief Christopher Krebs. “The fraud happened. The election in many ways was stolen, and the only way it will be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the laws.”

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley complained that after four years of non-stop accusations by Democrats that President Donald Trump was an agent of the Russian government, they had the audacity to condemn Republicans investigating pandemic irregularities at the ballot box.

“The whole Russia nonsense was based on we now know lies from a Russian spy,” Hawley said. “After four years of that, being told that the last election was fake and that Donald Trump wasn’t really elected and that Russia intervened, after four years of that, now these same people are told you just sit down and shut up. If you have any concerns about election integrity, you’re a ‘nut case’… That is not a recipe for success in this country.”

One of these strategies being considered is for a senator or member of Congress to object to the votes submitted by the half-dozen or so states where fraud or gross incompetence was the rule of the day. //

The Democrats are a bit fearful of the vote because their margin in the House is very small, and there is no guarantee their Senate caucus would not have defections.

On the whole, the upside for the GOP far exceeds any downside.

The VichyCons will have this vote tattooed on their forehead forever.

Pressing a fight will keep faith with the GOP base that came out in record numbers to vote in 2020 and will serve as a rallying point for 2022.

Joe Biden’s presidency will be publicly flagged as fraudulent.

The issue of electoral integrity will be shoved to the forefront of the national agenda because, without a reliable means of conducting elections, we cease to exist as a Republic.

Earth generates heat. The deeper you go, the higher the temperature. At 25km down, temperatures rise as high as 750°C; at the core, it is said to be 4,000°C. Humans have been making use of hot springs as far back as antiquity, and today we use geothermal technology to heat our apartments. Volcanic eruptions, geysers and earthquakes are all signs of the Earth's internal powerhouse. //

The average heat flow from the earth's surface is 87mW/m2 – that is, 1/10,000th of the energy received from the sun, meaning the earth emits a total of 47 terawatts, the equivalent of several thousand nuclear power plants. The source of the earth's heat has long remained a mystery, but we now know that most of it is the result of radioactivity. //

The decay of one uranium-238 nucleus, for example, releases an average of 6 neutrinos, and 52 megaelectronvolts of energy carried by the released particles that then lodge in matter and deposit heat. Each neutrino carries around two megaelectronvolts of energy. According to standardized measures, one megaelectronvolt is equivalent to 1.6 10-13 joules, so it would take around 1025 decays per second to reach the earth's total heat. The question is, can these neutrinos be detected? //

Two recent experiments have added to the research: KamLAND, a detector weighing 1,000 metric tons underneath a Japanese mountain, and Borexino, which is located in a tunnel under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy and weighs 280 metric tons. Both use "liquid scintillators." To detect neutrinos from the earth or the cosmos, you need a detection method that is effective at low energies; this means exciting atoms in a scintillating liquid. Neutrinos interact with protons, and the resulting particles emitted produce observable light.

KamLAND has announced more than 100 events and Borexino around 20 that could be attributed to geoneutrinos, with an uncertainty factor of 20-30%. We cannot pinpoint their source, but this overall measurement—while fairly rough—is in line with the predictions of the simulations, within the limits of the low statistics obtained.

Therefore, the traditional hypothesis of a kind of nuclear reactor at the center of the earth, consisting of a ball of fissioning uranium like those in nuclear power plants, has now been excluded. Fission is not a spontaneous radioactivity but is stimulated by slow neutrons in a chain reaction.

There is a table of building material R-Values further down in this article, but first we should quickly cover some basics about R-Values, U-Factors, and calculating thermal resistance.

In construction, the R-value is the measurement of a material's capacity to resist heat flow from one side to the other. In simple terms, R-values measure the effectiveness of insulation and a higher number represents more effective insulation.

R-values are additive. For instance if you have a material with an R-value of 12 attached to another material with an R-value of 3, then both materials combined have an R-value of 15.

Chang’e-5 promises new lunar science as well as more ambitious future missions
HELSINKI — China has recovered precious lunar samples after a successful reentry and landing of the Chang’e-5 return capsule.

The roughly 300-kilogram Chang’e-5 return capsule performed a ballistic skip reentry at 12:33 p.m. Eastern Dec. 16, effectively bouncing off the atmosphere over the Arabian Sea before reentry.

The capsule containing around 2 kilograms of drilled and scooped lunar material landed in the grasslands of Siziwang Banner at 12:59 p.m. Recovery vehicles located the capsule shortly after.