IT'S A MIRACLE! ... or so it seems. Three incredible, unrelated occurrences that you'd never believe were even possible, just happened!

Still think he looks like Stan Laurel

In your wildest dreams these 3 things happened and are hard to believe. But they happened! They really happened!

1: Credit Pope Francis, a man who knows miracles by profession, for the first seemingly miraculous revelation.

The Pope, whose word is seen by Catholics as the word of God, professed, in 'Francisco' a film about his life: 

"Homosexuals have the right to be part of the family. One doesn't have to believe in God to go to heaven. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it."

This news should, it is believed, send an undeniable message to Catholic families with LGBTQ people, that all family members are deserving of acceptance and support. 

To that, I add, "Amen."

Pope Francs also assured atheists, "You don't have to believe in God to go to heaven." In a written open letter responding in a non-Catholic owned newspaper, La Repubblica, he wrote, "You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don't believe and who don't seek the faith. I start by saying--and this is the fundamental thing--that God's mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience." 

Earlier, Pope Francis signaled a more progressive attitude on sexuality asking, ( Best quote ever: ) "If someone is gay and looking for the Lord, who am I to judge him?

God, er, I mean Gosh, I love this Pope. One small step... one giant leap.

Depiction of landing on asteroid Bennu

  2: OSIRUS-REX is the name of the NASA mission  that sent a spacecraft from earth, 200 million miles into the heavens. to actually land on a carbon-rich asteroid named Bennu. (Asteroids are fragments of the early solar system, largely unchanged since they formed 4.5 billion years ago.) The spacecraft has already landed safely but--now get this--is collecting dust and specks of what the surface may hold--which we can see as it is happening with the camera on the spacecraft--and will return to earth with its collection in 2023.

The findings could provide us with an understanding of the building blocks of life on earth.

Here's the take-away on this: We, the people of earth, have actually figured what might be 'out there', what we may find, send a spacecraft millions of miles and actually land on target, all the while with both earth and Bennu moving disproportionally through space at thousands of miles per hour, collect samples of the surface and return to earth for us to analyze and understand how we happened to be. That is 'mind-blowing' unbelievable incredible. 

Are we super intelligent or not? Before you answer, ask, Do we wear a face mask or not? Heaven help us if we can solve so many answers about the universe but still can't put the toilet seat down, agree on anything... or, whatever. 

3. Scientists stretch every absolute boundary of the measurement of time and space while we marvel at what seemingly can't be, but is. 

Today, we know know the smallest fragment of time ever measured:  One trillionth of a billionth of a second. That is the timing of changes in an atom in zeptoseconds (That sounds made up but it's not. A zeptosecond is a decimal point followed by 20 zeros and a 1, like this: 0.000000000000000000001). 

There is, in theory, a yoctosecond, a septillionth of a second. And then there is Planck time where things start to get really ridiculous. Divide that into one second and you realize how fast you'd have to be with a stopwatch just to time it.

If we ever got this on an NBA scoreboard, the last 3 minutes of an NBA game could take lifetimes. On the brighter side, that would be called commercial heaven.

The beneficiary of all this... quantum computing and superconductivity, whatever those are.

This all goes back to Albert Einstein who supposed that this, theoretically, was out there. Science has now proved him right once again. What a brain! (ednote: I saw that brain in the Muter Museum in Philadelphia where all good brains must go.)

All old measures are now passe. So much for the old Catholic question posed by nuns to open-minded little children: 

How many angels could fit on the head of a pin? Answer: An infinite number. Heck, rumor has it that Chuck Norris was so tough and all-accomplished that one time he counted to infinity... twice.