Popular culture reinforces these ideas with images of pearly gates, golden streets, and radiant clouds ... of heaven. Ancient civilizations believed in a three-tiered universe with heaven above ...

The Bible frequently depicts heaven as being “above” Earth, reaffirming customary imagery such as clouds, golden gates, and ...

Instead, when her aunt Tara Noble saw the photo — which appears to show an image of a golden beam of light connecting the wreckage to the clouds above — she saw something remarkable.