Signs in the stars before the Day of the Lord.

Image credit:    Dr.  David Aguilar,      http://www.aspenskies.com/

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Scriptures

Matthew 24:29-30 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (Matthew 24:29)

Rev:8:10-11 “Then the third angel sounded; And a great star fell from Heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell upon a third of the rivers and on the springs of water,

“and the name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became as worm-wood; and many men died from the water because it was made bitter”. (Rev:8:10-11)

Ezekiel 32:7 “And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud And the moon will not give its light.

Joel 2:10 Before them the earth quakes, The heavens tremble, The sun and the moon grow dark And the stars lose their brightness.

Falling stars are either comets, asteroids, meteors, or dying stars which send out gamma bursts. It could be something artificial, that appears in the sky, like a nuclear warhead, but the scripture does not say this. The object originates in the sky and falls downward. It does not say it shoots up into the air, and then falls down. In context, this “star” is mentioned along with the sun and moon, which would confirm it is a natural object.

There has been no strong scientific data yet indicating a definite impact of any significance as of this date for the near future.

NASA link for “near earth object” program data:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

There are objects that come near the earth all the time, but either the object does not hit, or it is burned up in the atmosphere, and if whatever might be left hits the earth, it does not cause significant damage.

Examples:

Asteroids

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/02/asteroid.reut/index.html

Asteroid “2003 QQ47” will be closely monitored over the next two months, but — the chances of a catastrophic collision are just one in 909,000. Its potential strike date is March 21, 2014, but astronomers say that any risk of impact is likely to decrease as further data is gathered. On impact, it could have the effect of 20 million Hiroshima atomic bombs, a spokesman for the British government’s Near Earth Object Information Centre told BBC radio.

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn9095-big-new-asteroid-has-slim-chance-of-hitting-earth.html

Update 5 May 2006: The newly discovered asteroid 2006 HZ51 has now been removed from NASA-JPL’s list of potentially hazardous objects. The Earth is now safe from that particular threat, which was never anything more than a long-shot with odds of only one in six million.

Meteors

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/

These have been from 10-18,000 grams (0-39 lbs) in weight so far. This would hardly cause a global disaster.

Gamma Ray Bursts.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/bursts.html

Gamma-ray bursts are short-lived bursts of gamma-ray photons, the most energetic form of light. At least some of them are associated with a special type of supernovae, the explosions marking the deaths of especially massive stars.

Lasting anywhere from a few milliseconds to several minutes, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) shine hundreds of times brighter than a typical supernova and about a million trillion times as bright as the Sun, making them briefly the brightest source of cosmic gamma-ray photons in the observable Universe. GRBs are detected roughly once per day from wholly random directions of the sky.

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:rpEc43J0JwcJ:www.nasca.org.uk/gamma/gamma.html+gamma+ray+burst+disaster&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us

Scientists have now speculated that Gamma Ray Bursts may be associated with black holes capable of releasing a fireball of energy into a high pressure jet that in turn creates the shock waves that lead to the formation of Gamma Rays.

The very nature of GRBs mean that an explosion at even several thousand light years distance could prove deadly to all life on Earth.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080321/full/news.2008.687.html

Gamma-ray bursts are high-energy explosions seen as shockwaves jet out from a massive dying star

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/gamma/milkyway.html

What if such a burst occurred somewhere within our own galaxy, say only thousands of light-years away?

Dr. Jerry Bonnell is an astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center’s Laboratory for High-Energy Astrophysics in Greenbelt, Maryland (response) (http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov):

Regardless of the mechanism producing the burst, the intense flux of gamma rays would likely be stopped in the lower stratosphere by collisions with atmospheric nitrogen molecules. The molecules would break up and reform as nitric oxide and related compounds. (Hanging over cities today, nitric oxides are the brownish constituents of smog; they are also catalysts for the destruction of ozone.) Uncheerful brown skies and stratospheric ozone destruction would initially affect only the hemisphere facing the gamma-ray burst, but winds would soon spread the destruction worldwide.

How much ozone would be destroyed? Thorsett estimated that if the burster were located near the center of our galaxy, some 30,000 light-years away, the ozone depletion would be a few percent, comparable to that produced by natural disasters like large volcanic eruptions, very intense solar flares.

If the burster were closer, say less than 3,000 light-years away, the gamma-ray flux received in a few tens of seconds could wipe out the entire ozone layer for years to come.

At the very least, the drastic increase in solar ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth’s surface would cause

severe skin cancers. For humans and other animals, slow starvation would likely result, as the harmful ultraviolet flux inhibited plant growth and damaged and altered ecosystems supporting the food chain.

** The 1^st and 4^th angels in Revelation 16 pour out judgment on the earth . The results are

1. a grievous sore (skin cancer?) upon the men which had the mark of the beast (verse 2), and

2. men scorched men with fire and heat from the sun, (due to destruction of the ozone layer?) (verses 8-9)

As in a nuclear winter, the nitric oxides darkening our skies could also cause acid rains and significant cooling of the Earth’s surface. Such pollutants would take decades to settle out of the stratosphere.

But that’s not all. In addition to the chemical changes in the atmosphere, the nuclear interactions induced by the high-energy gamma rays would rapidly produce huge quantities of radioactive nucleids, such as carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,700 years. Of course, winds would distribute this fallout worldwide.

Depending on what the mechanism for producing a gamma-ray burst actually is, a nearby burst could wreak even more havoc.

Again, we have to take a “wait and see what happens” approach to interpretation. If a GRB were to occur close to earth, there is nothing we can do about it anyhow.

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***update 2-19-09  Most extreme gamma ray burst seen ever

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090219141458.htm

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Instructional videos about GRB’s

part 1 GRB (gamma ray burst)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNSo4xAMLy4

part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU_SGR14PcI&feature=related

part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hROnHFuN-Tc&feature=related

part 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5gQqeK77WU&feature=related

part 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBzmq7sglCE&feature=related

other:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v0S95kMmok&feature=related

To read about solar eclipses connected to end time events, Click here for more.

To read about solar cycle 24 and the end times, Click here for more.

To read about earthquakes in the end times Click here for more.

To read about wheat shortage (famine) in the end times Click here for more.