Over the past 34 years I have had the privilege of teaching the Book of Revelation on 14 occasions, before live audiences in the United States and Europe. One of the questions that I am asked on a consistent basis, is regarding the objects that are seen falling from space upon the earth in Revelation chapter 8. It is certain that from the midway point of the seven-year Tribulation Period, which becomes in the last three and one-half years, “The Great Tribulation”, the earth will travail in conditions both stellar and tera firma unlike at any time in earth’s history.
Only in recent years has the United States Government began to take notice of the potential threat that asteroid, Comets and Meteors pose to our delicately balanced planet. The impacting by an object as small as 200 feet across could destroy everything around it for hundreds of square Miles. According to one expert, there is a ten percent chance that an object of at least 70 meters, or 230 feet will impact the earth in a person’s lifetime.
Larger Asteroids are much easier to detect even decades in advance, giving us time to deflect or destroy the threat. Smaller asteroids are much more difficult to track as there are as many as 15,000 new objects found every single day. On March 18th of 2004 an asteroid 150 feet across passed earth at a distance of just 30,000 miles and we had only a 23-hour advanced notice.
The following is a brief synopsis of my lecture notes from the Book of Revelation chapter 8 regarding some of these objects that are seen falling from space to the earth as a part of the Judgment of the Great Tribulation in which two-thirds of the population of earth are killed.
Revelation 8:6“So the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. 7 The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
There are many places in this part of the study of the Book of Revelation where we see things from space, falling to the earth. As the Tribulation Period begins in Revelation chapter 6, John records objects falling from space:
Revelation 6:13-14
13 And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. 14 Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place
It is important that we understand that no one on the earth really knows what these objects are. The best any of us can do is to give a calculated, intelligent guess based on the description of the objects and the effects they have when they fall to the earth.
When we sit under a night sky and watch a meteor show, we call them “Shooting Stars”. They are not actual stars, it is just a name that is used to describe the action of the meteor hitting the upper atmosphere and incurring the friction, that causes the light in the sky. Also, when we see in the Book of Revelation, objects falling from the sky that have certain effects, it is not a reach to speculate intelligently, that they are either meteors or asteroids.
When the “Stars” fall, the sky recedes like a scroll, this is what we would expect from the impact of a massive object hitting and exploding on the earth. Mountains and Islands moved out of their place, would also be the effects of massive objects contacting the earth.
So, again here in chapter 8, we see the continuation of verse 7 describes as “Objects being thrown to the earth, and a third of the trees being burned up and all the green grass was burned up…”
In our solar system we have an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There are at least 40,000 Asteroids from a few feet across to several miles across. Most of the Asteroids in this belt average about 1/2 a mile across.
Many of the scientists and astronomers are very concerned about some of these large ateroids that make orbits that bring them near the earth. Outside of Tucson there is the “Kit telescope” on kit mountain. One of their main research jobs is to plot and search for asteroids that are a danger to the earth. There are currently 2,000 asteroids that are in an orbit that threatens the earth. There are another 2,000 which have the future possibility of making contact with the earth.
On May 19, 1996, a small Asteroid (between 300 and 900 feet wide) passed 280,000 miles from earth, which is a bit farther out than the moon. If it had hit the earth, it could have destroyed the entire United States., with an explosion larger than that of any hydrogen bomb ever tested.
You can rest assured that when an Asteroid contacts the earth with a force larger than any Hydrogen bomb ever created, “The Sky would recede like a scroll, and the mountains and Islands would move…” This asteroid was discovered only four days before it passed by earth.
In January 2002, an asteroid about 1000 feet wide passed by earth missing it by less than 400,000 miles. The Moon is just 238,607 miles from the earth, so this 1,000-foot wide Asteroid was not much farther away than our own moon!
In March 2002, asteroid 2002 EM7 came within 300,000 miles of earth, a bit farther out than the moon, and it was about 200 feet wide. This one really gave the astronomers a scare because it was detected 4 days after it passed by earth, because it had come from the sun’s direction, and therefore was coming from a direction where they cannot be seen because of the sun’s brightness.
July 2002, it was announced that asteroid 2002 NT7, detected on July 9 in New Mexico, could strike earth on Feb. 1, 2019. This asteroid has an orbital period around the sun of 837 days and is 1.2 miles wide, giving it enough kinetic energy to be a doomsday asteroid. This asteroid is large enough to wipe out most of mankind.
A very dangerous asteroid about a half-mile wide (2002 NY40) passes by earth at 330,000 miles out on August 18, 2002, a bit farther out than the distance earth is from the moon. If it struck the earth it would not be an ELE Extinction Level Event (ELE), but the impact and explosion could cause a major decrease in the human population and giant tidal waves that would swamp the coasts of the earth’s continents.
There are thousands of small asteroids that will pass close to earth, but they are unknown now and will likely only be noticed as they get close to earth.
Scientists have discussed various ways to redirect the course of these asteroids. Send a nuclear missile. Bad Idea, because it breaks up the asteroid into hundreds of small pieces that will still come into Earth’s atmosphere. Send a shuttle to the asteroid and attach a rocket engine to the asteroid and propel it into space. Scientists are concerned because an asteroid of 1 kilometer, (3,280 feet), hitting the earth would do more than an all out nuclear war.
We have discussed previously, the earth’s polar axis. The Earth rotates on it’s Axis at 23.5 Degrees.
There is evidence on the earth that in the past, the earth has shifted from it’s axis of 23.5 degrees. The northern area, north of the North Pole, in the arctic circle was not the arctic circle in the past. It was not always frozen with ice. There were “Mastodons”, that have been found in the Arctic Region with tropical vegetation in their stomachs? Scientist believe this type of “Quick freeze” might have been due to a polar axis shift.
These frozen mammoths have been found in a wide area -some 3,000 miles from Siberia to Alaska. Undigested buttercup flowers have been found in the stomachs of the mammoths. Let’s consider the buttercups first. They grow in a warmer climate than Siberia. We have also found in their stomachs undigested grasses that are known to grow ONLY in more moderate climates. Of course a problem develops. To freeze a mammoth so fast that it does not rot and instead its stomach contents still remain undigested requires a VERY fast freeze. How could it have happened? When a shift happens in our polar axis, it is very quick and the effects are devastating upon any life in the affected areas. A shift in the polar axis could move a region over 1,600 miles either north, south, east or west. A tropical region might be suddenly and violently shifted to a frigid area 50 below zero. When this occurs, the animal would be quick frozen, along with whatever he had eaten that day.
One of the most famous pieces of evidence for past Meteor contact with earth, is our own Meteor crater outside Winslow, is 3 miles in diameter and 522 feet deep.
In a blinding flash, a huge iron-nickel meteorite or dense cluster of meteorites, estimated to have been about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand tons, struck the rocky plain with an explosive force greater than twenty million tons of TNT. Traveling at supersonic speed, this impact generated immensely powerful shock waves in the meteorite, the rock and the surrounding atmosphere. In the air, shock waves swept across the level plain devastating all in the meteor’s path for a radius of several miles. In the ground, as the meteorite penetrated the rocky plain, pressures rose to over twenty million pounds per square inch, and both iron and rock experienced limited vaporization and extensive melting. Beyond the affected region, an enormous volume of rock underwent complete fragmentation and ejection.
The result of these violent conditions was the excavation of a giant bowl-shaped cavity. In less than a few seconds, a crater was carved into this once flat rocky plain. During its formation, over 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone were abruptly thrown out to form a continuous blanket of debris surrounding the crater for a distance of over a mile. Large blocks of limestone, the size of small houses were heaved onto the rim. Flat lying beds of rock in the crater walls were overturned in fractions of a second and uplifted permanently 150 feet. Fragments of rock and iron-nickel, some as large as a few feet across, were thrown several miles away.
This crater is believed to be from an asteroid just 150 feet across, large enough to push the earth into a polar axis shift. If you have a ball spinning quickly and you hit it with force, you can stop the spin of the ball or cause the ball to flip over. These mastodons lived 1,600 miles from the polar ice, but in an instant were frozen solid in 80 below zero cold.
The chances this year of an asteroid impacting the earth are 1 in 3 million.
Every second we have over 1,800 small meteorites coming into the earth’s atmosphere, we call them “Shooting stars”. The events we see in The book of Revelation could be as a result of an asteroid impact. In Revelation Chapter 6, it is said that “The stars are going to fall like a fig tree dropping its figs when she is shaken by a mighty wind. Revelation 6:13 And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. What we are seeing now is nothing compared to what will happen during the tribulation period.
From NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Asteroid Watch
Earth has been impacted by asteroids and comets for billions of years. In the 1980s, after Luis and Walter Alvarez suggested that a massive asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs, scientists began to consider the environmental effects—including widespread extinction—that could be caused by large impacts.
By the 1990s, available research indicated that the impact of a 1.5 to 2-kilometer-diameter asteroid or comet anywhere on Earth had the potential to produce global effects that would seriously impact human civilization (e.g., a significant reduction in the total food yield, perhaps for several years).
Because there were substantial uncertainties in the threshold impactor size needed to produce global effects, a team of NEO experts selected 1-kilometer-diameter objects as the threshold for the most dangerous objects to human civilization.
In 1998, The NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office was established at JPL to coordinate NASA-sponsored efforts to detect, track and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that could approach the Earth. The primary computational activities of this Office involve the continuous (and largely automatic) use of new data to update the orbits of Near-Earth objects so that their future orbital paths can be examined for close Earth approaches. If the possibility of a future close Earth approach arises, impact probabilities are computed and the circumstances of the Earth approach are noted on the SENTRY (Impact Risk) region of the Near-Earth Object Web site (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov). When the possibility of a particularly close Earth approach is identified, JPL’s computations are compared and verified with a parallel, but independent, effort in Pisa Italy called the Near-Earth Objects Dynamic Site, (NEODyS). Once verified, these events are immediately posted on the SENTRY page. At any given time, there will be several dozen Near-Earth objects on the SENTRY Web site for which a future Earth impact cannot yet be ruled out. But with additional data to improve our calculation of their orbits, the vast majority of Near-Earth Objects will be removed from SENTRY. At the same time, newly discovered objects, with orbits that require more observations, will be added to the SENTRY list so there will always be objects on the Risk Page.
What do we do if we discover an asteroid that may hit the Earth?
Although Hollywood has created some colorful methods for stopping an object that is on a collision path with Earth, no government agency, national or international, has been tasked or accepted the responsibility to stop such an asteroid, should one be discovered. But there have been a number of academic and some technical studies, not to mention numerous movies, on how a devastating asteroid impact might be avoided. Since asteroids outnumber comets 100 to 1 in the inner solar system, the asteroids, rather than comets, represent the majority of the nearer-term threat to our planet.
Because of the wide range of possible sizes, trajectories and warning times for Earth-threatening asteroids, there will be a corresponding wide range in the levels of challenge in providing an appropriate response. Unless there are a few decades of warning time, hazardous asteroids larger than a few hundred meters in diameter will require enormous energies to deflect or fragment. In the rare case of a large threatening asteroid, nuclear explosions that could push or fragment the object might provide a sufficient response.
For the far more numerous asteroids that are smaller than a few hundred meters in diameter, if we have adequate early warning of several years to a decade, a weighted robotic spacecraft could be targeted to collide with the object, thereby modifying its velocity to nudge the trajectory just enough that the Earth impact would be avoided. The spacecraft navigation technology for impacting a small body was successfully demonstrated when the Deep Impact spacecraft purposely rammed comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, to scientifically examine its composition.
Nuclear explosions and spacecraft impacts are two of the more relatively mature options for deflecting Earth-threatening objects and they have been studied in some detail (for example, see Ref. 1). Another option has been suggested for the small subset of asteroids that might also pass close to the Earth a few years prior to the predicted Earth impact. For these unique cases, the pre-impact close encounter affects the asteroid’s motion so strongly that a relatively tiny change in its velocity prior to the close approach will be multiplied several fold during the flyby, thus allowing the asteroid to miss the Earth on the next pass. In these relatively infrequent cases, even the very modest gravitational attraction between the asteroid and a nearby “micro-thrusting” spacecraft (nicknamed a “gravity tractor”) could provide enough of a change in the asteroid’s velocity that an Earth collision could be avoided (see Ref. 2).
Successful mitigation requires that a threatening asteroid must be discovered and physically characterized soon enough to allow the appropriate response; the current NASA Near-Earth Object Observations program is operated with this in mind. But, since the number of near-Earth asteroids increases as their sizes decrease, we are most likely to be hit by the relatively small objects that are most difficult to find ahead of time. As a result, consideration must also be given to the notification and evacuation of those regions on Earth that would be affected by the imminent collision of a small, recently-discovered impactor. However, if the object could be found far enough ahead of time and our space technology used to deflect it from the Earth threatening trajectory, it would be a tremendous demonstration of our space-faring capabilities!
The NASA Authorization Act of 2008 stated that “near-Earth objects pose a serious and credible threat to humankind.”
The projected increase in data rate from such telescopes as PanSTARRS can easily be handled by the MPC. At present, the MPC routinely calculates about 30,000 orbit improvements each day, has more than 60 million observations in its archives, and keeps track of nearly 500,000 objects, of which about 6,000 are NEOs.
CHARACTERIZATION OF NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS
Since the ultimate goal is to mitigate the hazard posed by NEOs, it is insufficient to merely discover and track them. Those that pose a hazard are candidates to be characterized, and characterization of non-hazardous objects is useful for understanding the possible hazards.
SPACECRAFT MISSIONS TO SMALL PLANETARY OBJECTS
NASA has launched several missions to asteroids and comets over the years. For example, in 1996 NASA launched the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR Shoemaker) mission which orbited the asteroid Eros for a year and touched down on the surface in February 2001. In early 2005 NASA launched the Deep Impact spacecraft which used an impactor to eject material from the comet Tempel 1 in July 2005. Deep Impact is now part of the EPOXI mission, which is scheduled for a flyby of the comet Hartley 2 in late 2010. NASA’s Stardust-NExT mission is heading for a flyby of the Tempel 1 comet in order to image the crater created by Deep Impact. In 2003 the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the Hayabusa spacecraft that rendezvoused with the asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and is returning to Earth by 2010, possibly carrying samples from the asteroid. Japan currently has plans for a Hayabusa 2 mission. The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the Rosetta spacecraft which is scheduled to rendezvous with a comet in 2015 and deploy a lander to touch down on its surface. ESA was also
working on a study of the Marco Polo mission for rendezvous with a small asteroid; however, this mission was recently canceled.
CONCLUSION
Although the threat posed to human life by near-Earth objects has received much attention in the media and popular culture, with numerous movies and television documentaries devoted to the subject, to date there has been relatively little effort by the U.S. government to survey, discover, characterize, and
mitigate the threat. Requirements have been imposed on NASA in this area without the provision of funds to address them. Despite this problem, the United States is still the most significant actor in this field with few exceptions,, if only because other countries have devoted negligible resources to it. If the threat of NEOs and solutions to deal with that threat are to be further explored, additional resources will be required, such as for completion of dedicated telescopes and increased funding for existing key facilities and research and analysis programs.
Stefan Lovgren in Los Angeles
for National Geographic News
April 14, 2004
When a massive asteroid, measuring ten kilometers (six miles) across, smashed into Earth off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula some 65 million years ago, it most likely changed the shape of life on Earth.
The dust from the impact, perhaps exacerbated by other asteroid blasts, blocked the sun, darkening and cooling the Earth. When the dust settled, increasing greenhouse gases sent temperatures soaring. The violent climate change, most scientists believe, is what finished the dinosaurs, along with 70 percent of all plants and animals living at the time
So, could such an asteroid strike again?
Absolutely. But while the dinosaurs didn’t know what was about to hit them, humans probably would. Scientists have already identified more than 700 of the estimated 1,100 “Earth killers”—asteroids bigger than one kilometer (about a thousand yards) across—out there. They concluded that none are on a collision course with the Earth during the next century.
The bad news, however, is there are also about ten million “smaller” asteroids out there. These could not destroy humankind, if they were to hit Earth, but could cause widespread damage, possibly even wiping out an entire city. Because they have not been identified, the smaller asteroids could potentially strike without warning.
“Finding and cataloguing the big [asteroids] is relatively easy and inexpensive,” said Brian Marsden, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a clearinghouse for asteroid observations. “But when it comes to … the likelihood that there really would be an impact in the foreseeable future, it is the smaller objects that are of more concern, and to make a serious search for them would cost a fair bit of money.”
Spaceguard
Formed during the creation of the universe, most asteroids are made of rock, but about 3 percent are made of metals like iron. They range in size from small boulders to objects that are hundreds of miles in diameter. In our solar system most asteroids orbit the vast region of space between Mars and Jupiter.
Debris from asteroids and comets called meteoroids collide with Earth all the time. But these simply burn up on their descent through Earth’s atmosphere, producing “shooting stars.”
On the other hand, the probability of a large asteroid hitting Earth is extremely slim. However, such an impact could be devastating, which is why NASA in the 1990s started a program known as Spaceguard. Its goal: to identify 90 percent of the large near-Earth asteroids—those bigger than a kilometer in diameter—by the year 2008.
“To date, more than 700 objects of an estimated population of about 1,100 have been discovered,” Lindley Johnson, the manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observation Program in Washington, D.C., told the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space last week.
The estimate of the large asteroids vary. Some speculate there may be as many as 1,500. About 100 objects have been found per year in the last four years, though experts agree it’s unlikely that every single large asteroid will be found.
“As we discover more, and hopefully conclude that each one cannot hit within the next century or so, the remaining threat will shift to the smaller ones,” said Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Shock Waves Tracking smaller asteroids is almost impossible, mainly because there are so many of them—ten million in Earth’s neighborhood, according to David Morrison, a NASA scientist.
The Minor Planet Center receives observations of up to 15,000 new objects every day from two telescopes in New Mexico alone. An informal network of amateur astronomers around the world does much of the follow-up observation work.
While they are not potential Earth killers, smaller asteroids can cause considerable harm. “Any asteroid larger than 50 meters [164 feet] is a threat to the place it hits,” Morrison said.
In 1908 an asteroid believed to be about 60 meters (197 feet) in diameter exploded in the atmosphere over Siberia. The resulting shock wave knocked down trees for hundreds of square miles.
An asteroid made of iron, on the other hand, would crash through the atmosphere intact and plunge into Earth. If it fell in the ocean, it could create a giant tsunami that could threaten coastal cities.
According to one expert scenario, there is a 10 percent chance that a 70-meter (230-foot) asteroid will impact Earth in our lifetime, striking with an energy of 10 megatons, equivalent to 700 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.
“There is a better than even chance that an asteroid big enough to do some damage will impact in a person’s lifetime,” Johnson said. “However, it will probably be relatively small and the area of damage fairly isolated, so the probability of any specific person being affected is quite small, maybe one in 300,000 in any one year period.”
No Warning
A potential hit by a large asteroid is likely to be discovered decades in advance, allowing scientists to find ways of deflecting the object by, say, setting off a nuclear bomb on the object to change its orbit.
A smaller asteroid, on the other hand, is likely to slip under the radar. “Most likely, we’ll have no warning at all,” Chapman said.
On March 18 of this year, an asteroid measuring perhaps 50 meters across passed Earth at a distance of 30,000 miles (48,000 kilometers). It was announced with 23 hours notice.
“Generally, we get a couple of scares each year,” Marsden said. “Most of them are pretty silly, because someone says something unwise.”
Chances of getting killed by any asteroid are slim.
“If you are a smoker, or drive without seat belts, forget it,” Chapman said. “If you are worried about shark attacks, or terrorist attacks, or the chances of another Three Mile Island, then pay attention. The impact hazard is more likely to kill you than any of those.”
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