(OPINION) In the Gospel of Luke Chapter twenty-one verse twenty-five, Jesus told us that prior to his return that humanity would see signs in the sun, moon, and stars. He even went further to say that we would witness great and fearful sights from Heaven. – Luke 21:11
Over the past week or so there have been multiple reports regarding celestial discoveries and events that have captured the attention of mainstream media news publications. The first event was a report from the Guardian where astronomers captured the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed, an event thought to have been triggered by a giant cloud of gas being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.
The flare-up, traced to 8bn light years away, is more than 10 times brighter than any known supernova and has so far lasted more than three years, making it the most energetic explosion on record. “It went unnoticed for a year as it gradually got brighter,” said Dr. Philip Wiseman, an astronomer at Southampton University who led the observations.
It was only when follow-up observations revealed how distant it was that astronomers appreciated the event’s almost unimaginable scale. “We’ve estimated it’s a fireball 100 times the size of the solar system with a brightness about 2tn times the sun’s,” Wiseman said.
“In three years, this event has released about 100 times as much energy as the sun will in its 10bn-year lifetime.” Scientists believe that the explosion, known as AT2021lwx, is the result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than our sun, plunging into the inescapable mouth of a supermassive black hole.
Another event that took place was Astronomers reportedly spotting a star swallowing a planet whole — for the first time! Insider reported that a distant, Jupiter-sized planet found itself in serious trouble when its star began to die — the same fate Earth will eventually face. As the alien star burned through the last of its hydrogen fuel, it swelled to 100 times its original size, its atmosphere ballooning outward toward the orbiting planet.
That’s what astronomers have determined after watching the star, 12,000 light-years away, suddenly burst with white-hot light, growing 100 times brighter in just 10 days, before quickly fading and turning cold.
This is exactly how Earth will die. In about 5 billion years, when the sun burns out and swells, it will devour all the inner planets: Mercury, Venus, and Earth.
“We are seeing the future of the Earth,” Kishalay De, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, who led the discovery, said in a press release. “If some other civilization was observing us from 10,000 light-years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was.”
Then came the recent report from Space.com, where Scientists have detected sounds high in Earth’s atmosphere that can’t be identified.
A solar-powered balloon mission launched by researchers from Sandia National Laboratories carried a microphone to a region of Earth’s atmosphere found around 31 miles (50 km) above the planet called the stratosphere.
This region is relatively calm and free of storms, turbulence, and commercial air traffic, meaning microphones in this layer of the atmosphere can eavesdrop on the sounds of our planet, both natural and human-made.
However, the microphone in this particular study also heard strange sounds that repeat a few times per hour. Their source has yet to be identified. The sounds were recorded in the infrasound range, meaning they were at frequencies of 20 hertz (Hz) and lower, well below the range of the human ear.
“There are mysterious infrasound signals that occur a few times per hour on some flights, but the source of these is completely unknown,” Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratories said in a statement.
To gather acoustic data from the stratosphere, Bowman and the team used devices initially designed to monitor volcanoes called micro barometers that are capable of detecting detect low-frequency sounds.
Along with the expected natural and man-made sounds, the micro barometers detected the mysterious repeating infrasound signals. The sensors were carried aloft by balloons that Bowman and fellow researchers built.
Featuring diameters between 20 and 23 feet (6 and 7 meters), the balloons were built from common and inexpensive materials. Powered by sunlight, these deceptively simple devices were able to climb to altitudes of around 70,000 feet (13.3 miles) over Earth.
And lastly, there was a report recently, indicating that a mysterious object has been spotted that’s 10 million times as bright as the sun leaving Scientists baffled by this mysterious celestial object so bright that physics dictates it should have exploded.
NASA has been tracking so-called ultraluminous X-ray sources, objects that can be 10 million times as bright as the sun, to understand how they work.
These objects are impossible in theory because they break the Eddington limit, a rule of astrophysics that dictates an object can be only so bright before it breaks apart. A new study categorically confirms that M82 X-2, a ULX 12 million light-years away, is as bright as previous observation suggested.
The principle behind Arthur Eddington’s rule is simple. Brightness on this scale comes only from material — like stardust of remnants of disintegrating planets — that falls inward toward a massive object, such as a black hole or a dead star.
As it’s pulled by the object’s intense gravity, the material heats up and radiates light. The more matter that falls toward the object, the brighter it is. But there’s a catch.
At a certain point, so much matter is being pulled in that the radiation it’s emitting should be able to overwhelm the power of the gravity from the massive object. That means at some point, the radiation from the matter should push it away, and it should stop falling in. But if it’s not falling in, the matter shouldn’t be radiating, which means the object shouldn’t be that bright. Hence the Eddington limit.
As humanity gets closer to the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ, I would say it is very probable that we will see more and more strange, mysterious, and spectacular celestial events like these being reported. However, we must also remember that Jesus warned that we would also witness “Great and fearful” sights from Heaven.
We can only speculate what these sights will be. Likely, we will witness asteroids take near misses on the Earth or even experience strikes on the planet where one breaks through the atmosphere such as in the event that took place on February 15, 2013. where a relatively small asteroid, known as the Chelyabinsk meteor, entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.
The intense heat generated during its atmospheric entry caused the meteor to explode at high altitude, resulting in a powerful shockwave that caused significant damage to buildings and injured many people. The event gained widespread attention due to the extensive footage captured by witnesses and circulated on social media. If there have been any subsequent asteroid events in Russia since then, I do not have information about them.
Another major threat from the Heavens is Solar storms, also known as solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs),
The government has warned that these can pose a disruption to Communication Systems by releasing highly energetic particles and electromagnetic radiation, which can interfere with radio communications, satellite systems, and power grids. This interference can disrupt telecommunications, GPS navigation, and even cause power outages in some cases.
Satellite Damage: Solar storms can damage or disable satellites in orbit around the Earth. Satellites play a crucial role in various activities such as weather forecasting, telecommunications, and navigation. Disruptions of these services can have significant economic and practical consequences.
During severe solar storms, the influx of charged particles can also induce electric currents in power lines on Earth’s surface. These geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) can overload transformers and other components of power grids, leading to power outages and potential damage to the electrical infrastructure.
It’s not a matter of “if” but “when” these types of events will transpire in the future and it would be wise to be prepared as much as possible now and not wait until it is too late.
