Posts Made By: Rob Ogilvie

I thought I might comingle the recent Chernobyl and Bible interpretation threads.

In the book of Revelations, there are two verses that could be interpreted as being fulfilled by the Chernobyl disaster.

REV 8:10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

REV 8:11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

Using Google, I found this:

""Oddly enough, "Chernobyl" is the Ukrainian word for Wormwood, the name of the star that, according to Biblical prophecy (Revelations 8:10), will fall from heaven and poison the waters of the earth, so that many will perish. According to Dr. Robert Gale, the Chernobyl incident was a "final warning" -- one that some speculate may have encouraged Gorbachev and President Reagan to renew efforts to reduce superpower stockpiles of nuclear weapons.""

Of course though the analogy of a star (fusion) to a nuclear reactor (fission) may be a stretch, one must admit that this is one heck of a coincidence.

The ISS will eclipse Jupiter around 9:30 EDT tonite. The path of totality is only 80 meters wide, but anyone along the east coast will see (weather permitting) the meeting of the two bright objects.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/12may_issjupiter.htm?list155268

It was socked in this morning near Harrisburg, PA. I got in the car and road around, and found a hilltop where the sun was visible thru the fog. Venus was clearly visible to the naked eye - so naked that not even a filter was needed. I set up my Ranger, with protection, and could not see the sun. With the filter removed, I was able to view Venus with a 20 mm eyepiece. I never thought I would look at the Sun thru an unprotected telescope.

I butted my Olympus D-560 to the eyepiece for this view (image reversed).

Dave,

I just went out and observed the large sunspot. Often, for naked eye sunspots, I look first thru my binoculars to see where to look on the Sun's surface. This one didn't need any help, very prominent and basically in the center.

Some quick "Googling" led me to believe that sunspots get as large as 30,000 miles. Your approximation of 10 Earth diameters would be much larger than that. Have you seen larger ones than this one?

Be sure to use your 3-D glasses. Wow!

Vince,

The author of Revelations (John) erred in that he described a fusion event (star crashing) , when, in fact, Wormwood was a fission event. Chernobyl is in the Ukraine, and Chernobyl is Ukranian for Wormwood. Since the catastrophe at Chernobyl did in fact make the waters bitter (no one lives anywhere near there), I think we can credit John with a pretty good prophecy.

"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."
Revelation 8:10-11

Damn,

Clouds rolled in about 30 minutes ago, so I missed the pass by. But my girlfriend near Harrisburg, PA saw it. I seem to have no luck. I was in central PA for the great Leonid meteor shower of 2001, and at 11PM skies were very transparent. Sure enough, at 3AM , fog had rolled in, and I missed probably the greatest shower of my life. Of course back here on Long Island it was clear.

There is an interesting thread on this at InternetInfidels. It is based on a C.S. Lewis essay on praise, and what he thinks it really means.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=118152&page=1&pp=25

It does seem that a religious sensitivity would be an evolutionary advantage. A prehistoric tribe would succeed better if the individual members believed in an afterlife. They would be more willing to give their lives for the benefit of the group. This would be an advantage in food gathering, and territorial fights.

Today many of this still have this genetic predisposition. And I guess today it is still a genetic advantage, if only for the reason that the religious tend to have more children.