Near Miss
There’s been some interesting things happening lately. A major earthquake in Nevada, tornadoes in February and asteroids zinging past our planet. A couple of asteroids passed by us passing closer than the Moon and so were, for a while, influenced by the earth’s gravity to some degree. As our solar system gets closer and closer to the center axis of our galaxy, the “Milky Way”, i would expect to see lots of debris of this sort entering into our solar system.
The Bible speaks of a day in the future when a “star” would fall from the sky that would be called, “wormwood”. If you’ve ever seen what asteroids look like, that would be a good description. An interesting validation of the true prophetic nature of this great book.
It’s also interesting that people would use this name for the “star”. Maybe there would be advanced warning about an asteroid on a collision course with earth and this name became a household term.
Asteroids and comets are monitored carefully these days. Men keep track of their orbits around the sun and look for any that may possibly strike the earth in the future. But, passing thru the center plane of the enormous galaxy our little solar system orbits in is a horse of a different color. Our solar system is bound to pick up many “new” objects from the debris field that may exist there.
2012 will supposedly be the year that our solar system reaches the center axis of the Milky Way and will begin it’s journey to the other side and the unknown. The sun’s trip around the galaxy takes 233 million years? and we pass thru the center plane twice a year nearly at winter and summer solstice (our solar system’s axis appears to be about 60 degrees off of the galactic axis).
Where is “Wormwood” now, already on a collision course with earth as our solar system nears it’s region in the galaxy. Will it orbit the sun a few times first so that we can track it for several years first. Will we make heroic efforts to use spacecraft to move it out of it’s collision course with our planet?
Were these recent flybys just a shot across the bow to shake our confidence in man’s ability to avert such an event. None of these near misses were expected. The objects were never seen before in the night skies.
But, Wormwood is out there, and when it comes, it won’t make a flyby!
Wayne Hollyoak