Phenomenon/ Signs in the Heavens/ Signs and Wonders

Asteroid with Rings Amazes the Scientists …

Phenomenon Current, Joel 2:30 April 24, 2014

The prophecy in Joel declaring that God would show wonders and signs in the heaven and earth was given to us nearly three millennia ago. Jesus told us the last days would show forth extraordinary things which would appear around the world. Even with that, who could have imagined that Christ’s words meant that the heavens would become a thing so close that it would turn the galaxy and beyond into a provincial sky.

Artist Conception of Chariklo: Only known asteroid with Rings

Observations at many sites in South America, including ESO’s La Silla Observatory, have made the surprise discovery that the remote asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two dense and narrow rings. This is the smallest object by far found to have rings and only the fifth body in the Solar System — after the much larger planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — to have this feature. The origin of these rings remains a mystery, but they may be the result of a collision that created a disc of debris. The new results are published online in the journal Nature on March 26, 2014.

The rings of Saturn are one of the most spectacular sights in the sky, and less prominent rings have also been found around the other giant planets, but despite many careful searches no rings had been found around smaller objects orbiting the Sun in the Solar System. “We weren’t looking for a ring and didn’t think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery — and the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system — came as a complete surprise!” says Felipe Braga-Ribas (Observatório Nacional/MCTI, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) who is the astronomer who spearheaded the observation campaign and is the main author of the paper describing the discovery.

NBC News.com’s science editor, Alan Boyle, said of scientists like Felipe Braga-Ribas of Brazil, who made the announcement, that they “are armed with both the patience and the inventions to see wonders never before conceived or imagined”. We are no longer limited to the spectacle of driving along with our children and grandchildren and seeing a green tailed meteorite zooming past our roofs, ducking beneath the treetops and into some distant woods. It is the end of days and as the prophet Joel suggested there are even greater signs to appear that will dazzle the imagination. The accession of technology in the end-times, as the invention of gamma-ray and x-ray telescopes and the remarkable advances in astronomy and astral physics will attest, has produced an abundance of knowledge never before conceived of, with remarkable prophetic sights providing mankind with inconceivable wonders. For instance, Chariklo is 155 miles in diameter and more than 62 million miles away. Its orbit is between Saturn and Uranus and is the largest of a class of objects called Centaurs. It is especially surprising that rings should be found around a Centaur. (Centaurs are small bodies with unstable orbits in the outer Solar System that cross the orbits of the giant planets.)

They were able to detect the rings when Braga-Ribas and his colleagues at seven different sites noticed a dip in starlight as the asteroid passed by a star – as well as two additional dips a few seconds before and then again after the main events. From there they deduced that there are two rings around the Centaur.

This is an amazing time in which we live. God promised not only to judge the world, but also to show miraculous and amazing wonders in the heavens and the earth. Those on the wrong side of God’s judgment should be apprehensive of such signs and wonders for they foretell that God is coming. Those on His side, however, will be delighted and thrilled by the spectacle of new things which are on display to all the inhabitants of the earth; which until now have been un-accessible to all of mankind.