A gamma-ray flare star 30,000 light years from Earth is putting on a remarkable show for NASA spacecraft. Highlights include ghostly x-ray "light halos" and eruptions packing more total energy than the Sun puts out in 20 years.
I almost didn't click on it because I'd read a previous article about a gamma-ray star flare and although it was interesting, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend time on that again this morning. I changed my mind, however, when I thought about the "remarkable show" this one is putting on. Maybe there would be pictures or video or something and I love that kind of stuff. :) :) I was destined for disappointment, though, because for some reason the video won't play. Bummer.
However, I did find this paragraph very interesting: "At times, this remarkable object has erupted with more than a hundred flares in as little as 20 minutes," said Loredana Vetere, who is coordinating the Swift observations at Pennsylvania State University. "The most intense flares emitted more total energy than the sun does in 20 years."
I thought about how hot the sun was on our backs as Mel and I walked down the street on Monday in sunshine! and I thought about how intense the sun shine is in summer. My very first thought, though, was - "Wow! I bet that purifies everything around that star, kind of like God doing housework, 'cleaning up space a bit.'
I know from reading the other article I mentioned that gamma-ray bursts from distant stars can cause problems here on earth. That fact was mentioned again: In 2004, a giant flare from another soft-gamma-ray repeater was so intense it ionized Earth's upper atmosphere from 50,000 light-years away: more.
And I thought about the materials I'm working on for the Sunday School. I confess, I find these materials extremely boring and I refuse to inflict them as they are on kids who should not be bored by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (I can hear people being disgruntled at me for putting these materials down - waves of disgruntlement sweeping through the thought vibes of the universe...I can take it!) I've spent hours and hours over the past couple of weeks upgrading, adding to, making them better. All in double and triplicate, the extras put away in appropriately labeled files so some Sunday School teacher of the future can do whatever he/she wants to with them. Hopefully at least some of it will be used...
I've been finding additional interesting visuals, mazes, games and word games (I just take the idea from a game and then use it with Russian words). One of the things I've been doing is making visuals for reviewing the memory verses. In a couple weeks I'll be teaching this verse that I was working on last night: Может ли человек скрыться в тайное место, где Я не видел бы его? говорит Господь. Не наполняю ли Я небо и землю? говорит Господь. or maybe this is easier to read AND understand:
so that I cannot see him?"
declares the LORD.
"Do not I fill heaven and earth?"
declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 23:24
When I read that article about gamma-ray bursts, I thought of this verse. I thought about:
who turns blackness into dawn
and darkens day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out over the face of the land—
the LORD is his name.
Amos 5:8
Millions and millions of miles out in space a neutron star is sending out bursts of gamma-rays that could literally destroy the earth. Yet, that star was created far enough away from us that we can sit back and 'enjoy the view,' so to speak. Even so, even that far away, it could have negative effects on our earth.
God created that star with a word. A simple word, spoken in an instant of what we now call time (or was there "time" as we know it now when God was creating the earth? God is eternal and does things outside of "time." When did "time" begin? - Ah, but that is for other posts and other mornings of contemplation!) God created it and He said it was good. Somehow, in the scheme of how our universe works, stars bursting gamma-rays out into space are part of that 'good' creation.
A hundred years ago, or maybe 150 years ago, man would never have known that star was out there. I think of that often when I hear of or read articles like this. I also think of Jesus words:
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come." Matthew 24:36-42
Now those verses bring up a whole 'nother subject that I won't go into here. I want to think a bit about "As it was in the days of Noah." I've always been taught and I've always thought that the 'as it was' refered to sin and how horribly sinful man was at that time. If we open our minds to the fact that we are NOT evolving better and better in every way every day from cave man to our next evolutionary step, but that in fact we are falling farther and farther away from our created perfectly in everyway father, Adam - well, that opens the door to the idea that maybe, just maybe "as it was in the days of Noah" could refer to knowledge as well as sin. Even after the Flood, this happened:
But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth. Genesis 11:5-7
What did ancient man know before the Flood? If he could do and build things like that, what was he really like before the Flood? Did he study the stars with eyes that could see much better and farther than ours can? Did he have instruments, lost in flood and world upheaval at that time, that we are only now beginning to replicate? We don't know! Much was lost and destroyed in the Flood, possibly including a whole continent. (Atlantis). Maybe ancient man knew and understood gamma-ray bursts. It seems to me that as our world communicates more and more in one language (English) we are in knowledge becoming more and more like those people at the Tower of Babel and possibly more like those who lived before the Flood.
So many maybes. So many things to think about and wonder about.
I've been criticized for thinking about things like this, criticized by people who live in the 'here and now' and 'just the facts, ma'am' and 'why wonder about what might have been and just think about what is'. I find that sad. And close minded. And lacking in imagination. And lacking in worship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who created it all, thinking smaller of Him by ignoring or discounting the amazing work of creation that He did.
Oh, I want to know Him better! And when I think of His creation - created just for me!! - and how little I understand or know it or CAN know it - I have no words. I am humbled. And I bow before the Creator of the universe and sing with the twenty-four elders:
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being."
Revelation 4:11
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