Return to the Home Page | Translate this Page
The BibleSearchers Reflections
Reflections on the Time of the End
By Robert Mock MD
robertmock@biblesearchers.com
www.BibleSearchers.com
From the joys of the dynamic images of a growing fetus seen on ultrasonic image from a mother’s womb, we can now visualize the process of how being “created in the image of God” is transformed into the literal reality of a child of God. Very early in the growth cycle of development, the fetal human depicts very complex movements and expression that truly express its humanity. These have been captures in dramatic images such a walking, yawning, opening and shutting their eyes, smiling and crying. How beautifully we can now document the ‘humanness’ of a fetus.
At the same time, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has reconsidered his views on Black Holes and the destruction of matter, a fly-by to Mercury is opening new understanding to earth’s sister planet, a skeleton during the era of the crusades has been discovered in Israel, beryllium ice cores have now determined that the fall, 2003 sunspots and solar flares have now been documented as been at a 1,000 year high, the collapse of earth’s geomagnetic field may soon lead to a polar reversal, African plants growing as native plants in Holland, superbugs such as MRSA, ESBL, VRE, SRSV that are posing life threatening risks to humans due to mutations or antibody resistance and how you may have Human Mad Cow Disease and not even know it.
A new type of ultrasound scan has
produced vivid pictures of a 12 week-old foetus "walking" in the womb
– June 28. 
2004
BBC News - The new images also show foetuses apparently yawning and rubbing its eyes. The scans, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell at London's Create Health Clinic, are much more detailed than conventional ultrasound. Professor Campbell has previously released images of unborn babies appearing to smile.
He has compiled a book of the images called Watch Me Grow. Conventional ultrasound, usually offered to mothers at 12 and 20 weeks, produces 2D images of the developing foetus. These are very useful for helping doctors to measure and assess the growth of the foetus, but convey very little information about behaviour.
Complex behaviour Professor Campbell has perfected a technique which not only produces detailed 3D images, but records foetal movement in real time. He says his work has been able to show for the first time that the unborn baby engages in complex behaviour from an early stage of its development.
Professor Campbell told the BBC: "This is a new science
for understanding and mapping out the behaviour of the baby. "Maybe in the
future it 
will help us
understand and diagnose genetic disease, maybe even conditions like cerebral
palsy which puzzles the medical profession as to why it occurs."
The images have shown:
· From 12 weeks, unborn babies can stretch, kick and leap around the womb - well before the mother can feel movement
· From 18 weeks, they can open their eyes although most doctors thought eyelids were fused until 26 weeks
· From 26 weeks, they appear to exhibit a whole range of typical baby behaviour and moods, including scratching, smiling, crying,
· hiccuping, and sucking.
Until recently it was thought that smiling did not start until six weeks after birth. An hour long session using the new technology, which is not yet available on the NHS, costs £275.
In pictures: Watch me grow – June 28. 2004
Hawking revises theory on escaping black holes – July 16, 2004
LONDON - After 30 years of
arguing that black holes never release "information," astrophysicist
Stephen Hawking now believes the galactic traps eventually do. A black hole is
an object, usually a collapsed star, that is thought to be so massive that even
light cannot escape its gravitational pull.
Twisted Space and distorted Magnetic Fields of a Black Hole (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
In the 1970s, Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, said black holes are not totally "black," but actually emit tiny amounts of matter and energy. He theorized that once a black hole forms, it never releases information about the matter it has gobbled up.
This "Hawking radiation" created a paradox, because the laws of quantum physics say such information can never be completely destroyed. Hawking now says some of the information can be determined by what a black hole emits.
"A
black hole only appears to form but later opens up and releases information
about what fell inside," Hawking told the British Broadcasting Corp.'s 
Newsnight program. "So we
can be sure of the past and predict the future." He will present the
mathematics behinds his revised ideas at the 17th International Conference on
General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin on July 21.
Stephen Hawking in 1999 (AP Photo)
If the revision is correct, then Hawking and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology, will lose a bet they made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. The pair bet "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden and can never be revealed." If Preskill correctly bet against their idea, he wins an encyclopedia. (Article)
Crusader-era skeleton discovered during Jaffa excavations – August 4, 2004
A human
skeleton dating back to the Crusader era (12th century) was discovered recently
in Jaffa during excavations carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The excavations are
being carried out on a street in the Jaffa flea market to save potential relics
before the area undergoes renovation.
According to the director of the excavations, Martin
Fileshtoker, the burial was conducted after the Crusader era and it is not
known whether the person was Jewish. The bones will be handed over for burial
to religious council officials.
A man pointing at a
human skeleton found recently during excavations in Jaffa. (Motti Kimche)
Fileshtoker said that a furnace used for forging metals, dating back to the Byzantine period, was also found in the same street. The Jaffa excavations have been going on for the past three years and have uncovered a large Crusader-era town which was located in the area that today houses the flea market
Mission to Mercury Is the Stuff of Mystery – August 2, 2004
Washington Post - Mercury
is the smallest of the inner solar system's "rocky planets," a nasty
little place covered with moonlike craters, cooked by sunshine 11 times as
bright as Earth's and imbued with enough mystery to fill a whodunit. Why is
Mercury basically a gigantic iron ball? Why does it have a magnetic field? Why
does it have a cloud of sodium gas surrounding it? Is the shiny stuff that
fills the polar craters ice, and if so, where did it come from?
"Mercury is very unusual," said the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Sean C. Solomon. "It belies conventional wisdom in a number of ways and cries out for further exploration." To try to answer some of these questions, NASA developed the Messenger space probe, which was scheduled to blast off early today from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to begin a seven-year trip to Mercury, the first time a spacecraft has headed that way since the 1970s. The 12-second launch window -- the first of 16 brief, daily launch opportunities ending Aug. 18 -- opened at 2:16 a.m.
On a direct flight, Messenger, which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, would travel about 50 million miles and reach its destination in a few months. But because it is going to orbit Mercury, it will need to slow down so the planet can pluck it out of the ether. Deceleration is hard for something traveling toward the sun, and Messenger will use an Earth flyby, two Venus flybys and three flybys of Mercury itself to refine its trajectory and put on the brakes before going into orbit in March 2011. By then the spacecraft will have flown 4.9 billion miles. (Fascinating Sister Planet to Earth)
Spacecraft Fleet Tracks Blast Wave through Solar System – July 8, 2004
Goddard Space Flight Center - A fleet of spacecraft dispersed throughout the solar system gave the most comprehensive picture to date of how blast waves from solar storms propagate through the solar system and the radiation generated in their wake. The "Halloween" solar storms in October-November 2003 launched billions of tons of electrified gas (plasma) that blasted by Earth within a day and past Mars hours later. The most recent reports come from the twin Voyager spacecraft at the fringe of the solar system near an unexplored region where the solar wind becomes turbulent as it crashes into the thin gas between stars…
|
|
|
The Halloween storms were the most powerful ever
measured.
The storms broke all-time records for X-ray intensity and for speed and
temperature of the solar wind observed near Earth. About a third of the
total particle radiation emitted by the Sun in the last decade in the deadly
30-50 MeV energy range came from these storms, even though the solar activity cycle
was well past its maximum…
The Earth wasn't alone in feeling the effects -- the storms rocked the inner
solar system from Mars to Saturn. The Mars Radiation Environment Experiment
(MARIE) instrument on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft was disabled by radiation
in Mars' orbit. The MARIE instrument successfully monitored space radiation
to evaluate the risks to future Mars-bound astronauts before it stopped working
during the period of intense solar activity on Oct. 28, 2003. The Ulysses
spacecraft near Jupiter and the Cassini spacecraft near Saturn both
detected radio waves from magnetic storms generated as the blast wave slammed
into the vast magnetic fields around these giant planets.
"It's striking that this blast wave was powerful enough to generate a
magnetic storm all the way out to Saturn, almost ten times farther from the Sun
than Earth is…” (Read entire
article giving Solar System confirmation of what observed on Earth)
African Plants Grow as Dutch Environment Warms – July 25, 2004
Amsterdam (Yahoo) - Changes in the Dutch climate in recent years because of global warming have meant dozens of plant types normally found in warmer areas are now growing wild in the country, according on one study. The Standaardlijst Nederlandse Flora, a catalog of plants growing wild in the northern European country, found 50 varieties introduced here over the last seven years -- some from as far away as Africa, Dutch media reported on Sunday. Researchers who compiled the catalog, due to be published in September, said that as the European climate has warmed the plants spread from the south of the continent. Global warming and the accompanying rising oceans is a particularly significant issue to the Netherlands as half of the country lies below sea level. The tiny but wealthy Netherlands with its population of 16 million is criss-crossed with canals and rivers, and has battled for centuries to claw back land from the sea and protect itself by building sea walls known as dykes.
Peru's Snowy Peaks May Vanish as Planet Heat Up – July 25, 2004
Lima, Peru - The snow
atop Pastoruri, one of the Andes most beautiful peaks and a big draw for
mountaineers and skiers, could disappear along with many of Peru's glaciers in the next several years because of global warming,
experts say. At 17,000 feet in the northern Andes, the glacier which covers
famed Pastoruri has shrunk at a rate of 62 feet every year since
1980. Today it covers a surface area of 0.7 square
miles, about 25 percent less than a quarter of a century ago. Pastoruri is one of 18
glacier-capped mountains in Peru suffering the effects
of climate change, according Peru's National Environment Council, CONAM.
Mount Pastoruri, Andes, Peru (Reuters)
"If climatic conditions remain as they are, all the glaciers (in Peru) below 18,000 feet will disappear by around 2015," CONAM's President Patricia Iturregui told Reuters in an interview… Peru has the most tropical glaciers in Latin America and has already lost 20 percent of the 1,615 miles of glaciers running through its central and southern Andes in the past 30 years. The world has been heating up in the past 50 years and the Earth is at its hottest in 10,000 years, scientists say…
MELTWATER THREAT But there are bigger worries. "There are already predictions that show that we will have too much water in the future, increasing the risk of disasters but also causing droughts (in other areas)," Iturregui said. Peru is particularly vulnerable to climate change because some 70 percent its energy comes from hydroelectric plants, supplied mainly by meltwater from Andean glaciers. The meltwater is also used for agriculture and industry and to supply Peru's desert coast, home to more than half the country's population… (Entire Article)
Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high – July 6, 2004
BBC News
- A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active
now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the
Institute for 
Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to
construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the
last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's
climate became steadily warmer. This trend is being amplified by gases from
fossil fuel burning, they argue.
Sun Spot causing a 'Little Ice Age'?
Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity. The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes. In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface. This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.
It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive…
In
an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold
periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a
form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland. The isotope
is created by cosmic rays - high-energy particles from the depths of the
galaxy. The flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth's surface is modulated by
the strength of the 
solar wind, the charged particles that stream away from the Sun's
surface. And since the strength of the solar wind varies over the sunspot
cycle, the amount of beryllium in the ice at a time in the past can therefore
be used to infer the state of the Sun and, roughly, the number of sunspots.
Beryllium Ice Cores from Greenland record climate trends back beyond human measurements
Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany. He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years. But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years. Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer. The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase. This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth. (Entire Article)
Will Compasses Point South?
– July
14, 2004
International Herald Tribune - Dr. John A. Tarduno, a professor of
geophysics at the University of Rochester, suggests that a reversal of the
Earth's magnetic field may be overdue. The collapse of the Earth's magnetic
field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears
to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned
10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated
of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of
magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth. During a
reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, then reappears with opposite
polarity.
Afterward, compass needles that normally point north would point south, and during the thousands of years of transition, much in the heavens and Earth would go askew. A reversal could knock out power grids, hurt astronauts and satellites, widen atmospheric ozone holes, send polar auroras flashing to the equator and confuse birds, fish and migratory animals that rely on the steadiness of the magnetic field as a navigation aid. But experts said the repercussions would fall short of catastrophic, despite a few proclamations of doom and sketchy evidence of past links between field reversals and species extinctions.
Although a total flip may be
hundreds or thousands of years away, the rapid decline in magnetic strength is
already damaging satellites. Last month, the European Space Agency approved the
world's largest effort at tracking the field's shifts. A trio of new
satellites, called Swarm, are to monitor the collapsing field with far greater
precision than before and help scientists forecast its prospective state.
"We want to get some idea of how this would evolve in the near future,
just like people trying to predict the weather," said Dr. Gauthier Hulot,
a French geophysicist working on the satellite plan. "I'm personally quite
convinced we should be able to work out the first predictions by the end of the
mission." The discipline is one of a number - like high-energy physics and
aspects of space science - where Europeans have recently come from behind to
seize the initiative, dismaying some American experts.
No matter what the new findings, the public has no reason to panic, scientists say. Even if a flip is imminent, it might take 2,000 years to mature. (Read Entire Article)
New superbugs in Ulster hospitals - July 20, 2004
Ulster, Ireland (Belfast Telegraph) - ULSTER health experts are fighting a new wave of superbugs, as powerful as the potentially deadly MRSA, it can be revealed today. The Belfast Telegraph has learned that resistant bugs known as Gram Negative organisms have found their way into both hospitals and the community in the province. But it is the emergence of one type of these bugs - E-Coli Extended Spectrum Beta Lactamases (ESBL) - that is causing particular concern. And the Telegraph can reveal that experts are considering introducing a major surveillance programme to track the bug's progress in the province. One expert, based in Belfast, said: "MRSA is not the be-all and end-all of the superbug. The ESBL bug is as worrisome as MRSA. "There is evidence that it is not only in hospitals but in the community. "We are concerned about this. E-coli is the commonest cause of urinary tract infections. "We need some surveillance programme in place so that we can see the size of the issue we are dealing with. "We are looking to set up standard procedures to deal with the problem." The big worry with ESBL is that it is resistant to most antibiotics and it has been blamed for the recent deaths of around 28 patients in England.
But apart from ESBL, experts are also battling with other bugs such as VRE which is resistant to vancomycin - the antibiotic widely used to treat MRSA infections. Recently, a number of hospitals have been plagued by SRSV - the tummy bug virus. "SRSV used to be confined to the winter but now we are seeing it the whole year round," (Finish Article)
Human Mad Cow May Be More Widespread – August 5, 2004
LONDON (AP) - Scientists have found evidence
suggesting that the human form of mad cow disease might be infecting a wider
group of people than seen so far and that some may develop a milder form of the
illness. Since variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was first identified in 1996,
little has been learned about it. Until now, the fatal brain-wasting disease
was found only in people who have a certain genetic profile.
But research published this week in The Lancet medical journal reported the infection in a person with a more common genetic makeup and with no symptoms of the illness. That means more people than previously believed could be incubating the disease, thought to come from eating processed beef products from cattle infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. It also raises the possibility that some people may get only a mild infection, as opposed to the fatal disease.
Scientists don't know how many people are infected with the human form of mad cow disease. Projections vary wildly — from just 10 more cases in the future to hundreds of thousands — because so many factors that play into the disease remain a mystery and because there have been so few cases to study. Experts don't know how long the incubation period is; whether everybody is equally vulnerable; exactly how the disease spreads and whether it can be easily passed on before symptoms develop. There is no test to diagnose it, no treatment and no cure.
The latest finding means that forecasts need to be radically revised because they were based on the assumption that the disease only affects people with a particular genetic profile found in about 35 percent of Caucasians, said James Ironside, director of Britain's national Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease surveillance unit, which did the study. In new research, an autopsy found the disease in a person whose genetic signature is shared by about 50 percent of Caucasians. Ironside said, "I think we have to go back and redo all the calculations based on this case." So far, 147 people in Britain, and another 10 elsewhere, are known to have contracted the disease. Five are still alive. (Read entire article)
Return to August, 2004 BibleSearcher Reflections
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material
available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political,
human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.
We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.