Meteor shower tonight - we're doomed, I tell you!

[5129frederick]

There's a meteor shower due tonight just after ten.  If you look east you should see them between ten p.m. and two a.m. if, like me, you're a night owl.  As forecast by St. John the Divine in the Book of Revelations.  Don't believe me?  Read all about it:  Revelations ct. 6 vss. 12 - 14 inc.

"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackclothof hair, and the moon became as blood;

and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken by a mighty wind ..." 

Ok,so we all know just one star is thousands of times bigger than the earth, so we'd be instantly oblitterated, so logically what John was seeing was a spectacular meteorite shower - something that happens several times a year along with earthquakes, which is why I'm writing this tongue in cheek.  Meteorites are pretty small anyway but as the enter the earth's atmosphere at anything up to twenty-two miles per second, they give off a huge display as the break up.  

For those who take the Book of Revelations seriously, as Fraser (Dad's Army) would say:  "We're doomed - doomed, I tell you..."  

[dairyview123]

LOL, can just imagine that eh Fred been on the old fig juice have they! lol

[peteryola]

The Geminids ( tonight's shower ) is the best shower of the year; from a truly dark site with the radiant directly overhead you would have in the region of 120 each hour; in practice we have a lot of light pollution ( even in rural areas ) and worse there4 is a last quarter Moon rising just after 23.00 and it's pretty close to the radiant; in practice we should still see at least half the quoted rate.

One good point about this particular shower is that the meteors are relatively slow and this means they stay visible for at least a second instead of the fraction of a second of most; there is also a tendency to produce a high proportion of brighter ones.

The good news is there is a clear sky tonight, at least in the south east.

[saasher2012]

I don't know about everywhere else but the sky tonight is ideal for watching natures fine show.

[5129frederick]

That's great - I live in Sittingbourne, Kent, just passed the Medway Towns.  I'll be going out there tonight, but I'm going to play it clever.  I'm taking out my sun lounger and wrapping myself up in a sleeping bag with a hot water bottle.  Also one of these metal Thermos flasks of tea which I'll be able to sip from the flask.  Pour it into a cup and it'll get cold instantly.  It's gonna be cold and, at 66, I'm already getting on a bit - that's my excuse anyway  The thing is, if you're on a sun lounger set at it's maximum, you're more or less flat, so you won't be straining your neck.  One thing I won't be taking are my binoculars.  I don't reckon on somebody reporting me to the police as a bleedin' pervert! : 

[ed_blackadder_1]

Go for it Fred. I shall try and keep awake, we might be lucky here as the lights go off at midnight and we are very dark. I have watched these showers a few times and they never fail to impress.

[bankhaunter]

Be careful Frederick, I was only reading this morning in the comments on a You Tube video, that 144,000 people are going to be ruptured.

[5129frederick]

Yeah - every one a J.W. too, by all accounts!    I6t also predicts a war - a big, big war between the East and the West by the bamming of the Euphrates.  Many years ago when Chairman Mao was in his prime, asked about the size of his army he replied that all told, within an hour he could mobilise a fighting force of 200,000,000 people ( two hundred million! ).  Now no way could you airlift that number of people.  It would be impossible.  But if you just suddenly upped and marched across the land like ants, nothing on God's earth would have the power to stop you, and the Euphrates is one of the prime rivers in that area.  Still laughing?  

[ilove2patch]

Ruptured? lol

[5129frederick]

I know all about that!  Had a double hernia after my daughter was born, I hasten to add! 

[bankhaunter]

Might have a few logistical problems and we are well past the point where numbers mattered.

Plus what would be the reason, why would they do that?

[5129frederick]

The East and the West are not totally mad.  What does cause problems are tinpot nations stirring things up in the Middle East and drawing more and more people into it.  Maybe not tinpot in their own little world, but certainly tinpot as far as Uncle Sam is concerned re North Korea/South Korea who are famous for getting involved in other people's affairs.  The present trouble out in the Middle East could esculate out of all proportion.  Remember Idi Amin?  Had he had a "Big H"  he would have loved nothing more than to go out in a blaze of glory!  He actually got quite religious - thought everybody in church was was saying "for ever and ever Amin!" 

[bankhaunter]

End time predictions of which there have been countless over the years, have at least two things in common.

Firstly they are all based on some form of old writings and secondly they have all been wrong.

I suppose one day one might possibly be right but I won't be holding my breath.

[cee-dee]

The predictions of when an end time would occur might have been wrong but end times have happened before and we've no way of knowing when they happened or how extensive they were.

Also, we don't know if a human race advanced to the same stage as us and disappeared due to some sort of "end time".

[bankhaunter]

Also, we don't know if a human race advanced to the same stage as us and disappeared due to some sort of "end time".

We know there were none as we have evidence of the life which actually existed before each mass extinction and there is certainly no trace of any human activity in for example the Permian, Triassic or Cretaceous periods.

[5129frederick]

Update on metoer "Shower".

Out there for an hour and a half last night.  Don't know about a shower, but triumphant - I saw ONE!!!  Sleeping bag was soaked - so much dew.  Daughter said just two words to me last night - "You're mad."  She could be right 

[cee-dee]

That's only true in that we've found nothing......... yet.

If there was some major, catastrophic event, how much would actually be left to find after millions of years? Also, the occupants might not have been as numerous as us and their "places of residence" may be beneath the present sea(s) or ancient lava flows.

[bankhaunter]

I did once see a meteroid shower though it was purely by chance when out fishing, it was quite impressive though not as much as the sight of the Hale Bopp comet seen from a dark site in Yorkshire.

[bankhaunter]

I suppose it is possible that a small colony could have existed for a while between extinctions though I think extremely unlikely much as any other alien visits.

The vast distances involved do act a a barrier.

[cee-dee]

I wasn't thinking about an alien colony or any visitors from "out there".

We just don't know what happened to some of the people who lived here between 7 and 12 thousand years ago never mind any humanoids that might have been here so very, very long ago.

All we know about some of the ancient settlements is that they were occupied by humans but what happened to them, we just don't know. We can surmise as to what happened to those people in ancient places found in Turkey and the Arabian deserts but without "written" works we only have later "myths and legends" to go on.

Atlantis is mentioned by Plato but where, exactly was it (supposed to be)? Crete seems to fit some of Plato's descriptions but several other places are believed (by theorists) to be the site of Atlantis.

As to signs of humanoids from very long ago, all I can remember is reading about a series of Dinosaur footprints in (what was) a stream bed along with some footprints that looked just like present-day human footprints. The mud there had "turned to rock" of course and it was only a recent exposure that revealed them.