August 26-27

"I will give you the treasures of darkness And hidden wealth of secret places, So that you may know that it is I, The LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name” - Isaiah 45:3 NASB

Year by year scientist's around the world discover hidden secrets of the earth and universe. The same day that our regional TV news programme announced news of Pogba's 89 million pound 'purchase' by Manchester United football club here in the UK, the same news station told us that an expedition has revealed life is thriving on the UK's tallest underwater mountains.

Lying just off the west coast of Scotland, scientists used robotic submersibles to dive more than 2,000m beneath the waves to explore four sea mounts. Video pictures of the largest of these was an almost look-a-like of Ayres Rock in Australia. The footage revealed vast coral reefs, and an array of crustaceans and fish living in the cold, dark waters. Imagine the excitement as, using robots, the team was able to collect thousands of samples, many species believed to be new to science.

Dr Kerry Howell, a deep sea biologist at Plymouth University, told BBC News: that the reefs were among the best she had ever seen. "These reefs are enormous and in really great condition - [they are] so beautiful, so important - so many animals, so much life." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36806038

Of the four underwater mountains explored, the biggest - the Anton Dohrn - stands at 1,700m tall. It would dwarf Ben Nevis, which has a peak of 1,344m - yet Anton Dohrn is totally submerged.

“You see the sea floor coming out of the gloom, and you don't know what you are going to find," said Dr Michelle Taylor, a deep sea biologist from the University of Oxford.

"This is the first time that anybody has seen this sea mount, has seen the animals that live on this sea mount, how they live, what they live on, who lives with them - and that's really exciting."

The team found brightly coloured cold-water coral reefs that stretched for many kilometres. Some of the species were several metres high, while others were thought to be thousands of years old.

They discovered huge sponge gardens crammed with tiny animals, crustaceans, including deep-sea crabs and shrimps, basket stars, sea anemones, and many fish species, including lepidions and chimaeras, which are related to sharks. they expect there could be many species new to science.

I was just getting my mind round all of this when, hot on the heels of this report came another this week updating findings first released in January 7, 2015.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world”- Psalm 19:1-4.

National Geographic reported that SEATTLE—NASA's venerable planet-hunter, the Kepler spacecraft, has discovered eight new worlds beyond our solar system, (announced in 2015), boosting the number of Kepler's confirmed planets to 1,004 (if you're keeping count), including two of the most Earthlike planets discovered so far.

Those eight new worlds are each less than 2.7 times the size of Earth, astronomers reported at the American Astronomical Society's annual winter meeting. But hiding in the wings, among a group of 554 newly announced planet candidates, is an even more tantalizing set of planets.

"These candidates represent the closest analogues to the Earth-sun system found to date, and this is what Kepler has been looking for. We are now closer than we have ever been to finding a twin for Earth around a star," says Fergal Mullally of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center.

Today the media gave out news of another 'earth like planet' larger than the earth, with it's own suns. a team led by astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and San Diego State University (SDSU) in California, used NASA's Kepler Space Telescope to identify the new planet, Kepler-1647b. Like the earth the planet rotates around it's suns but takes 1,107 days – just over three years – to orbit its host stars, "For much of the planet’s year the stars appear close together, giving it a familiar night-side and day-side with a unique triple-sunset and sunrise each day. As the planet orbits and the stars grow farther apart each day, they reach a point where the setting of one coincides with the rising of the other – at which point the planet is in near-constant daytime for about one-quarter of its orbit, or roughly 140 Earth-years." Scientists believe this planet could sustain life. (Nature magazine)

So much of our day to day lives are filled with the practicalities of family, work etc that we scarcely give a thought to the incredible wonders of the universe we live in – the planet we live on, and the fact that "In the beginning, Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands” - Hebrews 1:10.

Let us adjust our perspective and rejoice that almost every day new planets are discovered - archaeological finds made, and deep sea expeditions prove the existence of a wonderful Creator, who, as the expanding universe attests, continues to create new and greater wonders as it prepares for the coming of Christ.

What more can I say apart from“The Wonder of it all” (LIVE) Click on the picture to listen.