The Third Trumpet: Wormwood

"The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter." (Revelation 8:10,11 - New International Version)

Verses ten and eleven describe a great star named Wormwood. This star could be a star, a meteor or a comet. The one which best fits the description would be a comet. There is no record of a comet of significant size hitting the earth, so we have no historical event upon which to understand what might occur.

In his book, Tibulation Triad (Bogard Press, 1983, page 67), Tom McElmurry writes about what might happen if a comet hits the earth:

The main parts of a comet are the tail, the nucleus, and the coma. The nucleus is made up of dust, frozen hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and cyanogen. . . . Cyanogen [is] a poisonous gas that liquefies at minus 21 degrees centigrade. Cyanogen may be thought of as the parent substance of cyanides of all types. . . . Our most recent spectrographical observations of a comet, the comet Kohoutek, at radio wavelengths revealed the presence of methyl cyanide and hydrogen cyanide. “Wormwood” means “undrinkable” - and I believe that the chemical composition of a comet is capable of generating sufficient poison into the earth's water supply to kill the “many men” of Revelation 8:11.