What's with the Kolob thing?

Sigh.

The short answer is:
Kolob is another word we use (occasionally) for the place where God lives.

The long answer is
Kolob is a star that is close to God's world.  We believe that God, a glorified yet physical person, has a glorified (yet physical) home, and the star there (like our Sun) is called Kolob.

The word sounds funny because it comes from Egyptian (I think). It comes from a book that Joseph Smith translated that we call the Pearl of Great Price.  The Pearl of Great Price is special because it contains a less garbled (freshly translated) copy of Moses's account of the creation than what has been passed down to us in the Old Testament, and it has some additional information about Abraham.  But I can't recall the word Kolob ever having been used in a talk or lesson.  It appears in one hymn, which we don't sing very often.

Apparently, Abraham was a really smart guy, and it appears that God revealed to him a little more about science and math and astronomy than we typically teach in church.  That extra knowledge is briefly touched on but not expounded.  Intellectuals in the church have tried for years to unlock additional knowledge through this snippet of scripture.  Some of them have proposed some weird theories (although, who knows, they might be right).  But these do not constitute the core and accepted doctrine in the church -- any more than the mystics or super-intellectuals in your church represent the minister or the Pope.

The great teaching that I have taken away from this handful of verses is that God wants his children to learn about lots of things, and if I am sincere and obedient, God will reveal to me things that are sacred and not available to the world, just like he did for Abraham. (And God will likely tell me to keep it between Him and me, so they won't be posted on my blog. Sorry.)  The sun and moon and stars were created to bless us, and to remind us of God, and since God's knowledge is Endless, I assume there are some things that he can teach me about Math or Astronomy or how to do my job or rear my family, if He sees it as helpful to my salvation and progress.