COMETS AND SUPERSTITIONS

By Edvard A. Hemmingsen

Comet Hale-Bopp has impressed us with its celestial display for some
time.  It is the brightest comet to have appeared for many decades,
but it is far less bright than many that have appeared in previous
times.

Prior to the present millennium, records of comet appearances are
scanty in the Western culture.  However, Chinese records go back more
than 3000 years and have been very useful in some cases to explain
vague historical descriptions of celestial events, as well as to
establish the periodicity of some comets.

But even with record keeping over long time periods and our present
ability to calculate paths or orbits of comets, there is little
regularity in their appearance.  According to current theories,
supported by evidence and solid reasoning, most comets originate in
the Oort Cloud.  This is a wide belt of objects, probably trillions in
number, in circular orbit around our sun, at a distance hundreds to
thousands of times further away that the outermost planets.  These
objects are largely conglomerates of ice, dust particles, and
condensed gases, generally ranging in size from a few hundred meters
to many kilometers.  Some comets may originate from the Kuiper Belt, a
smaller but similar collection of objects much closer to the outer
planets.  All of this material is considered to be remnants of the
process that formed the planets more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Gravitational disturbances from nearby passing stars or planets
occasionally set one of these chunks of "dirty ice" in movement
towards the sun.  The initial movement is very slow, approximately
walking or bicycling speed.  It may take millions of years for it to
reach the inner solar system.  As it approaches this space, gases
evaporate off the nucleus, and dust is ejected thereby producing the
familiar corona and tail(s) of the comet.  In the vicinity of the sun
it may be fragmented or destroyed, or ejected out of the solar system
in a parabolic path never to be seen again, or forced into an
elliptical orbit around the sun with a typical periodicity ranging
from tens to thousands of years.

This randomness and unpredictability of comets contrasts dramatically
with the regularity of the movements of the sun, the moon, the planets
and the stars across Earth's sky.  In the earliest human history,
these familiar celestial objects provided regularity and order in an
unstable and chaotic world filled with tragedies and uncertainties.
With some imagination, people even could associate the regular
celestial patterns with events in their lives, and the cyclical
movements could be tied to many cyclical events on earth.

However, many events in the lives of people are not cyclical or
predictable.  Natural disasters, epidemics, famines and wars usually
appear at irregular intervals with unpredictable intensities and end
results.  Thus, it is not surprising that people who often were
looking for higher causes for the events around them would chose to
believe that the mysterious, sudden apparitions of comets represented
the wrath or warnings of gods, or evil omens of coming disasters.
Sometimes, the apparitions coincided with disasters, somewhere, but
more frequently the period between the apparitions and the event it
was supposed to herald or cause had to be stretched to several years.
Or worse, disasters occurred without the appearance of comets at all.

The fears and mysticisms surrounding comets and their representation
as instruments of gods appear to have been cultivated by the
priesthoods of several early cultures, including the Egyptians and the
Babylonians who incorporated them into their astrological frameworks.
Less attention was paid to celestial features in the Greek culture
which focused more on the human body and mind.  Even though comets
continued to have negative and mystical connotations, the Greeks were
the first to attempt to give a natural explanation of comets.  But
this attempt was bound to fail because they did not have the astronomy
background to understand what they observed.  Aristotle thought that
comets were an atmospheric weather phenomenon in the upper atmosphere.
Surprisingly, this view was not basically challenged for nearly two
thousand years.

Only after the invention of the telescope in the sixteenth century was
it established that comets were extraterrestrial bodies, existing out
in space with the planets.  However, this revelation did not dispel
all of the mysticism and superstition associated with them.

The most famous of all comets, Halley's Comet, has made numerous
appearances both before and after its nature was understood.  Some of
these appearances have been truly spectacular, such as those of 1301
and 1456, while others such as that in 1986 were duds.  In the 1301
apparition, the tail covered 60 degrees of the sky.  Several notable
historical events occurred during the years of some of its
appearances.  In 66 A.D., Halley's Comet appeared a year after the
Romans started their siege of Jerusalem and led to prophesies of the
city's destruction, which occurred four years later.  William the
Conqueror gained his victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the
year of another appearance of this comet.  Its 1456 appearance was
blamed for the Turkish harassment and persecution of Christians, and
the reigning pope excommunicated the comet as an instrument of the
devil.  Its 1835-36 display was blamed for the massacre at Alamo, the
big fire in New York City, and the Zulu's massacre of the Boers.  The
1910 appearance (which followed another much brighter comet the same
year) was a goldmine for hucksters of paraphernalia to protect against
poisonous gases from the comet's tail.

Superstitions and events have been associated with many other comets
besides Halley's.  For example, the comet of 1528 was described in
historical records as follows: "This comet was horrible and so
frightful.  It produced such great terror that some died of fear while
others became sick.  It seemed to be of extreme size and had the color
of blood."  Montezuma is said to have delayed attacking Cortes forces
during the 1519-20 appearance of a comet, with disastrous results.
Napoleon was infatuated with comets and believed they had mystical
powers.  He made his entry into Russia in 1811, the same year as the
appearance of perhaps the most brilliant comet in historical times.
He believed that comets controlled his destiny and foretold his
victory in Russia.  The comet of 1665 was blamed for the Great Plague
of London as well as for the great fire that swept the city.  Other
comets were blamed for various plagues that ravaged Europe and Asia.

But superstitions and strange beliefs about comets were not limited to
uninformed and irrational people.  Some prominent scientists of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries assigned supernatural powers to
comets.  Even the great Sir Isaac Newton at one time believed that
comets supply essential "spirits" for life on Earth.  The idea of
panspermia, the seeding of Earth with microbes from space, has been
embraced by well known scientists, including Fred Hoyle of our own
generation.  Comets and meteors are assumed to be the vehicles of such
seeding.

These ideas are aberrations in mainstream, modern scientific thought,
and the superstitions and mystical ideas about comets were largely
dispelled among people capable of rational thinking by the meticulous
work of Newton and Halley.  Yet wacky ideas still are associated with
comets by some people; witness the suicide of 39 persons recently in
Rancho Santa Fe.  They apparently believed that they were leaving
Earth to join a spaceship trailing the comet Hale-Bopp.  This is not
the only crazy thought or happening associated with this comet as a
visit to Internet Web sites convinces one.

But this will soon die down.  Comet Hale-Bopp is now on its way out of
the inner solar system, not to return for nearly 2400 years.  It is a
relatively big comet, 30 to 40 kilometers across (3 to 4 times larger
than Halley), and spewing out tons of water vapor and other gases per
second at its perihelion.  However, impressive as it has been, this
comet does not rank among the great ones of recent centuries.  Its
tail spans only 5-10 degrees of the sky under common viewing
conditions, whereas that of the 1264 comet spanned more than 90
degrees, and those of the 1618 and 1680 comets spanned 70 degrees.
Comet Tebbutt of 1861 had a tail spanning between 90 and 120 degrees,
and at its brightest it cast shadows at night.  Some of these and
other comets from by-gone days were so spectacular that they could be
seen in bright daylight!


Additional reading recommended:

Olson, R. J. M. (1985) Fire and Ice. A History of Comets in
Art. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Sagan, C. and A. Druyan (1997) Comet. Ballantine Books, New York.

Thomas, P. J., C. F. Cyba and C. P. McKay (eds.) (1996) Comets and the
Origin and Evolution of Life. Springer, New York. This collection of
articles is very technical.

Cruikshank, D.P. (1997) Stardust memories. Science, vol. 275,
no. 5308.  Besides this non-technical perspective, this issue contains
seven technical papers describing various aspects of the comet
Hale-Bopp.

----------------

Edvard A. Hemmingsen is an Emeritus Physiologist at UCSD and a
Co-editor of Rational Inquiry

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