Comet ISON: Should we fear it?

Comet ISON:  Should we fear it?
 
Fact:  In 1665, Londoners looked up and marveled at a spectacular comet splitting the sky.  By the end of the year, a hundred thousand of those spectators would be dead.  Daniel Defoe wrote about it in his classic 1722 novel, "A Journal of the Plague Year, saying that the comet of 1665 "foretold of a heavy judgment, slow but severe, terrible and frightful." 
 
But human fear of comets goes back much, much farther than that – to the dawn of human history, in fact.  In their landmark book "Comet," Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan note that as early as the 15th Century B.C., the ancient Chinese were associating comets with really bad things.   Throughout recorded history, observers have connected comets to everything from plagues and famine to war and flood.  Most modern scientists have chalked it all up to superstition.  But not all of them have.  No less than the great Edmond Halley himself, the eminent 16th century scientist who discovered the periodic nature of comets, and who famously predicted the return of the body that now bears his name, suggested that a comet may have been responsible for The Great Flood.  The Royal Society censured him for it, but despite the society's hissy fit, the idea refused to die.  In modern times, scientist and author Immanuel Velikovsky took up the torch for the cometary connection to disaster.  Most scientists considered him to be a crackpot, but he had a wide public following.
 
Could it be that in connecting comets to doomsday scenarios, our forebears may have known something that we don't?
 
These days most scientists accept that comets or asteroids have been responsible for disasters in the past, including the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million year ago.  But can a comet that doesn't hit the earth cause a disaster – such as, for instance, a plague?
 
Here's some food for thought.  According to some theories, comets may have been responsible for supplying most of Earth's water – perhaps even all of it.   Some believe comets may be seeding the Universe with life.  So much cometary dust has fallen on the Earth that you almost certainly breathe some of it in every day.   And how's this for a conversation-starter:  scientists don't truly know exactly what's in comets.   You've heard comets described as "dirty snowballs."  But it isn't all just ice and dust.  Theories suggest that some comets may be made up of unknown organic chemicals consisting of up to 25% of their bulk.   Question:  what's aboard Comet ISON that is causing it to glow green right now?  The fact is, historically comets have come in all sizes, shapes and colors.  This hints at a wide array of chemical compositions.
 
These questions are what make doomsday theories – and science fiction – so much fun.  Comet ISON plays a role in my just-published science fiction novel, "A Journal of the Crazy Year" (a name inspired by Defoe's work).  I invite you to look it up on Amazon.com (it's a cheap read -- and a good one, according to my first user review) and also to find me on Facebook.
 
Forrest Carr
Novelist and recovering journalist

Quote :

 including the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million year ago.

            
That always cracks me up everytime I read it.
 
Still though, nice post. :)Welcome to the forum and good luck on your book sales.

Thanks for the welcome and for your good wishes!
FC

333 Years ago......an object of interest to Sir Isaac Newton



NOTE THE MASONIC PILLARS IDENTIFYING THIS AS A TIME MARKER






A very remarkable comet was seen in the end of 1680 and beginning of 1681. Its tail extended 70 degrees, and was very brilliant. This comet, of all those which have been observed, approaches nearest to the sun. Descending with immense velocity in a path almost perpendicular to his surface, it proceeded until its distance from his centre was only about 540,000 miles. Sir Isaac Newton computed that, in consequence of so near an approach to the sun, it must have received a heat 2000 times greater than that of iron almost going into fusion; and that if it was equal in magnitude to our earth, and cooled in the same manner as terrestrial bodies, its heat would not be expended in less than 50,000 years.

Three observations on comets are recorded in history, agreeing in remarkable circumstances with the comet of 1680: - one in the 44th year before Christ; another in the consulate of Lampadius and Orestes, about the year of Christ 531; and the third in the reign of Henry I. of England, in the year 1106. These dates are nearly at equal distances of times, namely, 575 years; which is also the period between 1106 and 1681. Hence Dr. Edmund Halley conjectured that these might be successive appearances of one and the same comet, revolving about the sun in the period of about 575 years. If this conjecture is well founded, this comet may be expected again, after finishing the same period, about the year 2255.

http://www.jwwerner.com/history/Comet.html


From the ISON thread FYI