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Halley’s Comet

The content below is from Episode 161 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

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ANNOUNCEMENT

  • Apparently, there are dozens of podcast sites out there that have my podcast, but I don’t get any credit for…
    • Reason being, I haven’t taken the time to create accounts on all these platforms and claim my podcast.
      • I’m not super mad about this or anything, but I am bummed I don’t see the actual numbers of followers/listeners/Who’d a Thunkers out there.
    • On the brightside, that means there are more of you out there than I previously thought… which would explain why the blog gets so much traffic.
    • Anyway, thanks for reading/listening Who’d a Thunkers! I’ve been doing this since before the Pandemic and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
  • Another announcement, I will be traveling a lot this year, starting in June where I may not post an episode for 2 or 3 weeks in a row.
    • Not consistently posting each week is what kills a shows numbers, but it is my HoneyMoon and I don’t regret it.
    • I’ll try to post something while I’m in Cancun Mexico, but no promises. … I’ll be on Vacation!

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

  • This week I recommend the HBO show Barry
    • Here’s the plot:
      • Disillusioned at the thought of taking down another “mark,” depressed, low-level hit man Barry Berkman seeks a way out. When the Midwesterner reluctantly travels to Los Angeles to execute a hit on an actor who is bedding a mobster’s wife, little does Barry know that the City of Angels may be his sanctuary. He follows his target into acting class and ends up instantly drawn to the community of eager hopefuls, especially dedicated student Sally, who becomes the object of his affection. While Barry wants to start a new life as an actor, his handler, Fuches, has other ideas, and the hit man’s criminal past won’t let him walk away so easily.
    • Shannon and I binged the first season of Barry this past weekend.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

  • From NASA:
    • Halley is often called the most famous comet because it marked the first time astronomers understood comets could be repeat visitors to our night skies. Astronomers have now linked the comet’s appearances to observations dating back more than 2,000 years.
    • Halley was last seen in Earth’s skies in 1986 and was met in space by an international fleet of spacecraft. It will return in 2061 on its regular 76-year journey around the Sun.

Image of Comet Halley
In 1986, the European spacecraft Giotto became one of the first spacecraft ever to encounter and photograph the nucleus of a comet, passing and imaging Halley’s nucleus as it receded from the Sun. Credit: Halley Multicolor Camera Team, Giotto Project, ESA
  • Halley’s comet (officially 1P/Halley)’s biggest claim to fame is that is is the first celestial body to be tracked as reoccurring sight in Earth’s sky.
    • It wasn’t until a guy named Edmond Halley (1656 to 1742) came around that the astronomical community realized celestial bodies such as comets could return and predictively so. Before Halley (the guy) it was beleived that comets only passed through our solar system once.
    • In 1705 he applied the great Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity to calculate the orbits of a bunch of comets. 1P/Halley was the first and thus, named after Edmond Halley.

NASA:

Halley found the similarities in the orbits of bright comets reported in 1531, 1607, and 1682 and he suggested that the trio was actually a single comet making return trips. Halley correctly predicted the comet would return in 1758. History’s first known “periodic” comet was later named in his honor.

The comet has since been connected to ancient observations going back more than 2,000 years. It is featured in the famous Bayeux tapestry, which chronicles the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

  • The last time Halley visited Earth was in 1986 when we humans sent some spacecraft to take a look at it. The next time it will return is 2061 as Halley returns every 76 years. So if you are listening to this… we aren’t the luckiest generation when it comes to Halley’s comet sightings.
    • But have no fear, we can still laugh at the past generations reactions to it LOL
  • When historians and astronomers put their heads together they realized there is documentation of Halley’s sightings dating back over 2,000 years, just like that paragraph from NASA.com said. EXCITING STUFF!
Shih Chi and Wen Hsien Thung Khau chronicles from China 239BC
  • The first thought to observe Halley’s comet was the ancient Greeks in 466 BC
    • The first written observation was by ancient Chinese astronomers back in 239BC. It was written down in the Shih Chi and Wen Hsien Thung Khau chronicles.
  • The Babylonians noted seeing a bright comet in the sky in 164BC and 87BC.
    • I even put a picture on the blog of the tablet that apparently says so. It is one those artifacts the British “acquired” from other countries LOL.
According to this Museum in London, the Babylonians mentioned Halley’s Comet
Tapestry on men looking at comet.
A panel from the Bayeux tapestry showing people looking at what would later be known as Halley’s comet. Credit: By Myrabella – Own work, Public Domain
  • When you google historical Halley’s Comet sightings, the biggest and most undisputed documentation comes from 1066 AD.
    • William I, usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 1087. A descendant of Rollo, he was Duke of Normandy from 1035 onward.
    • In 1066AD he invaded England successfully and during the invasion they saw Halley’s comet. William even thought it brought his success. The Tapestry that was made to document/honor William’s invasion shows Halley’s Comet.
    • LOL there are these peasant dudes with bowl cut hairstyles embroidered on the Tapestry pointing up at the sky where a cool looking comet is flying by. The warped dimensions of the tapestry makes the dudes pointing look like stoners to me and it makes me giggle.
      • Like, the Tapestry is showing a bunch of guys who snuck out of the castle for a doobage 420 break and all the sudden one of them was like “holy shit! look at that thing in the sky!”
      • and King William was like “oh damn! that’s wild. Put that shit on my Tapestry. That’s dope.”
Adoration of the Magi
Giotto
Original Title: Adorazione dei Magi
Date: c.1304 – c.1306
Style: Proto Renaissance
Series: Scenes from the Life of Christ
Genre: religious painting
Dimensions: 200 x 185 cm
  • When you look up Halley’s Comet in the Encyclopedia Britannica they mention the comets visit in 1301 could have inspired Giotto’s (old Italian artist) painting of the Star of Bethlehem in his “The Adoration of the Magi”
    • Which Magi refers to the Zoroastrians (3 wise men) who were at the nativity. Reference back to my Zoroastrian episode. Such a cool old religion.
    • Giotto would inspire the name of The European Space Agency’s Giotto craft that was able to get a close look at Halley’s comet back in 1986.
  • The comet’s pass in 1910 was particularly spectacular, as the comet flew by about 13.9 million miles (22.4 million kilometers) from Earth, which is about one-fifteenth the distance between Earth and the sun. On that occasion, Halley’s Comet was captured on camera for the first time.
    • According to biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, the writer Mark Twain said in 1909, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” Twain died on April 21, 1910, one day after perihelion, when the comet emerged from the far side of the sun.
  • Keep in mind, all of these historical sightings (as far as the historical record suggests) were under the impression that they were seeing an isolated event.
    • Again, It wasn’t until 1705 when Edmond Halley connected all these observations
  • Here is some fun sciency facts about Halley from NASA

In 1986, an international fleet spacecraft met the comet for an unprecedented study from a variety of vantage points. The science fleet included Japan’s Suisei and Sakigake spacecraft, the Soviet Union’s Vega 1 and Vega 2 (repurposed after a successful Venus mission), the international ISEE-3 (ICE) spacecraft, and the European Space Agency’s Giotto. NASA’s Pioneer 7 and Pioneer 12 also contributed to the bounty of science data collected.

Each time Halley returns to the inner solar system its nucleus sprays ice and rock into space. This debris stream results in two weak meteor showers each year: the Eta Aquarids in May and the Orionids in October.

Halley’s dimensions are about 9.3 by 5 miles (15 kilometers by 8 kilometers). It is one of the darkest, or least reflective, objects in the solar system. It has an albedo of 0.03, which means that it reflects only 3% of the light that falls on it.

With each orbit around the Sun, a comet the size of Halley loses an estimated 3 to 10 feet (1 to 3 meters) of material from the surface of its nucleus. Thus, as the comet ages, it eventually dims in appearance and may lose all the ices in its nucleus. The tails disappear at that stage, and the comet finally evolves into a dark mass of rocky material or perhaps dissipates into dust.

Scientists calculate that an average periodic comet lives to complete about 1,000 trips around the Sun. Halley has been in its present orbit for at least 16,000 years, but it has shown no obvious signs of aging in its recorded appearances.

Comets are usually named for their discoverer(s) or for the name of the observatory or telescope used in the discovery. The official name is 1P/Halley. Since Halley correctly predicted the return of this comet ​– the first such prediction – it is named to honor him. The letter “P” indicates that Halley is a “periodic” comet. Periodic comets have an orbital period of less than 200 years.

  • A sobering side fact:
    • The astronauts aboard Challenger’s STS-51L mission were also scheduled to look at the comet… but the Challenger infamously exploded shortly after launch on national television.

THE PANIC

  • The first source I list on the blog (SetTheTape.com) was what turned me on to doing a Halley’s Comet episode because it pointed out the crazy crap people thought about this comet… but it isn’t a reliable source as it started with “In 1910, Edward Halley discovered a comet that was going to closely pass by Earth.” Well that’s odd because the dude died in 1742… LOL
    • So I threw out everything that article had (only 1 paragraph), but still felt it was right to mention it as this episode’s inspiration.
    • The main sources for the historical and scientific first portion of this episode are instead from NASA and Space.com
  • But for the latter half of this episode I used WIRED.com as their article focused on the societal impact of Halley’s comet instead of the science of it.

Below are the bits from WIRED.com‘s article that I liked most:

ON MAY 6, 1910, Halley’s comet approached Earth and killed England’s King Edward VII, according to some superstitious folk. No one could definitively say how it did, but it certainly did. And that wasn’t its only offense. The Brits also figured it was an omen of a coming invasion by the Germans, while the French reckoned it was responsible for flooding the Seine.

Writing to the Royal Observatory, one worrywart warned the comet would “cause the Pacific to change basins with the Atlantic, and the primeval forests of North and South America to be swept by the briny avalanche over the sandy plains of the great Sahara, tumbling over and over with houses, ships, sharks, whales and all sorts of living things in one heterogeneous mass of chaotic confusion.”

Throughout history, there’s always been a bit of panic when comets approached the sun, burning off into long, ominous tails. But in the months preceding Halley’s flyby of Earth on May 19, 1910, folks got real creative with their anxiety. It didn’t help that a few months earlier, The New York Times had announced that one astronomer theorized that the comet would unceremoniously end life as we know it.

French astronomer and author Camille Flammarion circa 1890.

French astronomer Camille Flammarion sure knew how to part a head of hair. POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

He was a Frenchman named Camille Flammarion, and in typical French despair, he reckoned that as we passed through the comet’s tail, “cyanogen gas would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet,” The Times reported. Astronomers had detected the cyanogen in the tail using spectroscopy, which reveals an object’s composition by analyzing the light coming off it. “Cyanogen is a very deadly poison, a grain of its potassium salt touched to the tongue being sufficient to cause instant death,” the paper wrote. To its credit, though, The Times noted that most astronomers did not agree with Flammarion.

But other enterprising capitalists hatched more nefarious schemes. Fraudsters hawked anti-comet pills, with one brand promising to be “an elixir for escaping the wrath of the heavens,” while a voodoo doctor in Haiti was said to be selling pills “as fast as he can make them.” Two Texan charlatans were arrested for marketing sugar pills as the cure-all for all things comet, but police released them when customers demanded their freedom. Gas masks, too, flew off the shelves.

Writes Ridpath: “A shepherd in Washington State was reported to have gone insane with worry about the comet, while in California a prospector nailed his feet and one hand to a cross and, despite his agony, pleaded with rescuers to let him remain there.” Churches found themselves packed to the brim with worried followers, while at home people were going so far as to plug up keyholes to keep out the comet’s vapors. (Sound familiar? If you think these people were nuts, remember that in 2003 our government told us to seal our homes with duct tape in the event of a terrorist attack. In 2003. The 21st century.)

folks in Atlanta missed out on all the fun on account of pesky cloud cover, though The Atlanta Constitution seemed relieved, declaring the clouds had in fact saved the city.

Weirdly, two years after the event came an even more fanciful theory from Sze zuk Chang Chin-liang of the Imperial Polytechnic College in Shanghai: “It is obvious the comet has no tail at all and the so-called tail must be the Sun rays which, while passing through the body of the comet, look like a tail.” Should the comet itself be transparent it could form a convex lens, “then everything on the Earth will be burnt provided the sunlight passes through the body of the comet and the focus falls on the surface of the Earth.” Why the procrastinating worrier only got around to proposing it after the Earth had already survived is anyone’s guess.

  • I love history, what we can learn from it, what fantastic stories it can tell.
    • And Halley’s comet is a predictable metronome keeping rythm with the history of mankind. It has been here for longer than our societies are thought to have existed and it will be here long after anyone reading or listening to this will live
      • (assuming the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast doesn’t just indefinitely live on in a server somewhere for millenia… LOL how cool would that be?!… “whats up future people! Did you like my multiple episodes on poop?) … Oh god, if some distant future society stumbles upon this blog/podcast like they will think we were all nuts!
    • But those same future people will hopefully regard Halley’s Comet as a wonder to behold.
    • I mean think about it: men the caliber of Mark Twain were happy to be born around the time of Halley’s Comet and die when it came back around.
    • This comet means so much to so many generations.
    • Sometimes it represents panic, others it represents something special… some generations it is both.

CREDIT: