May 19 – Anniversary of a Cosmic Non-collision

nPostednMay 19, 2015

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nActually,nevery day of the year, we could celebrate cosmic non-collisions, because space is huge and collisions large enough to get excitednabout are pretty rare.

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nButnin 1910, astronomers predicted that the Earth was going to passnthrough the tail of Halley’s comet for six hours on May 19.

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nAndnalthough most astronomers assured people that the comet’s tail wasnvery thin, very rarefied – a bit of gas and dust blown out by thensolar wind for millions of miles – there was one astronomer whonsaid something a little bit different:

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nHensuggested that the comet’s tail, which spectrographs had shownncontained cyanogen, might poison all life on the planet!

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nThenastronomer who made that scary prediction was Camille Flammarion. Innhis lifetime, he made a lot of suggestions and held a lot of beliefsnthat weren’t backed by any evidence. For example, he wrote thatndwellers on Mars had tried to communicate with the Earth in the past;nhe believed that human souls (and alien souls, too!) werenreincarnated on many different planets, in the bodies of manyndifferent sorts of creatures; he believed in telepathy. And yet,nFlammarion did seem to honor evidence and the scientific method. Henstudied mediums and seances, apparently very open to the possibilitynthat these were ways of contacting souls of the dearly departed, butnhe concluded that all mediums cheat.

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Atnany rate, thanks to Flammarion’s cyanogen-snuffing-out-life-on-Earthnpronouncement, a lot of people panicked. Many people spent money onntrying to survive the comet tail; they bought gas masks andnanti-comet pills and even anti-comet umbrellas! Some people fearednthat the tail would bring deadly influenza, rather than poison gas,nand some farmers neglected to plant their crops, and some peoplenneglected to do their own work, as these people prepared for the endnof the world.

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n(Bynthe way, I’m not sure that surviving the comet tail would be such angood idea, if the rest of life on Earth died. I mean, unless peoplenwere going to purchase tiny gas masks for every leaf on local applentrees, and anti-comet umbrellas for every corn plant, and so forth –nwouldn’t it be better to die along with everything else than tonslowly starve to death?)

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nOncenthe day came, and Earth passed through Halley’s tail, of coursennothing happened.

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Well,nnothing detectable happened to the Earth’s lower atmosphere or to allnthe various lifeforms. But people created some havoc, for sure. Fourndifferent people contacted Flammarion to report smelling somendisturbing odors—the smell of burning vegetables, one personnclaimed, or a marshy or chemical smell, according to others. InnChina, some people wouldn’t go outside for half a day, and theynwouldn’t drink water in case it had been poisoned by the comet’sn“vapors.” People in Tennessee waited with their prophet for thenend of the world, at noon, and a preacher in Pennsylvania filled hisncongregation with terror about the destruction the comet wasnbringing. n

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nBynthe way, in case you are wondering, the world didn’t end.

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nThennext day, people read that a religious group in Oklahoma, thenso-called “Sacred Followers,” had attempted to sacrifice anvirgin in order to save the Earth. They also read that, thankfully,nthe police stopped them! – But nowadays scholars think that,ndespite the newspaper story, this didn’t actually happen.

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nSontoday is the anniversary of “– Excitement! – Danger! – CosmicnCatastrophe! – oh, wait, never mind!”

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