COMETS- THE HAIRY
STARS
Imagine you are out on a romantic
date with your beau to the city outskirts. Both of you beneath the starry sky
and then a beautiful comet passes by. What will you do?
I remember a similar scene from a
Bollywood movie (Ajab Prem ki Ghazab kahani) where the heroine( Katrina Kaif)
closes her eyes and wishes for her love to be successful with hands held tight.
How romantic, right?
Wrong. Infact I would call it asinine,
stupid. I pity her for closing her eyes instead of seeing and enjoying the rare
occurrence.
How can a comet make your dreams
come true? After all, it is a dirty snowball lost its way home in the space and
wandered crying into our solar system. Wake up ppl and chase your dreams..
This is one of the several myths regarding
comets.
Lets ask our ancestors about more
of them.
We were born into a mystery. We
awakened on this tiny world beneath a blanket of stars, like an abandoned baby
left at a doorstep without a note to explain who we are, where we came from. We
are supposed to figure it all by ourselves.
Luckily, we are gifted with
pattern recognition. Ancient humans were able to distinguish between things:
prey from predator, poisonous plants from nourishing plants.
They used this gift to study the
pattern of stars. They predicted the occurrence of seasons and thereby followed
appropriate survival strategy. Everything was going well for them until one
day.
The day, the apparition of a
comet happened in the space. They had absolutely no idea what was happening.
Almost invariably, they concluded that the news was not good. They believed something
bad was going to happen. This marked the beginning of myths and fears regarding
comet sightings.
It doesn’t matter whether you
were an ancient Aztec, Anglo-Saxon, Babylonian or Hindu, comets were always the
portents of doom. The only difference among them is the precise nature of disaster
it was believed to cause. To some it meant famine, to some it meant war, to
others it meant disease. A certain ancient society showed its uniqueness: To it,
it specifically meant “small pox”.
Interestingly, “dis-aster” in
greek means “bad star”. No wonder they had such superstitions.
It is surprising to notice that
most of the science related names were originated from Greek language. Infact
the name “comet” is also derived from Greek which means “hair”.
Whaaaaat!! Why did they name it
after hair?
Here the creativity of greeks
comes into picture. They viewed the comet as a star with long hair. Kudos to
their creativity.
Lets see some other comet myths.
To the ancient Rome, it meant the
death of a leader. A falling star (as a comet appeared to them) is believed
equivalent to a falling emperor. A comet once appeared during the reign of
Nero. A foolish astrologer in his courtship referred to it as a blazing star
which is after the death of Nero. To cool that blazing star, he resorted to the
massacre of his entire successorship as a sacrifice.
My reaction to such people: http://media.giphy.com/media/6XA99Q0nPSXyU/giphy.gif
Apart from such tragic incidents, there are some funny incidents also in our history.
In 1910, people
panicked when a comet passed through Earth’s path around the Sun. In Chicago,
people sealed their windows to protect themselves from the comet’s poisonous
tail. Others committed suicide. Special "Comet Protecting Umbrellas,"
gas masks, and "anti-comet pills" were sold.
Good job by the
marketing people then. They took the maxim “Make hay while the sun still shines”
way too seriously..
Do you know
dinosaurs? If not, go watch the jurassic park series. Scientists believe that a
comet collided with earth and killed all the dinosaurs.
Two minutes
silence for all the dinosaurs.R.I.P.
One possibility
is that a comet about 10 kilometers in size struck the Earth. Scientists think
that the impact disrupted the environment by displacing great amounts of dirt
and rocks into the air.
To keep it
simple, imagine a huge rock of the size of the Mount everest travelling 10
times faster than the fastest bullet, hitting the ground.
There are two kinds of people out
there: common citizens and celebrities. Likewise, there are some celebrity
comets apart from others.
Comet Hale-Bopp ( named when people
wondered “arey bapp rey’’ on seeing it)
Comet Swift tuttle ( named after
Taylor Swift by her fan)
Comet Hyakutake ( I cant even
pronounce it…arghh…japanese)
Halley comet ( I know
it…Edmond halley, scientist)
Shoemaker levy-9( I think you can
figure out how it came) J
Everything is fine. If all these
are myths, what is the truth? What are
these comets in the first place? Why they keep on rambling in the space? Why cant
they stick their ass at one place like many other stars?
For answers, Stay tuned. Don’t go
away. I ll be right back. ( sry, been watching crime news too much these days).
