Word: haled
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...didn't. Hale-Bopp has steadily grown in brightness, giving amateur astronomers an increasingly satisfying show. Professional astronomers too have been watching Hale-Bopp, and not always with detachment. "We're delirious," says Tobias Owen of the University of Hawaii. "It's been 20 years since a really bright comet came by, and now, within just a year, we've had Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp...
...goes the theory, at least, and early studies of Hale-Bopp's gases bear this out. "We've found a type of hydrogen cyanide that's otherwise seen only in interstellar space," says Owen. "We saw it in Hyakutake too, but we thought it could be a fluke." Astronomers have found other gases they suspected would be there, including ammonia, methane, alcohol, formaldehyde and other organic compounds. Says Michael Mumma, an astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: "It's been suggested that both the building blocks of life and the water in our oceans fell to Earth...
Astronomers also believe a comet impact is probably what did in the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That object was perhaps 10 miles across. At double the size, Hale-Bopp packs a lot more potential energy. Luckily for civilization, Hale-Bopp will miss Earth by 120 million miles...
That should reassure worriers, but it's too bad for sky watchers. Hale-Bopp will be brighter than Hyakutake was, but it's also 15 times as far away. "If Hale-Bopp came as close as Hyakutake did," says Harvard's Green, wistfully, "it would be incredible. You'd even be able to see it easily in the daytime." Along with the rest of us, he's going to have to settle for what will merely be the best celestial show in decades...
...Alan Hale calls these waves of fear and mysticism "comet madness," and as co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp, he's seen more than his share. Ever since his find was announced, he has been inundated with inquiries, pronouncements and accusations from the cometary fringe...