Word: halley
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...solar and lunar eclipses are found in the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty over 3,000 years ago. In the 2,100 years from the Qin Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty (that is, from 221 B.C. to 1911), the 27 appearances of Halley's Comet were all recorded in China. Zhang Heng, of the Han Dynasty, invented a seismograph to determine the location of earthquakes, and the celestial globe that showed the movement of the sun, moon and other stars. Mathematicians in the pre-Qin days put forward the proposition known as the Pythagorean...
...also that year that we all caught comet fever; Halley's had come to town. For several weeks we endured arctic temperatures, looking skyward until our necks were sore. Everyone ooed and ahhed, and I think I was the only kid in town who admitted to not being able to see the damn thing. Finally, one frigid night I looked through the telescope at the high school and saw a pea-sized white blob. I'm told it was the comet, but it looked more like frost on the lens to me. I knew from school that we wouldn...
...meditations of religion, science and the occult all converged. Now enter Comet Hale-Bopp. In an otherwise orderly and predictable cosmos, where the movement of stars was charted confidently by Egyptians and Druids, the appearance of a comet, an astronomical oddity, has long been an opportunity for panic. When Halley's comet returned in 1910, an Oklahoma religious sect, the Select Followers, had to be stopped by the police from sacrificing a virgin. In the case of Hale-Bopp, for months the theory that it might be a shield for an approaching ufo has roiled the excitable on talk radio...
...block too many times. The first visit loosens a comet's crust, making later go-rounds more impressive. If the comet comes through too often, however, a new crust can form out of dust falling back onto the surface. This too can lead to false optimism. "With Comet Halley, which has been back many times," says University of Texas astronomer Anita Cochran, "only about 15% to 20% of the surface is active." Admits Hale: "It's been kind of nerve-racking to sit through all those months wondering if the comet would fizzle...
...were celestial brooms wielded by the gods to sweep the heavens free of evil. In the West they were believed to presage the fall of Jerusalem, the death of monarchs and such anomalies as two-headed calves. The Norman Conquest of England was attributed to the 1066 flyby of Halley's, history's most famous comet, which has been linked to everything from Julius Caesar's assassination to the defeat of Attila the Hun. Told that Earth would pass through Halley's tail during its 1910 visit, many Americans panicked and bought gas masks and "comet pills...