The Comets Decide: Chapter 3 - Comet Facts

The Earth, travelling at 67,000 miles an hour, spins only once a day. A misunderstood force called gravity holds its thin veil of atmosphere to it. Space is almost empty, so there is nothing to rip the air from its surface, the mantle from its magma.

A comet will eventually lose everything if it orbits a sun like ours. It can barely even hold itself together, so it leaves a bright trail of dust in its wake; in time becoming nothing but tiny particles spread across the void.

There are many possible ends for a comet: It could pass close to a gas giant and, being so fragile, be torn apart. Then it might fall in a shower of terrific magnitude, scarring the surface, ripping great holes in the gas, bringing its journey to an end in violent, spectacular fury.

There have been comets whose final moments have been observed from earth, as they careen past headed into the sun. There is even a story of one such traveller that seemed to perform the impossible task of navigating a path through the atmospheric matter of the sun to return, years later, to our skies.

There are geologists who think that the oceans themselves are a remnant of a comet's impact, that three and a half billion years ago a great medley of comets came and rained down on the earth, depositing huge volumes of water in the form of interstellar ice, melted by the still young earth. From the sky came the comets and from the comets came the oceans of from the oceans came life and from life came...

According to tradition, a comet became visible the day that King Harald of England was crowned, auguring his eventual doom at the hands of William and an arrow in the eye. In more scientific circles, such things are scoffed at; belief in such omens is superstition, paranoia and ignorance born of fear and misunderstanding. But, concurrently, one can live quite comfortably from the work of reading messages from the skies, in which comets are like the spectacular flourishes of fate's foretelling, and serious money-makers.

However, not all nearing comets are of such use to soothsayers and mystics; there are dark comets, those that have lost all their bright water and are left with only a dull organic crust. These may move without detection until they are upon their final destination; until it is too late for Bruce Willis to save us; until they fall from our skies, reaping what they sowed.