Santa Fe New Mexico

Comet Halley

 

A comet arrives from the mysterious depths of the Cosmos, and cuts the Earth’s orbit, instilling terror in the inhabitants of the city. Stone sages, the guardians of the temple, are frozen in stillness in the sacred tower’s niches. The city is waiting for them to reveal the secret meaning of this sign from heaven. One of the statues raises its hands toward the sky, praying unto God for forgiveness and deliverance from a universal disaster.

 

People took notice of comets from time immemorial. One cannot observe in the sky a rarer, and hence, more appalling sight than this, much more terrible than any eclipse. This vague luminary may be so bright that it blazes through the clouds and outshines the moon, and from the bowels of the unwanted celestial visitor, an enormous tail erupts.

 

In the Middle Ages, a comet was considered a bad omen bringing wars and epidemics. The Norman invasion of South England in 1066 was associated with the appearance of “Halley’s comet” as was the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

 

This wonderful newcomer, arriving from the depths of the solar system, can be seen only once in a lifetime, for it makes its appearance every 76 years, with amazing regularity. Mark Twain, an admirable American writer, the author of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” came into the world in the year 1835 when Halley’s comet shone in the sky. A year before his death he said, “I came to this world in 1835 together with the Halley’s comet, and I expect to leave together with it.” So it happened.

 

The widely known Halley’s comet could be a perfectly suitable candidate for the role of an alien celestial body having intruded into our Solar system by order of some another cosmic civilization far surpassing humankind in its development. Indeed, when comets approach the sun, a considerable part of the material contained in them is spent on the formation of tails. However, after disappearing from the sky, comets later arrive again. Somewhere in celestial workshops unknown to us, they restore, or rather, recover their matter. Astronomers gather information about our Solar system from these peculiar probes over the millennia.

 

…Perhaps, Mark Twain came to us from another civilization too?