PORTENTS IN THE SKY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20222, 7 October 1927, Page 11

PORTENTS IN THE SKY

DO THEY MEAN ANYTHING TO US? Pons Winnecke, one of the 20 periodic comets that flash into our field of vision and disappear again into space on their eternal journey about the central sun, is to crash into the earth and demolish it. Such, at least, was the prophecy given out by a Frenchman, but the comet has passed and nothing has happened. This, is not the first time the coming of a comet has been awaited with apprehension, states a scientist in the Sunday News. Portents in the sky, most of all comets, have always inspired dread and terror. Not so long ago astronomers believed that if one of these bodies crashed into the earth our planet would be annihilated. It is now known that these bodies are gaseous, and the earth could pass through them without their injuring it. But superstition dies hard. There are still many people who believe comets play a large part in human affairs. For instance, when Halley’s famous comet first appeared it so happened that the Turks had just captured Constantinople. The comet was blamed. People prayed to be saved from “ the devil, the Turk, and the comet.” Comets were regarded a? signs in ancient times. In Scandinavia it was firmly believed that comets appeared when the King had committed some grave sin. Kings used to be dethroned o the word of soothsayers, who interpreted the meaning of the flashing comet. The coming of scientific astronomy has not dealt a death blow to the strange superstitions which follow the comet in its dazzling flight. In France, for example, winegrowers will tell you the vintages of 1811 and 1858 are unique because in those years our globe passed through the tails of comets. The ozones of these comets made the grapes better than those of any other year, they say. One of the most alarming prophecies of the earth’s destruction caused tremendous alarm in the United States in 1922. , Professor Porta, of Michigan University, predicted the end of the world for December, 1924. He based this belief on the malign effect upon the earth of the giant sun spots. Another end-of-the-world scare occurred in 1923, when Dr George Harding predicted that the world would end before the conclusion of his brother's term as President of the United States. One of the greatest of all world scares was that which convulsed all Christend m on the eve of the year 1000 A.D. The first day of that year was to usher in the Day of Judgment. People flocked to the churches, men immured themselves in monasteries, women in nunneries, there was prayer and repentance. The day came and wont. The old eartht rolled on and fear passed. Rather less than two centuries ago Nicolas de Cusa similarly announced the end of all things. Do Cusa was a cardinal, and his prophecy accordingly carried weight- His argument, too, was plausible. Briefly, he said the Flood occurred in the thirtyfourth jubilee of the Creation; there-' fore the world would end on the thirty-fourth jubilee of Christianity. It did not. There have been many similar scares, some based on a fallacious interpretation of the Scriptures; others upon the appearance of strange celestial bodies. The voice of accredited science is more comforting. According to Professor Nordmann, the French scientist, the earth is good for another ten thousand million years; Professor Flinders Petrie gives it almost as long a lease of life.