Omega: The Last days of the World

by Camille Flammarion

When the threatening star arrived at a distance from the sun equal to that of Mars, the popular fear was no longer a vague apprehension; it took definite form, based, as it was, upon the exact knowledge of the comet’s rate of approach. Thirty-four thousand meters per second meant 2040 kilometers per minute, or 122,400 kilometers per hour!

As the distance of the orbit of Mars from that of the earth is only 76,000,000 of kilometers, at the rate of 122,400 kilometers an hour, this distance would be covered in 621 hours, or about twenty-six days. But, as the comet approached the sun, its velocity would increase, since at the distance of the earth its velocity would be 41,660 meters per second. In virtue of this increase of speed, the distance between the two orbits would be traversed by a comet in 558 hours, or in twenty-three days, six hours.

But the earth at the moment of meeting with the comet, would not be exactly at that point of its orbit intersected by a line from the comet to the sun, because the former was not advancing directly toward the latter; the collision, therefore, would not take place for nearly a week later, namely: at about midnight on Friday, the 13th of July. It is unnecessary to add that under such circumstances the usual arrangements for the celebration of the national fête of July 14th had been forgotten. National fête! No one thought of it. Was not that date far more likely to mark the universal doom of men and things? As to that, the celebration by the French of the anniversary of that famous day had lasted—with some exceptions, it is true—for more than five centuries: even among the Romans anniversaries had never been observed for so long a period, and it was generally agreed that the 14th of July had outlived its usefulness.

It was now Monday, the 8th of July. For five days the sky had been perfectly clear, and every night the fan-like comet hovered in the sky depths, its head, or nucleus, distinctly visible and dotted with luminous points which might well be solid bodies several kilometers in diameter, and which, according to the calculations, would be the first to strike the earth, the tail being in a direction away from the sun and in the present instance behind and obliquely situated with reference to the direction of motion. The new star blazed in the constellation of Pisces. According to observations taken on the preceding evening, July 8th, its exact position was: right ascension, 23h., 10m., 32s.; declination north, 7°, 36´, 4˝. The tail lay entirely across the constellation of Pegasus. The comet rose at 9h., 49m. and was visible all night long.

During the lull of which we have spoken, a change in public opinion had occurred. From a series of retrospective calculations an astronomer had proved that the earth had already on several occasions encountered comets, and that each time the only result had been a harmless shower of shooting stars. But one of his colleagues had replied that the present comet could not in any sense be compared to a swarm of meteors, that it was gaseous, with a nucleus composed of solid bodies and he had in this connection recalled the observations made upon a comet famous in history, that of 1811.

This comet of 1811 justified, in a certain respect, a real apprehension. Its dimensions were recalled to mind: its length of 180,000,000 kilometers, that is to say, a distance greater than that of the earth from the sun; and the width of its tail at its extreme point, 24,000,000 kilometers. The diameter of its nucleus measured 1,800,000 kilometers, forty thousand times that of the earth, and its nebulous and remarkably regular elliptical head was a spot brilliant as a star, having itself a diameter of no less than 200,000 kilometers. The spot appeared to be of great density. It was observed for sixteen months and twenty-two days. But the most remarkable feature of this comet was the immense development to which it attained without approaching very close to the sun; for it did not reach a point nearer than 150,000,000 kilometers, and thus remained more than 170,000,000 kilometers from the earth. As the size of comets increases as they near the sun, if this one had experienced to a greater degree the solar action, its appearance would certainly have been still more wonderful, and, doubtless, terrifying to the observer. And as its mass was far from insignificant, if it had fallen directly into the sun, its velocity, accelerated to the rate of five or six hundred thousand meters per second at the moment of collision, might, by the transformation of mechanical energy into thermal energy, have suddenly increased the solar radiations to such a degree as to have utterly destroyed in a few days every trace of vegetable and animal life upon the earth.

A physicist, indeed, had made this curious remark, that a comet of the same size as that of 1811, or greater, might thus bring about the end of the world without actual contact, by a sort of expulsion of solar light and heat, analogous to that observed in the case of temporary stars. The impact would, indeed, give rise to a quantity of heat six times as great as that which would be produced by the combustion of a mass of coal equal to the mass of the comet.

It had been shown that if such a comet in its flight, instead of falling into the sun, should collide with our planet, the end of the world would be by fire. If it collided with Jupiter it would raise the temperature of that globe to such a point as to restore to it its lost light, and to make it for a time a sun again, so that the earth would be lighted by two suns, Jupiter becoming a sort of minor night-sun, far brighter than the moon, and shining by its own light—of a ruby-red or garnet color, revolving about the earth in twelve years. A nocturnal sun! That is to say, no more real night for the earth.

The most classical astronomical treatises had been consulted; chapters on comets written by Newton, Halley, Maupertuis, Lalande, Laplace, Arago, Faye, Newcomb, Holden, Denning, Robert Ball, and their successors, had been re-read. The opinion of Laplace had made the deepest impression and his language had been textually cited: “The earth’s axis and rotary motion changed; the oceans abandoning their old-time beds, to rush toward the new equator; the majority of men and animals overwhelmed by this universal deluge, or destroyed by the violent shock; entire species annihilated; every monument of human industry overthrown; such are the disasters which might result from collision with a comet.”