“If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the shock would reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”
—Edmund Halley.
At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement. Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations, hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar system fails to change the result.
The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to the newspapers.
At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.
There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet daily to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published announcing the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the huge projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the Comet approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen Titanic hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees, in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call out their wares.
As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful, nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers, mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.
Long before the actual collision—long before the Earth is reduced to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris—mankind is annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.
When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.
When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened planetary cinder,—desolate and dead.