A photo from open sources
In 1347, a comet called the Black Comet passed very close to planet earth. Although this comet came close to Earth, and for many months it was possible to observe the unusual spectacle in the sky, as soon as the comet disappeared from the sky, “black death “began in Europe, Asia and China.
Over the next 12 years, she claimed an estimated 75 to 200 million people. 333 years later, The Great Comet of 1680 passed close to the earth. She was called ‘Comet Kirch,’ she also became one of the brightest objects in the night sky, was visible even in the daytime time. In 1680, the Great Plague mowed people in Vienna. It was connected with its passage?
333 years later, Comet Ison prepares to offer observers a sight once again approaching the planet Earth. This time, Earth may pass through the tail of comet Ison in accordance with statements experts.
Small telescopes will be able to see it in August this year. And in January 2014, the comet will be able to admire without any adaptations all comers. At the moment when the comet comes as close to To the sun, it can become as bright in our sky as the moon in full moon. If all goes well, we will witness the most striking astronomical event of our century.
Comets have long been associated with troubles and diseases. In the old days Russia, and indeed in medieval Europe, the appearance in the sky “tailed stars “- comets – was considered a bad omen. With them all sorts of impending misfortunes – epidemics, pestilence, crop failures, war, even the end of the world.
At the end of 1664, when Edmund Halle was six years old, in the sky a comet appeared, and the next year an epidemic broke out in London bubonic plague, which claimed every fifth of its inhabitants. In his Plague Year Diary Daniel Defoe, creator of Robinson Crusoe, with with full confidence indicated that the slow motion of the comet along the heavens foreshadowed “… heavy punishment, slow but harsh, terrible and terrible, what was the Plague. ”
A photo from open sources
This was one of the last cases when a serious author, not crazy freak, tried to associate comets with pestilence, after which respite came for a long time.
Halley and Newton fundamentally undermined any medical value of comets, explaining the nature of their orbits and witnessing how far they pass from the Earth, so the ability of comets to either prophesy, either cause the disease was called into very strong doubt.
In other respects, medicine developed more slowly, but in XIX century Pasteur and other researchers have found that infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms. It turned out and the way the spread of these pathogens – for example, through contaminated water (cholera) through fleas (plague) and mosquitoes (malaria). But recently, scientists have put forward an interesting hypothesis. According to her, on comets may contain complex organic matter viruses and even bacteria. When a comet flies near our planets, these substances, “blown away” from it by the solar wind, “landing” on Earth, causing flu epidemics, and even more serious illnesses. As you know, inside the comets is ice core. Ice cannot form in space. So their core appears during the catastrophic destruction of some planets having hydrosphere. It is then that alien microorganisms fall on “tailed stars” and then travel in the intergalactic space with them. Obviously, our ancestors noticed a direct the relationship between the passage of a tailed star near the Earth and the occurrence of epidemics. The mechanism of this relationship was incomprehensible, but this fact itself became widely known, which gave rise to fear of comets.
Epidemics
