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Throughout history, comets have been seen as omens of disaster. As recently as May 1910, then the Age of Science had vanquished many of the superstitions of the Middle Ages, the arrival of Halley's Comet was still met with fear and hysteria; scientists' predictions that Earth would pass through the comet's tail resulted in fears that poisonous compounds contained within it would kill people in their thousands.

Several people got rich selling 'comet pills' that were said to render the taker immune to any adverse affects. Needless to say humanity survived the encounter; a comets tail, though large, is nebulous and not at all toxic.

More recently, the presence of the Hale-Bopp comet in our skies from February to April 1997 was received with relative calm. Most people around the world were content to gaze into the night sky, fascinated by the best chance in decades to see the celestial wonder that is a comet. Some, though, had more extreme reactions.

The mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult in California, for example, made headlines around the world. Bizarrely, the cult members believed that Hale-Bopp was accompanied by an extraterrestrial craft that would carry their souls to the stars once they had left their bodies behind. While most people would dismiss this idea as patently ridiculous, the proposition that the comet was some kind of envoy from a distant civilization had been widely aired for some time before the suicides.

Astronomical Find.

Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered on the night of 22nd July 1995, by two people working independently of each other. Amateur astronomer Thomas Bopp had gathered with a few friends at an outdoor site in Phoenix, Arizona, to observe, among other things, a globular cluster - a dense mass of distant stars - known as M70. Allen Hale, head of the Southwest Institute for Space Research, had been watching the same cluster from a high-tech observatory in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

Hale had observed the region two weeks earlier, and noticed a blur of light that had not been there previously. Bopp saw that same object as he followed M70 towards the western horizon.

It took only a few hours - long enough for it to be established that the new object was clearly moving against the surrounding stars - for the two men to conclude that they had discovered a new comet. Both men relayed the information to the IAU Central Telegram Bureau, headquartered at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts - Hale via email, and Bopp by telegram once he had returned home. The next day, the new discovery was officially christened Comet Hale-Bopp.

Sinister Companion?

The true drama surrounding Hale-Bopp - and the starting point for much of the ensuing mass-hysteria - began in November 1996, when another amateur astronomer, Chuck Shramek, took a photo of the comet that seemed to show, close by, an unidentified second object with distinctive 'Saturn-like' rings. Shramek was unable to locate the Saturn-Like Object (SLO) on his star charts, and soon announced his findings on the Houston-based radio talk show, 'Dreamland', hosted by Art Bell, a provocative conspiracy chaser and UFO buff.

Shramek had as little idea as anyone else what the mysterious SLO might be, but the numerous photographs that quickly appeared world-wide fuelled imaginations in a variety of directions. As well as further publicizing its presence, the subsequent images seemed to prove that the SLO was actually travelling alongside the comet. Whitley Streiber, author of Communion, was among a number of prominent Ufologists to suggest that it might even be an alien space ship.

Remote Viewing.

Then, in February 1997, The Farsight Institute - a remote viewing centre in Atlanta, US - initiated its own effort to identify the SLO. The sessions involved several professional and student remote viewers. Although the participants were not told what subjects to focus on (i.e. the SLO), they all identified features pertaining to comets, stellar objects, or Hale-Bopp specifically.

Among the varied responses to the SLO were suggestions that it was 'the 12th planet', that the 'Galactic Federation' were involved, and that it was four times the size of the Earth.

Space Experiment?

There were, though, certain common, overriding themes linking all of the viewing sessions. These included deductions that the target object was hollow, that it was artificial, that there were living beings on board and that it was the focus of some sort of experiment. Several viewers also deduced that the object was also somehow involved with sub-space.

However, with a number of the viewers associating the target with emotions of awe, along with aspects of learning and scientific discovery, the possibility that they were identifying earthbound qualities (such as a public sense of wonder, and the possibilities for scientific research brought about by comet Hale-Bopp's proximity) should not be ignored.

Official explanations for the SLO were quick to follow. NASA claimed the object was a star that Shramek had failed to identify. The distinctive rings had been caused by a photographic diffraction effect that was apparently familiar to professional astronomers but not to amateurs. Shramek's supporters pointed out that Comet Hale-Bopp had been photographed in various positions, over a period of time, and that the companion object was visible in all these photo's. NASA, however, never wavered in their story.

The Japanese National Observatory posted their own picture of the comet on the Internet in December 1996. This revealed, they wrote, 'an anomalous funnel at [the] edge of an object next to the Hale-Bopp comet'. That same month, when Shramek's pictures were also causing a sensation on the Web, astronomers at the University of Hawaii explained the 'object' was actually a star, and the 'anomalous funnel' nothing more than a side effect produced by the electronic processing of the image. The Japanese subsequently agreed.

Another intriguing piece in a possible conspiracy puzzle involved the Vatican's own observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Art Bell, who had continued to keep his listeners updated on the companion object, received a letter in December 1996 simply signed 'Priest' and apparently posted from within the Vatican. it outlined a plot between NASA and the Vatican to withhold pictures of Hale-Bopp. The letter also claimed that the Pope was aware of, and deeply concerned about, the companion object.    

Chuck Shramek suggests that a possible reason for such concern is the fact that comets may contravene modern science's accepted model of the solar system, and that the scientific establishment is now trying to curb speculation and spread of knowledge.

Following this theme, there is a long-standing theory that the ring of debris orbiting between Mars and Jupiter - the asteroid belt - is evidence of a galactic catastrophe that occurred millions, perhaps billions, of years ago. The approach of Hale-Bopp, and the relative silence of the establishment on the comet, led many to believe that it was a more immediate catastrophe that was being kept quiet.

Anyone with even a passing interest on astronomy will know that it is extremely unlikely that a comet will strike the Earth, but were one to o so, it would be liable to pose a significant threat to life on this planet. Such an event is now widely believe to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period.

Astronomers predicted that Comet Hale-Bopp's route would carry it no closer to Earth than 210 million km, but they also found that it would pass relatively close to Jupiter. that planet's great mass can exercise a strong effect on the path of comets, and perhaps even destroy them.

Collision Course.

Some voices in the debate believed that Hale-Bopp had been torn to pieces by Jupiter - a theory that may explain the images of the companion object. This would have deflected the comet away from the Earth, at best the Hale-Bopp comet was 30-40km across, while the one that destroyed the dinosaurs was only 15km, if it had of hit it would have been catastrophic for life on the planet.  Thankfully though it did not. 

Sources: The X Factor