One of the most famous comets is heading back in the direction of Earth. On December 9, 2023, Halley’s comet reached aphelion–its furthest point from the sun–made its turn towards our planet for its next appearance in the 2060s. But don’t worry about Halley’s return. It’s not even close to a collision course with Earth. Like all the comets we know of, it’s made of dusty ice, some of which burns off to create a majestic tail as the body approaches the sun.
Currently, the comet is further out than Neptune, a bit over three billion miles from the sun—so far that it’s out of sight for even our largest telescopes and has been since 2003. Halley’s comet will make its next swing by our planet on July 29th, 2061, right on time with its 76 year cycle.
So why is this one space rock, out of the millions in the solar system, so widely talked about, and why has it fascinated humans so intensely throughout history?
People have actually been watching it for generations, with recorded sightings as old as 240 BCE. For most of human history, we didn’t know what to call this mysterious visitor from outer space. Somewhat unsurprisingly, something so unknown and (at that time) unpredictable was widely feared and seen as a bad omen or harbinger of disruptive change. The comet supposedly heralded the defeat of Attila the Hun in 451 and the Ottoman Empire’s widespread conquest in 1456. Genghis Khan even took the comet as a sign for where to lead his armies in 1222, drastically expanding his territory and fathering many kids along the way—so many, in fact, that 1 in 200 men may be his descendents.
“Naturally no one knew these appearances were all the same comet until Halley made his…
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