We're all going to die! 1910 edition

[WLJ]

The History Guy and The Halley Comet Scare of 1910.
Of particular interest and relevant to 2020 IMHO is how he notes science made people panic more not less

Halley's Comet and the End of the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcUSxV_zHQM

[K Frame]

Heaven's gate 1910?

[Angel Eyes]

Heaven's gate 1910?

... and the first thing I thought of was that awful movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmTI3xYO6mQ

[K Frame]

I've seen Heaven's Gate, both the original cut and the later director's cut(s).

I thought it was actually quite... good. Yeah, the original was unwieldy and I guess long-winded... but the director's cut did a pretty good job of tightening it up. And it didn't have much association with actual reality...

Going to have to watch it again.

[lee n. field]

A. Conan Doyle's novel "The Poison Belt" was about this time.  " Poison Gas from Space!!! We're all gonna die!!! "

[MechAg94]

I believe my US history book included mention of this in a general sense.  Maybe that was because Halley's comet was on the way at the time. 

It was a bit disappointing in 1986.  My Dad and I got up early a few mornings to see it.  My great grandfather was a teenager when it came through in 1910.

[K Frame]

Hugely disappointing in 1986.

My Great Grandfather was a ranch hand in the Dakotas in 1910 and later became a writer. One of the things that he wrote was his account of seeing Haley's Comet.

[230RN]

Just FYI and general interest, a list of the major meteor showers:

https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/

The next "big" one is the Leonids, which wil peak on the night of  Nov 16-17, 2020.  The moon will be 5% full.

[MechAg94]

Just FYI and general interest, a list of the major meteor showers:

https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/

The next "big" one is the Leonids, which wil peak on the night of  Nov 16-17, 2020.  The moon will be 5% full.

I heard Randall Carlson mention many of the past impacts appear to have happened when the Earth passes through a couple of those meteor shower orbits.  Supposedly still some big rocks moving in those bands.

[230RN]

Well, the Leonids appear to have been a bit scary at times.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2017/08/03/the-greatest-meteor-show-of-all-time/

(Some boiler plate --skip down a bit until  you get to this):

So, if not this year’s Perseid shower, what was the greatest meteor show of all time? I think many meteor researchers would give that award to the 1833 Leonids, which had rates of tens of thousands, perhaps even 100,000, meteors per hour. During a good Perseid shower under ideal conditions, you can see about one meteor per minute. Now imagine yourself being back in 1833, on the night of Nov. 12. Looking outside, you would see something like 20 to 30 meteors PER SECOND. No wonder we read accounts like this one from South Carolina (Chambers, A Handbook of Descriptive and Practical Astronomy, Volume 1, 1889)
(Description follows.)

See also:
http://www.astronomytrek.com/the-great-leonids-meteor-storm-of-1833/

There are some interesting remarks in there regarding scientific orthodoxy.

MechAg94's remarks about size distribution are relevant, and MillCreek's wisecrack about beginning with a 4 (as in .45 ACP, .44 Magnum or .454 Casull) was hilarious.

Terry, 230RN

[Fly320s]

Well?   Did we survive?

[WLJ]

Well?   Did we survive?

Yes but we got dumber

[230RN]

Here's an interesting item from the Chelyabinsk meteor in Russia (February 2013).  What to do in any case of a sudden bright light from outside:

A fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, was hailed as a hero after saving 44 children from imploding window glass cuts. Despite not knowing the origin of the intense flash of light, Karbysheva thought it prudent to take precautionary measures by ordering her students to stay away from the room's windows and to perform a duck and cover maneuver and then to leave the building. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the blast arrived and window glass severed a tendon in one of her arms and left thigh; none of her students, whom she ordered to hide under their desks, suffered cuts.[74][75] The teacher was taken to a hospital which received 112 people that day. The majority of the patients were suffering from cuts.[75]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

So don't get curious about that flash outside.  Most of the injuries in that whole meteor event were due to flying glass.

Flash?  Duck!

[MechAg94]

Flash?  Duck!

Sounds like a Daffy Duck cartoon.

[MillCreek]

Sounds like a Daffy Duck cartoon.

Or the duck and cover civil defense cartoons from the 50's: Bert the turtle.

[K Frame]

"Just FYI and general interest, a list of the major meteor showers:"

Correction...

That's a list of every damned date that will have rain, snow, heavy cloud cover, or pea soup ground fog in Northern Virginia.

[RoadKingLarry]

Several years ago I was working at night during the Geminids show. Traveling through a Sparsely populated area I was treated to several simultaneous meteors. One of which was as flash so bright I had to pull off the road for a few minutes to let my eyes readjust, I was seeing nothing but but afterimages of the bright green flash. It had been like a flash bulb going off right in my face.
 

[230RN]

^ It wuz a flyin' saucer covering itself in a pack of meteors.  Clever bastages.

Wuz the afterimage green or the actual flash?  (I think I asked you that before.)

[RoadKingLarry]

I remember the flash being green.