Editing Comet (section)

== In popular culture ==
{{See also|Comets in fiction|Category:Fiction about impact events}}

The depiction of comets in [[popular culture]] is firmly rooted in the long Western tradition of seeing comets as harbingers of doom and as omens of world-altering change.<ref name="Van Riper 29">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JADiKdzkJqsC&pg=PA27 |pages=27–29 |title=Science in Popular Culture: A Reference Guide |isbn=978-0-313-31822-1 |last1=Bowdoin Van Riper |first1=A |date=2002|publisher=Greenwood Publishing }}</ref> Halley's Comet alone has caused a slew of sensationalist publications of all sorts at each of its reappearances. It was especially noted that the birth and death of some notable persons coincided with separate appearances of the comet, such as with writers [[Mark Twain]] (who correctly speculated that he'd "go out with the comet" in 1910)<ref name="Van Riper 29" /> and [[Eudora Welty]], to whose life [[Mary Chapin Carpenter]] dedicated the song "[[Halley Came to Jackson]]".<ref name="Van Riper 29" />

In times past, bright comets often inspired panic and hysteria in the general population, being thought of as bad omens. More recently, during the passage of Halley's Comet in 1910, Earth passed through the comet's tail, and erroneous newspaper reports inspired a fear that [[cyanogen]] in the tail might poison millions,<ref>{{cite web |last=Ridpath |first=Ian |author-link=Ian Ridpath |title=Awaiting the Comet |work=A brief history of Halley's Comet |url=http://www.ianridpath.com/halley/halley11.htm |date=3 July 2008 |access-date=15 August 2013}}</ref> whereas the appearance of Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997 triggered the mass suicide of the [[Heaven's Gate (religious group)|Heaven's Gate]] cult.<ref>{{cite news |first=B. Drummond Jr. |last=Ayres |title=Families Learning of 39 Cultists Who Died Willingly |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/29/us/families-learning-of-39-cultists-who-died-willingly.html |quote=According to material the group posted on its Internet site, the timing of the suicides were probably related to the arrival of the Hale–Bopp comet, which members seemed to regard as a cosmic emissary beckoning them to another world |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=29 March 1997 |access-date=20 August 2013}}</ref>

In [[science fiction]], the [[impact event|impact of comets]] has been depicted as a threat overcome by technology and heroism (as in the 1998 films ''[[Deep Impact (film)|Deep Impact]]'' and ''[[Armageddon (1998 film)|Armageddon]]''), or as a trigger of global apocalypse (''[[Lucifer's Hammer]]'', 1979) or zombies (''[[Night of the Comet]]'', 1984).<ref name="Van Riper 29" /> In [[Jules Verne]]'s ''[[Off on a Comet]]'' a group of people are stranded on a comet orbiting the Sun, while a large crewed space expedition visits Halley's Comet in Sir [[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s novel ''[[2061: Odyssey Three]]''.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-12-06-bk-26609-story.html |title=The View From Halley's Comet – 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke |work=Los Angeles Times |last=Brin |first=David |date=6 December 1987}}</ref>