Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Is it just me, or is something extremely rare always happening, making apparently ker-azzy astronomical phenomena pretty commonplace? This Venus brouhaha must be at least the seventeenth time that some body has passed in front of the sun that I can remember. When I was seven (?) and Halley's Comet was last here, and everyone was all like, "Oh, it only comes every Big Number of years, you might just get to see it again..." I hoped and hoped that I'd still be around to catch it the next time. Couldn't care less now, there'll be a different extremely rare one next week, Ian's Comet or some such, only to be seen every 635 years. But Nigel's Comet will be the week after that (first time in a fortnight), and Simon's Comet will be round again soon, for only the third time in a gazillion years. Oooh. If you remove the particular from these events and just think of them as Cool Stuff, then they're pleasingly regular and not rare at all.
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