Armageddon at Jupiter

Abstract

July 16, 1994, was the day that Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 left the solar system and entered history. But I woke up that morning in my Washington hotel room, not to the sound of trumpets but to the ticking of my old watch. I saw the date: “16.” So this is the day, I thought sleepily. On this day we would find out about that comet which had consumed our lives for the past 15 months. I fielded two phone calls before I was even in the shower—one from a reporter and the other from a young Montreal hairdresser who wished to discuss a series of dreams she had about crashing comets. I gave her points for persistence at least; she somehow found out where and how to reach me. She wasn’t the only one who was dreaming about comets these days. I hung up the phone and thought of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.¹