A Comet Tale (for twenty-something year olds)

I like being scientifically accurate but the above image is unfortunately not to scale. The comet would not be visible if it was. It is simply an imaginative representation!

Do you know that the average long-term comet takes up to millions of years to complete one revolution around the sun? I find it quite similar to someone in their twenties. Obviously not because of the orbital period of the comet. Long-term comets usually have very high “eccentricity”- their orbits are highly elliptical (oval-like), their movements as though they are slingshot around the sun and flung straight to the edge of the solar system, where the sun’s gravitational tug pulls them back in. Their orbits are also tilted several degrees from the orbital plane of the planets and other objects in the inner solar system. They can revolve round the sun in the exact opposite direction of both the sun’s rotation and the planets’ revolution- which is not normal. They travel millions of kilometers to the outer sphere of the solar system (the Oort cloud) and come right back and fall to the sun.

If you think about it, all celestial bodies trapped in orbits are endlessly performing the same Sisyphean task of falling around their captor at mind-boggling speeds. This may be a bit similar to being an adult, sure. Sad, but that’s also not the point I’m trying to make. These comets seem to have- for lack of a better word- personality. Being one of the lighter remnants of the solar and other star systems, they come from the mostly inert Oort cloud where they float around lazily until by some gravitational accident, they begin to fall into the centre. If not for these accidents, they wouldn’t get close to the sun at all.

A comet is simply a coarse ball of rock and methane ice for most of its life, sleepily freefalling into the Sun for millions of years, almost in a straight line. But at some point when it starts to feel its closeness to the sun, the comet has its brutal wake up call to reality- the sun is very close, and very warm- increasingly so. Some comets are unable to avert disaster and fall right into the sun at the end of their first journey. A comet that achieves a stable orbit however, is able to consistently avoid this every time by a cosmic hairbreadth.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t panic. As it gets more tightly wound in its orbit, its orbital speed increases dangerously. Gas and dust tails develop from it, blown away by the solar wind. The comet literally begins to sublimate (turn from solid to gas) from the sun’s energy. The comet’s incredible acceleration remains just under control as it swings violently around the sun like a vehicle driver who has just realized the brakes don’t work, swerving to prevent a crash. At this point, it has just got around the sun- and then leaves it almost at escape velocity, the speed required to leave the solar system forever. But it doesn’t. It comes back every time it completes its orbit, performing the same dangerous manoeuvre over and over.

If a comet could speak about its experience, it would say, “I been sleeping for a long time and when I open my eyes, what do I see but the big ol’ ball of gas I’m falling into? I’m losing control, seems to be nuffin’ I can do. So I say to myself, Bob, you got one shot. And then you can sleep again for thousands more years. I’m speeding up, and I’m just a couple million of them kilometers close to Big Man, and it look like I lost control for one damn second. But the next second I’m speeding all the way back. My own momentum saved me.”

Why is the comet called Bob? I don’t know.

Being in your twenties can be frightening. You’ll find yourself having to make important decisions in comparatively short time periods, and they quite often define your life afterwards. Every decision is a return to the sun, a survival move to prevent possible catastrophe. There are long periods of stability too- an undergraduate course, a job- but they are punctuated by these critical moments where you and I feel like a single move can make or break everything. And I am not old enough to know whether it’s true or not. The panic, the anxiety before it turns out right (if it does), the flailing about, the deadly acceleration towards another inevitable milestone – it can be draining and exhilarating at the same time. I don’t know what to make of it.

I am a comet. You are a comet. We are all comets. Young people, perhaps more so than others.