‘Nostradamus doomsday comet’ set to bombard Earth with meteors TONIGHT
THE astronomical world is braced for the arrival of the Orionids meteor shower, which will light up the sky with shooting stars tonight.
But doom-mongers fear this beautiful celestial display will rain terror onto the face of Planet Earth and wipe out humanity in the process.
The meteor shower is actual produced by Halley's Comet, which sweeps by the planet once every 75 years.
We won't actually observe the comet, but we'll notice fragments of its tail as they hit our atmosphere and cause shooting stars to streak through the sky.
Very pretty, you might be thinking.
But if you listen to the prophecies of Nostradamus, you might think otherwise.
According to , Nostradamus wrote: "A fire will fall from the sky which will appear in several countries and will burn some palace: the fire will be great."
"At the end of this Moon and one part of another, one will doubt in several countries the conflagration of Vesuvius or Phaethon to come again one other time."
He actually said this would happen in 1607, yet we seem to have survived that fateful year.
Now, Nostradamus isn't exactly know for being 100 per cent accurate with his predictions, after having claimed that "King of Terror" would arrive in "1999 and seven months" to set about bringing an end to human civilisation.
But that hasn't stopped people from worrying that he might just have gotten the date wrong, meaning disaster is about to strike.
You'd think scientists would be able to have a better stab at accurately auguring the future.
Yet a French astronomer called Camille Flammarion sparked panic in 1910 when he said the passing of Halley's Comet "would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet".
He was worried the passing comet would rain huge amounts of the poison cyanogen on Earth, killing more or less everything.
This claim sparked global hysteria, with churches holding all night vigils and dodgy Del Boys flogging pills which were supposedly antidotes to the poison.
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to claim that the gravity of the comet would tug the Pacific into the Atlantic and flood the whole of America.
Guess what? Nothing happened.
Halley's Comet has been at the centre of starling and often ridiculous claims ever since astronomer Edmond Halley worked out the orbit of the comet, which was named after him.
He suggested a comet may have caused the biblical flood which caused Noah to take to his ark.
The celebrated astronomer also claimed the Earth was hollow.
Only a big old meanie would suggest many of his claims were too.
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