“From a score of well-observed original orbits it is shown that the "new" long-period comets generally come from regions between about 50000 and 150000 A. U. distance. The sun must be surrounded by a general cloud of comets with a radius of this order, containing about 1011 comets of observable size; the total mass of the cloud is estimated to be of the order of 1/10 to 1/100 of that of the earth. Through the action of the stars fresh comets are continually being carried from this cloud into the vicinity of the sun.”

— Jan Oort

[The structure of the cloud of comets surrounding the Solar System and a hypothesis concerning its origin, Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands, 11, 408, 91–110, 3 January 1950, 91, https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/6036/BAN_11_91_110.pdf?sequence=1]

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Jan Oort 5

Dutch astronomer 1900–1992

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“Comets are flying around the solar system. As they near the sun, they develop a tail as material is blown off by the solar wind. Most astronomers agree that comets cannot be more than 10,000 years old. They would have completely disappeared by now. Some scientists have recognized this as a serious problem for the theory that the earth is billions of years old, so they have proposed a new theory that new comets are constantly being introduced into the solar system to replace the old ones that burn out. They say they are coming from the “Oort Cloud.” No one has ever seen this Oort cloud, Oort never saw the Oort cloud! There is NO scientific evidence for its existence, but in their mind, this answers the serious problem the short lives of comets creates. There is a simpler answer, of course: the universe is NOT billions of years old!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 38

“The article indicates how three facts concerning the long-period comets, which hitherto were not well understood, namely the random distribution of orbital planes and of perihelions, and the preponderance of nearly-parabolic orbits, may be considered as necessary consequences of the perturbations acting on the comets.”

Jan Oort (1900–1992) Dutch astronomer

“The combined effects of the stars and of Jupiter appear to determine the main statistical features of the orbits of comets.”

Jan Oort (1900–1992) Dutch astronomer

“This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”

Isaac Newton book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), Scholium Generale (1713; 1726)
Source: The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Context: This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, these being form'd by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially, since the light of the fixed Stars is of the same nature with the light of the Sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems. And lest the systems of the fixed Stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those Systems at immense distances one from another.

“To make way for the regular and lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets, it's necessary to empty the Heavens of all Matter, except perhaps some very thin Vapours, Steams or Effluvia, arising from the Atmospheres of the Earth, Planets and Comets, and from such an exceedingly rare Æthereal Medium”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 28 : Are not all Hypotheses erroneous in which Light is supposed to consist of Pression or Motion propagated through a fluid medium?
Opticks (1704)
Context: To make way for the regular and lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets, it's necessary to empty the Heavens of all Matter, except perhaps some very thin Vapours, Steams or Effluvia, arising from the Atmospheres of the Earth, Planets and Comets, and from such an exceedingly rare Æthereal Medium … A dense Fluid can be of no use for explaining the Phænomena of Nature, the Motions of the Planets and Comets being better explain'd without it. It serves only to disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies, and make the frame of Nature languish: And in the Pores of Bodies, it serves only to stop the vibrating Motions of their Parts, wherein their Heat and Activity consists. And as it is of no use, and hinders the Operations of Nature, and makes her languish, so there is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected. And if it be rejected, the Hypotheses that Light consists in Pression or Motion propagated through such a Medium, are rejected with it.
And for rejecting such a Medium, we have the authority of those the oldest and most celebrated philosophers of ancient Greece and Phoenicia, who made a vacuum and atoms and the gravity of atoms the first principles of their philosophy, tacitly attributing Gravity to some other Cause than dense Matter. Later Philosophers banish the Consideration of such a Cause out of natural Philosophy, feigning Hypotheses for explaining all things mechanically, and referring other Causes to Metaphysicks: Whereas the main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical.

“Man's skull represents the same infinity for the movement of conceptions. It is equal to the universe, for in it is contained all that sees in it. Likewise the sun and whole starry sky of comets and the sun pass in it and shine and move as in nature... Is not the whole universe that strange skull in which meteors, suns, comets and planets rush endlessly?”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

1921 - 1930
Source: 'God is not cast down', Malevich, 1922; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 65

“The double-sun system was relatively poor in comets; there were only a hundred billion of them.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 5 “Kiss the Blade” section I (p. 133).

“Confusion has seized us, and all things go wrong: The women have leaped from "their spheres" And instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along,And are setting the world by the ears!”

Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885) American abolitionist

From "The Times That Try Men's Souls", as quoted in [Squire, Belle, The Woman Movement in America: A Short Account of the Struggle for Equal Rights, https://books.google.com/books?id=SnOIAAAAMAAJ, 1911, A. C. McClurg & Company, 71-2]

“I compared it to H Geminorum and the small star in the quartile between Auriga and Gemini, and finding it so much larger than either of them, suspected it to be a comet.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

His discovery of Uranus. Scientific Papers, vol. 1, page 30 "Account of a Comet".

“Comets at the time were considered by theologians and the general public alike as a sign of divine anger, and God must have seemed pretty pissed off to create this one - it occupied more than half of the visible sky.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 5, The Dueling Of Large And Small Numbers, p. 89

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