Halley's Comet

Nexor references Halley's Comet in the context of its 1910 approach, citing the mass public panic that followed astronomer Camille Flammarion's speculation that cyanogen gas in the comet's tail posed an extinction-level threat to Earth. The dispatch frames this episode as a historical case study in expert-fuelled mass panic, using it to illustrate how authoritative voices can generate widespread fear from speculative rather than confirmed data.