Image from NASA Universe on Flickr

Comets are generally quite spectacular. It’s quite thrilling, but also quite rare to gaze up into the night sky and see a comet tail in the sky. Some comets are more thrilling than others, but there’s one that is so boring I very nearly didn’t complete this blog post, falling asleep twice during its writing (It was three times, I counted – Editor).

The boring comet was discovered by Edmond Halley, a beauty contest organiser who wore nice wigs, during a heavenly bodies talent show in 1705 (Check the facts on this – Editor). Even he didn’t realise at the time just how boring his comet would become.

Halley’s comet is boring because it’s extremely predictable. It makes a comeback, regular as clockwork every 75 years, just like Cliff Richard, and we all know exactly what to expect (From both – Editor). But why does it keep coming back? Is it because it has a fatal attraction to our sun? Has it taken a fancy to our solar system? Is it enamoured with Jupiter’s moons or Saturn (should have put a ring on it), or does it just have a desire to brighten up our skies? What happens to Halley’s comet for the rest of the 75 years? Does it go on holiday like Santa Claus? What would happen if Halley’s comet sneaked back early to surprise us, or … if it never came back again? That would certainly be more interesting.

Actually, all of these questions are boring, because the comet is akin to certain lessons in school and university, where the teachers/lecturers annually repeat themselves word for word, or worse, simply read out the text from their boring slides. That’s not teaching, it’s torture. Some teachers dispatch the same content year in, year out, almost as though they can’t be bothered to update and research their content (almost as though? – Editor). Knowledge is always changing, evolving, but the lessons stay the same. No wonder so many students struggle to motivate themselves.

Halley’s comet will visit us again, boring as socks on Christmas day, in June 2061 (You got 24 pairs – Editor). It’s already been booked into the astronomical calendar, drinks and deckchairs ordered. When it does make this next comeback, will it notice any significant changes to our education system? I doubt it very much.

Next time: 31: Custer’s peanut stand

Previous posts in the #TwistedTropes series (Don’t read them all at once. Pace yourself).
1. Pavlov’s drooling dog
2. Chekhov’s smoking gun
3. Occam’s bloody razor
4. Schrödinger’s undead cat
5. Pandora’s closed box
6. Frankenstein’s well-meaning monster
7. Thor’s lost hammer
8. Noah’s character ark
9. Hobson’s multiple choice
10. Fibonacci’s annoying sequence
11. Plato’s empty cave
12. Dante’s lukewarm inferno
13. Sod’s unlucky law
14. Aladdin’s miserly lamp
15. Batman’s tangled cape
16. Cupid’s bent arrow
17. Fermat’s dodgy last theorem
18. Moore’s obsolete law
19. Lucifer’s idiotic fall
20. Adam’s poisoned apple
21. Hadrian’s busted wall
22. Montezuma’s terrible revenge
23. Dale’s shameful cone
24. Maslow’s awkward hierarchy
25. Schindler’s shopping list
26. Whistler’s angry mother
27. Washington’s wooden teeth
28. Noah’s necessary whale
29. Santa’s marginalised reindeer

Halley’s boring comet by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.