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ACTIVIDAD 1
Lee la lectura y contesta las preguntas a continuación.

Comets
A Halley's Comet and the innumerable others that burn across the night skies have had a profound effect on
history. They have influenced literature, art, religion, and warfare, perhaps even evolution and the very
beginnings of life.

B For centuries comets were popularly seen as indications of disaster, portents of death, pestilence, wars,
5 drought, earthquakes, and floods. Modern science has dismissed many of these myths, but some persist
today. In a strange twist, scientists themselves are beginning to attribute great cataclysms of the past to what
the ancients called “hairy stars.”

C The Chinese, who recorded the appearances of comets as early as 613 B.C., thought that the bright specters
were celestial brooms handled by the gods to sweep the heavens free of evil, which then fell to earth bringing
10 wars, floods, droughts, and other disasters.

D Comets have carried that stigma ever since. Aristotle thought the night visitors were earthly "exhalations"
that rose into the atmosphere and were ignited in burning upper regions, causing drought and high winds on
earth. On its pass in A.D. 66, Halley's in the words of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, “hung like a
sword in the sky” and predicted the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

E 15 Halley's return in 451 was thought to portend the defeat of Attila the Hun's armies at Charlons by Flavius
Aetius. Comets came to be so closely associated with the deaths of great leaders, says Astronomer Donald
Yeomans that historians waited expectantly for celestial sign every time a monarch died. When Emperor
Charlemagne died in 814 and no comet appeared, Yeoman says, “Historians made one up and inserted it
to history.” Halley's appearance in 1066, complete with a forked tail, was joined into the renowned Bayeux
20 tapestry, which represented the Norman Conquest. Behind the comet's tail, above six cringing and pointing
figures (apparently Saxons), are words THEY ARE IN THE AWE OF THE STAR. While the Saxons may
have attributed their defeat to the comet, William the Conqueror probably forever afterward considered
comets to be good omens.

F In 1301 Halley's so inspired the Italian artist Giotto that in his famed nativity scene he portrayed the star of
25 Bethlehem as a comet. The comet heralded the descent of Turkish armies on Belgrade in 1456, and in the
same year was blamed for the birth of two-headed calves.

G Shakespeare’s works reflected the cometary myths of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In “Julius
Caesar”, for example, the Emperor’s wife, after seeing a comet, warns the noblest of Romans, “When
beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” But in the
30 same play, as Cassius and Brutus plot Caesar's assassination, Cassius says, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not
in the stars but in ourselves.

H The winds of change, however, were slow to reach Boston, wherein 1682 the Puritan minister Increase
Mather, awestruck by the same comet that inspired Edmond Halley, asked the members of his congregation
if they would continue their evil ways “until God sends his arrows from heaven, to smite them down into the
35 grave.”

I Indeed, superstition about comets has persisted into the 20th century. As Halley's came into view in 1920,
some residents of Chicago prepared themselves for death by cyanogen-gas poisoning when, as it was widely
predicted, the earth passed through the comet's tail. As recently as 1970. Vietnamese farmers trembled at
the sight of the “Sky Broom,” the unexpectedly vivid passage of Bennett's comet.

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J 40 The 20th century has generated some notions about comets that seem more fantastic than the ancient
myths. British Astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have suggested that over hundreds
of years, primitive biological entities, perhaps even cells, developed within some comets. These may have
been delivered to the earth as the first form of terrestrial life by a comet that impacted billions of years ago.
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule's structure, and Organic Chemist Leslie Orgel have
45 proposed a less fanciful theory: Comets brought with them the chemical precursors of life, in the form of
amino acids and other molecules.

K That comets do occasionally strike the earth seems certain. Some scientists think a tiny piece of a comet,
exploding in the atmosphere above Siberia in 1908, caused a tremendous explosion and fireball in the
Tunguska region, downing trees in a 200-sq-mi. area and knocking the nearest residents (40 miles away)
50 off their feet.

L During the past few years. evidence has been accumulating to support Physicist Luis Alvarez’s theory that
a giant comet (or asteroid) hit the earth 65 million years ago, pulverizing a huge area and spreading so much
debris into the atmosphere that the skies darkened for months, temperatures dropped, and much of the life
on earth -most notably the dinosaurs- died. It was the death of the dinosaurs, many evolutionists believe,
55 that enabled man's tiny mammalian ancestors to emerge from hiding, occupy the environmental niches left
vacant by the great creatures and other destroyed species, and evolve into Home sapiens. Impacts by
comets may have been responsible for mass extinctions of life at other times in the past and scientists are
certain that it can happen again.

I. Lee el texto rápidamente e indica en qué párrafo se abordan los siguientes temas:
1. La influencia de los cometas en las religiones de los Estados Unidos. _____
2. Los cometas como portadores de desastres en la antigüedad. _____
3. La aparición de un cometa en un cuadro navideño. _____
4. La teoría de que un cometa provocó la extinción de los dinosaurios. _____
5. Los cometas en las obras de Shakespeare. _____

II. De acuerdo con el grupo o personaje mencionado, escribe los diferentes nombres dados a los cometas.
a. Los hombres de la antigüedad. ____________________
b. Los chinos. ____________________
c. Aristóteles. ____________________
d. Donald Yeoman. ____________________

III. Relaciona los siguientes temas con los personajes indicados.

a. Literatura ( ) La teoría de Luis Álvarez
b. Pintura ( ) La creencia de Increase Mather
c. Religión ( ) La teoría de Fred Hoyle y Chandra Wickramasingle
d. Historia ( ) Las obras de Shakespeare
e. Origen de la vida ( ) La pintura de Giotto
f. Evolución ( ) El punto de vista de Flavio Josephus

IV. Elige la opción que mejor complete cada reactivo.

1. Actualmente la ciencia ha dado un cambio respecto a los cometas y empieza a considerarlos como
a) inofensivos e injustamente calificados causantes de desgracias.
b) un tipo de estrellas “con cabellos”.
c) algo que podría tener relación con grandes desgracias del pasado.

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2. Los chinos
a) pensaban que los cometas eran escobas que trían buena suerte.
b) pensaban que los cometas caían a la tierra y traían males.
c) registraron la aparición de los cometas antes de 613 A.C.

3. Aristóteles
a) pensaba que los cometas eran de origen celestial.
b) fue el primero en atribuir desgracias a la aparición de cometas.
c) pensaba que los cometas no eran de origen celestial.

4. Los historiadores de la época de Carlomagno

a) inventaron la aparición de un cometa.
b) al ver aparecer un cometa, predijeron la muerte del emperador.
c) no se dieron cuenta de la aparición de un cometa que presagiaba la muerte del emperador.

5. Guillermo el Conquistador
a) fue derrotado por los sajones.
b) derrotó a los sajones.
c) mandó representar el cometa Halley en un tapiz.

6. En las obras de Shakespeare

a) los cometas no siempre intervienen en el destino de los hombres.
b) los cometas aparecen hasta en la muerte de los limosneros.
c) se niega la influencia de los cometas en el destino de la realeza.

7. El ministro puritano Increase Mather

a) coincidía con lo que se había dicho antes sobre los cometas.
b) consideraba al cometa Halley como un castigo divino a su congregación.
c) se maravilló ante el cometa e inspiró a E. Halley a estudiarlo.

8. En el siglo XX
a) el cometa Halley puso en peligro la vida de residentes de Chicago.
b) el cometa Halley provocó un temblor en las regiones rurales de Vietnam.
c) sigue habiendo prejuicios sobre los cometas.

9. Hoyle y Wickramasinghe
a) están de acuerdo con la teoría de Crick y Orgel acerca del origen de la vida en la tierra.
b) plantean una teoría opuesta a las nociones fantásticas de otras épocas.
c) platean que un cometa trajo formas vivas a la tierra.

10. El suceso de Siberia en 1908 probablemente se debió

a) al choque y estallido de un cometa con árboles en Tunguska.
b) a un incendio en la región y no a un cometa, como se había dicho.
c) la caída de un pedazo de cometa en la zona de Tunguska.

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