MovieChat Forums > Friends (1994) Discussion > The Comet in S7E12 Up All Night

The Comet in S7E12 Up All Night

posted 5 months ago by CarolTheDabbler (518)
2 replies | jump to latest

Ross takes The Gang up to the roof to see a comet "streaking by." They keep watching, but don't see anything happen.

I realize that Ross is a paleontologist, not an astronomer, but he's expecting the comet to act like a meteor. It's meteors that "streak by" (and there may be lots of them on the same night). Even though a comet is moving at great speed, it's so far away that it appears to stand still. So you don't sit and wait for a comet to show up, you look around and try to find it, which may be really easy, very difficult, or anywhere between.

When I was a kid, I saw a comet without even knowing it was there, simply because it looked like a comet and happened to be where I was absent-mindedly looking. But I couldn't find the famous Halley in 1986 until my uncle (an amateur astronomer) told me exactly where to look, because it was just a little fuzzy spot, nowhere near as spectacular as it sometimes is. (Oh well, it'll be back in 2061.)

[–] Theman (1069) 5 months ago

This comet in that episode was coming very close to the earth so it was big and fast. In fact in the original script but never filmed the comet hits the apartment to the terror of onlookers which was how the series was supposed to end.

[–] CarolTheDabbler (518) 5 months ago

Good heavens! If they were seriously considering such a series finale, thank goodness they changed their minds.

Even very small comets are thought to have nuclei with a diameter of about a city block (500 feet / 150 meters). Something that size (even with a relatively low density) hitting Manhattan would presumably obliterate the entire island, at the very least.