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ZetaTalk dated August 17, 1995

Hale-Bopp was pronounced a comet when it does not, truly, meet the requirements for a comet. Do not the bureaucrats who assign numbers and name the celestial body after the finder check on these matters? No! They have a minimum requirement, three points, and if these line up into what can be computed as a reasonable orbit - all is well and all is accepted. What this means is that three people, working in collusion, can produce a fraud. In fact, since the proofs, the three points, can come from a single source, it only takes one person to produce a fraud. Without the 1993 image the recorded orbit of Hale-Bopp is so many pin-points on the head of a pin. They are all in the same place.

What about Hale-Bopp marks it as a comet? On appearance it is an exploding star - appearing suddenly and increasing rapidly in brightness, diffuse in appearance rather than with the coma expected of a comet, and having no tail to speak of. There are several irregularities that should have prevented Hale-Bopp from being labeled comet so breezily by the bureaucrats so cooperatively looking the other way.

Pick the orbit you want, calculate back in time and alter a single image accordingly, pepper a few hundred points across the diffuse brightness of an exploding star - and voile, you have a comet!

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