Comet Hale-Bopp, discovered in 1995 was an unusually bright comet.

1995年发现的海尔-波普彗星是一颗异常明亮的彗星。

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When comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997, rumors surfaced that an alien spacecraft was following the comet - covered up, of course, by NASA and the astronomical community.

1997年，海尔—波普彗星出现的时候，有一种传言说有一艘外星人的飞船躲在该彗星的后面，当然了，这种谣言是从美国宇航局和天文学界传出来的。

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Either way, Hale–Bopp managed to travel billions of kilometers before giving up its messy ways, farther than any comet astronomers have ever seen.

不管怎样，海尔波普彗星已为摆脱其邋遢的形象而游走了数十亿公里，这样的壮举比其它任何天文学家所观测过的彗星都要更胜一筹。

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It was two amateurs, for example, who discovered the Hale-Bopp comet in 1995.

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They believed that they were about to be taken to a higher level by a spacecraft travelling in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet.

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Or so says David Eichler, lead author of a forthcoming Astrophysical Journal Letters paper positing that a sun-grazing comet roughly the size of Hale-Bopp (with a nucleus some 30 kms in diameter), could trigger cosmic ray-generating shockwaves large enough to initiate a global electromagnetic Armageddon.

FORBES: Sun-Grazing Comets As Triggers For Electromagnetic Armageddon