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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ "There was a large, bright comet the month before and after my birth, but with orbit changes over this kind of time frame, there's no way to be sure which one, or even if it was a short-period repeater (vs. a long-period, seen once in millennia like Kohoutek). $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 20, 2018 at 20:42
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    $\begingroup$ Well, the Wikipedia article about Halley's comet says that "Researchers in 1981 attempting to calculate the past orbits of Halley by numerical integration starting from accurate observations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could not produce accurate results further back than 837". That makes me think that we probably don't know the date that it passed by about 9,974 years ago. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 20, 2018 at 20:51
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    $\begingroup$ There are 6300 known comets, with more being discovered every year. Halley's Comet is merely one of the brighter ones. If Bob was born during the passage of a Great Comet, there's no good way to figure out which comet it was. (Further, comets lasting more than 50 close passes of the Sun are rare; the brighter a comet is, the less likely it is to survive.) $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 20, 2018 at 23:05