The Comet Cometh
For hundreds of years, some of the greatest minds on earth, were convinced a comet caused the great flood.
The earliest known hypothesis about a comet that had a widespread effect on human populations can be attributed to Edmond Halley, who in 1694 suggested that a worldwide flood had been the result of a near-miss by a comet.[43][44] The issue was taken up in more detail by William Whiston, a protégé of and popularizer of the theories of Isaac Newton, who argued in his book A New Theory of the Earth (1696) that a comet encounter was the probable cause of the Biblical Flood of Noah in 2342 BCE.[45] Whiston also attributed the origins of the atmosphere and other significant changes in the Earth to the effects of comets.[46