Setting Jam: Hyperbolic Trajectory

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by PTTG

What's a rumour someone might hear?

I'm telling you man, Halley never left at all! Come May 5th 2525, you'll be sorry!

The False Arks

Given the dearth of information on the interstellar colonization missions, the extreme amounts of money tossed around to fund these projects, and highly influential people involved, it's no surprise that these are huge fixtures in basically any conspiracy theory made up within the last century. They range from the practical: "The companies cheaped out."; to the impractical: "The colonists went into hiding and rule from the shadows!"; to the comically absurd: "Aliens stole the colony ship!", "They crashed into the painted edge of space!", or "It's so utopian there they don't have time to call back!"

The most enduring theory is the so-called "Halley Conspiracy". In 2207, Humans landed on Halley's Comet to construct an interstellar ark that would travel to 61 Cygni, where it is believed a habitable planet is located. Over the 23rd century, the Halley Ark gradually accelerated, and apparently broke orbit with the sun after a close pass of the sun around July 19th 2277. The mainstream version of events is that they exited on a faster schedule and their "goodbye message" was garbled and/or lost.

That's where the conspiracists come in; the general thrust of the theory is that they never exited at all, instead hiding the comet with some implausible stealth technology. The why's are generally vague, but one key detail is common to most versions of the theory is that the Halley Ark has been converted into kinetic weapon that will strike the Earth. There is no consensus why they would do this.

The obviousness of this calamity and a desire to avoid otherwise certain death has led many a conspiracy theorist to predict the collision of the Halley Ark. There have been predictions of a collision basically every year, but the major "canonical" years are 2342, 2404, 2457 and 2463. This year, there's a large roiling of a possible collision date on May 5th 2525. Do you believe that?