Excitement gave way to shamefaced silence last week in the scientific world when what was supposed to be a comet at the sensationally low altitude of a thousand feet turned out to be nothing more than the light of a passing plane.
When astronomers from the Harvard and Oak Ridge Observatories had computed the altitude of the "comet" from comparing photographs taken at both observation stations, scientific reserve vanished in the excitement of the sensational discovery.
The bubble broke when some prosaic scientist suggested that the meteor was only an airplane's running light. The astronomers retired to their telescopes.
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