Why can the media never seem to cover science half-decently? They just don't have a clue of what they are talking about. In an article in the Daily Californian they talk about Hale-Bopp. Instead of calling it "Comet Hale-Bopp", they call it "the Hale-Bopp comet". How hard can it be for them to get the name right? Then they said that the comet grew bright as the eclipsed moon grew dim. Wrong! The comet did not grow brighter. It just become easier to see. If you are trying to see a distant object at night and someone is shining a flashlight in your face, you will have some trouble seeing it. When they remove the flashlight, you will see the distant object better. But it didn't get any brighter. It's just that you are no longer blinded by the flashlight. Same idea with the comet and the eclipsed moon.

Ok, now this next error is the most blatant of all. The article mentioned the comet's "wide parabola-like orbit". That's a new one on me. It's an elliptical orbit. If it were a parabola, it would not be a closed orbit and would only pass near the sun once ever. I dunno what they mean by "parabola-like", but I don't know why they don't just say elliptical, cuz that's what it is. The article also says that the eclipse last week made the comet one of the brightest objects in the sky. Nope. Wrong. The eclipse made the comet easier to see, but it didn't beocme any brighter. It was still the 4th brightest object in the sky, both during, just before, and just after the eclipse.

The article says, "When the comet approaches within 298,000,000 km of the sun, it forms a significant coma..." Why so exact? What's that about. Sounds pretty fishy to me. How does one define significant? The article also says, "When the comet's path of travel brings it in proximity of the sun, the comet instantly acquires its tails when nuclear particles from the sun bombard its nucleus." Instantly? Come on. These are all gradual processes. This statement makes as if nothing is happening and then in one instant the tails just form all at once in all their glory.

Another odd statement is the following, "Scientists project that after an average of 500 passes, most comets lose the required mass to maintain their momentum and become dead celestial bodies of asteroid." This statement doesn't make a lot of sense. If a comet loses mass, it will lose some momentum, but it makes no sense to say that it won't maintain it's momentum. If it is moving it has momentum. I don't think momentum was the right choice of words here. And "dead celestial bodies of asteroid" makes no sense. Asteroid is not a material, it's a mini-planet. Comets become like asteroids, they may even become asteroids, but they don't become bodies of asteroid. That doesn't make sense.

Another mistake. The article claims that Hale-Bopp reached perihelion (which is spelled incorrectly) on the evening of April 1st. Actually, it reached preihelion on April 1st at about 3:15 am Greenwich Mean time, which is the evening on March 31st in California.

That's a lot of errors for one article. Pretty outrageous if you ask me. You'd think they'd have someone with a half a brain proofreading the article. Afterall, this newspaper represents UC Berkeley.