Poor William, he is clueless when it comes to astronomy. He gets his ideas from a bunch of buffoons known as the "Millennium Group", who are quite rightly held in absolutely no regard by anyone who can think critically, and a basically a laughing stock amongst astronomers. Laugh along as you realise William claims various heavenly occupants have told him about Hale-Bopp, Comet Lee, and now Comet West-Kohoutek-Ikemura (76P) and the destruction of Phobos, one of the moons of Mars.
In past times, throughout most of his career, William has made all sorts of fabrications about what goes on in the heavens. The hilarious thing, is that they are so obviously fake and easy to expose. I thought I'd just summarise the most recent stupidity.
HALE-BOPP
Starting with Hale-Bopp, William claimed that it was going to cause all sorts of conflagrations. In all fairness, the message came from the worlds worst seer in terms of accuracy, Yolandita, of California. You see, both William and she forgot that comets are much smaller than the sun. Now William was convinced that Hale-Bopp's damage would precede hi papacy. Well, if he waits about 10,000 more years, he'll maybe get to be Pope. When William was called on to explain his complete and utter failure in regard to Hale-Bopp, he sent this rather hilarious letter.
LEONID METEOR SHOWERS
In November 1998, William had heard about the Leonid meteor shower, which happens every so often, about ever 13 years or so reaching a peak. This meteor shower is associated with Comet Tempel-Tuttle. On the morning of November 17th 1966, this shower produced rates estimated at 10,000 events per hour! Now of course, Hollywood had produced both "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" that year, and so the media was full of news about the approaching peak. So William decided to get on the bandwagon, exhorting everyone to "pray for the Astronauts", who at that time were on the shuttle. Of course nothing happened, but William probably thinks this was because of their prayers being answered, and nothing whatsoever to do with normal celestial mechanics, of which he is clueless.
COMET LEE
In June 1999, William got all twitterpated, after those buffoons, the Millennium Group, got all twisted and worked up about Comet Lee, discovered by an Australian Steve Lee. It's quite an innocent little comet, not causing harm to anyone. But neither the Millennium Group, nor William Kamm let the truth get in the way of a good conspiracy story, especially when it feeds their fantasy. So after he got stuff from the millennium group, William claimed Jesus Christ himself told him about the comet, and how it was more dangerous than Hale-Bopp, and it would cause "electrical shock waves throughout the solar system". Well you see, this is in keeping with the rather unscientific notion held by the Millennium Group, that comets are balls of plasma, emitting stuff (rather laughable), causing earthquakes and all sorts of conflagration. So William tried to explain that God told him that Hale-Bopp was delayed, and the real danger was from Comet Lee. Ahh well, nothing happened there either...
He had another go at Comet Lee again, later in the year, but sadly for him, he blew it yet again. Oh by the way, Australia did not get invaded by Indonesia. I wonder what lies he told to his followers to explain that one away.
MARS AND WEST-KOHOUTEK-IKEMURA
So even after all of his failures so far, William has to try again. Never mind that he knows nothing about Astronomy, he doesn't let the truth get in the way of a good prophecy.
So he lined up himself for the biggest bit of dumb prophecy and claims he has made since he claimed that 2 guys were being kept alive by the angels in a landslide at Thredbo (how did you explain that failure to your followers William?)
The Millennium Group (remember, these nuts get off on conspiracy claims, and just plain bad science) put it about that NASA was hiding the facts about Comet West-Kohoutek-Ikemura. So William, never letting an opportunity go by, jumped up to claim that some heavenly occupants had warned him about this, and that the comet was going to destroy the moon Phobos (one of Mars' moons), and send bits of it hurtling toward Earth. Oh dear. Comet West-Kohoutek-Ikemura missed Mars by 6 million kilometers, as it always would. You see, there are things called celestial mechanics involved.
When you understand them, you can predict the paths of planets, comets, asteroids, and yes SPACECRAFT with great accuracy. William doesn't realise that the same methods for tracking spacecraft all the way to the outer reaches of the Solar System, are used to predict the motions of other bodies, including comets. The maths is there for anyone. Now most comets are discovered by amateur astronomers, (because it's fun), and after a few sightings, you work out the ephemeris (that's the orbital parameters, or the predictions of where it is going to be at successive times). Now the ephemeris gets refined the more times you take measurements, but you get a fairly good idea where things go early on.
Astronomers use ephemerides to predict where they should point their telescopes to see things like comets. So it's kind of useless to have ephemerides when the comet is hidden by the sun for instance (when it's on the opposite side of the sun). Similarly, I have a program which predicts when satellites will go overhead for me to look at. It's kind of stupid for me to print out predictions of when the satellite will pass directly underneath me now isn't it?
But here's the Millennium Group asking NASA and JPL to waste time giving them, a bunch of kooks, useless information.
So then William claims Jesus Christ himself told him that Comet West-Kohoutek-Ikemura had destroyed the moon Phobos, and it was heading to Earth, one bit to fall in the USA, one bit to fall in Paris, and one bit to fall in the Pacific. WWWWRRRROOOOONNNNNGGGGG!!!
So William claims that NASA and the US government is involved in a coverup. What he forgets is that there are over 4 million amateur astronomers in the world, most of them pretty smart, including hundreds of them, possibly thousands, who can calculate an ephemeride. So William, I guess they must be in on the conspiracy as well huh? Well, I haven't received any money from NASA or anyone to be part of any huge conspiracy.
So how are you going to explain this little bit of buffoonery to your followers William? I hope you have a VERY good explanation, because you are going to lose a few more followers as this one fails and gets exposed for what it is.
Oh, Where does William get Kohoutek from? Lazlo Kohotuek has about 6 comets named after him, including the famous one in 1973, which everyone was expecting to be a big one. It was an interesting comet, but not spectacular, for a variety of reasons. William caught that name up around then.