Paper: Mountain Democrat City: Placerville, California Date: Saturday, September 01, 1917
SHOTS FROM THE SKY
Meteors That Bombard Us and the Puzzle of Their Origin
Most persons have no comprehension of the actual bombardment to which the earth is continually subjected from the heavens. Millions of small meteors enter the atmosphere every twenty-four hours, and in addition to these it has been calculated that on the average not less than a hundred large meteorites strike the earth somewhere every year. The small meteors are totally consumed by the heat and friction, and only their slowly settling dust ever touches the earth's surface, although any one of them if not resisted by the air would hit with from twenty to a hundred times the velocity of the swiftest bullet. The big meteorites on the contrary, which frequently consist of solid iron, often get through the airy shield with enough of their original velocity left to bury themselves many feet in the hardest soil. They constitute a real peril. Although the chance of anybody being hit by a meteorite is almost infinitely small, yet the annuals of mankind show that a few persons have actually been killed by these strange shots from the sky. Whence do they come? The small meteors are apparently the debris of those hardly less mysterious bodies, comets, but nobody has yet suggested a satisfactory origin for the great meteorites. - Garrett P. Serviss in New York Journal. Please visit, www.MeteoriteArticles.com, a free on-line archive of meteor and meteorite articles. |
