The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1881-02-24
THE INDUSTRIOUS COMET
HAT the Neeromancers Predict viii
Destroy the Earth This Year.

Destroy Tie Earth THIS Year.
Among the dreadful prodigies oi
the year now opening there is said tc
be one which, If it shall come to pass
will eclipse all others, with the soli-
tary exception of the total destruction
of the world prophesied by Mother
Shipton. This is nothing less than
the falling into the sun of Il monstrous
comet, the impact Of which Will SO III
crease the heat of the central luminary
that, as some persons think, it will de-
stroy all animal and vegetable life on
the earth and render necessary, if ou1
planet is ever to be repeopled, either a
long process of evolution from those
germs which, as no less an authority
than Prof. Huxley believes, must at
some time in the night of the past have
been spontaneously generated, or else
new creative act. Thcre is reason to
believe that, even if the predicted
ccmet should impinge upon the sun,
this prophecy will not be justified by
the event in all It's particulars, but,
still there is no telling; all will depend
upon the amount of heat generated by
the impact, which in turn will depend
upon the size and density Of the omi-
nous stranger, and the velocity to
which it shall have attained at the
moment when 1t makes its direct at
tack ugon the very pivot and governor
of our system of planets.
According to the prediction there is
now somewhere in the universe a body
small, perhaps, in size, by reason Of
its distance from the sun, bat almost
inconceivably dense by reason OF the
amount Of matter which is crowded
within (which is proceeding direct
ly toward the sun and growing gradu-
ally larger as it approaches and is
expanded by the heat. 1t has long
been a favorite theory with astrono-
mers that the heat of the sun is kept
up, in part, at least, by the falling
into it Of cosmical matter-meteorites
and so forth-which it is known must
be endlessly gathered from space by
the overwhelming attraction of the sun.
Space is known, or at least has been
said by a great astronomer, to be as
full of such bodies (among which
comets must be roekoned) as the sea
is Of fishes. Perhaps, and very prob
ably, the greater amount of solar heat
is produced by the contraction of the
body of the sun itself as it is cooled by
radiation, but it is generally conceded
that at least a good proportion of the
heat is produced, as has been said, by
the impact Of those meteors. Matters
like this have been considered by such
physicists as Helmholtz, Clerk-Max
we'll, and Sir William Thomson, and
it has be.n mathematically demon
strated that sufficient heat might thus
be produced to keep the solar system
IN working order for time to which
the imagination of the last probable
man could hardly stretch in Is highest
flights into the future. The methods
by which the sun is supplied with fuel
have, indeed, hong been a subject OF
speculation among physical astrono-
niers, and both Sir Isaac Newton and
Button, who was something of an as
tronomer as we'll as naturalist,
held the view that the impact Of com
cts might be the source Of the heat-a
theory which, in essence, was frs
preached in more recent times by Mr.
Waterson in 1858. Whatever may
be the fact as to whether the solal
heat is really kept up in this way}it i
demonstrably certain that the impac
of great body, such as the approach
ing comet is said to be, would certainl,
produce such a molecular disturbanc
in the solar system as to occasion grea
damage to all living bodies whiel
should come under its influence, an,
that both animals and vegetable
would be destroyed by the wholesale