The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1883-03-14
MeteOrs.

MeteOrs.
Moteors may be divided into two
classes. says Professor Young. The
majority of those actually seen to fall
are stones; but now and then we find
Il lump Of almost pure iron. 1t is a
common idea that most meteors are
pure iron. That is not so; for of the
200 or GOO specimens which have been
seen to fall, only ten, so far rs | know,
are iron. There are not unfrequently
large masses Of iron picked up, which
cannot be accounted for, and which sci
entiiic men have generally held tobe
meteors. But | must confess TO soTfe-
skeptc!sm about that. Those great
masses, from Greenland, shown in the
Centennial exhibition, / am inclined
TO think at least doubtful.
As to the other class of meteors. you
may go out and look at the sky any
evening, and you will see after a
few minutes some LITTLE star shoot
across the sky and fade away. If you
watch the whole sky, if you have eyes
big enough to do it-and if not YOU
can get a group of friends to help you
you will find that there are forty
visible in an hour at a favorable time
in any one place on the surface OF
the earth. And you find this
also: that there are about
twice as many in the morning-be.
tween 5 and 6 o'clock-as there are
between 5 and 6 o'clock in the even.
ing; and little calculation as to the
distance at which we see them and the
height at which they appear shows
this number would mount up to, not
200 or 500 a day, but something like
100000 or 100000 day striking
the earth. That is Professor Newton's
estimate, 7,500,000-while some COM
pute it at as low a number as $500
600 and others as high as 100000
day. There are little bodies of matter
flying through space with velocities
like those of the comets, and the earth
encounters more in the morning than
in the evening, for the reason that we
are then on the headlight of the loco
motive, as it were, br on the front of
the earth as it moves around the sun,
While in the evening we are in the
rear, and we see only those which
Overtake the earth and strike it from
behind. And so, as they are moving
in all directions in space, we do not
experience as many OF the phenomena
as when we are in front, or during the
morning hours. These meteors are
some of them very bright, and 1 am
not sure that they can be distin-
guished from those that send
pieces to the earth. On this point
scientific operation is divided. A
great many scientific men claim that
these shooting-stars that we see all the
time are precisely the same us the
Larger meteors that drop pieces on the
earth, except as to their magnitude.
Many of these are so small that they
burn up entirely in the air, according
to that view of the case. Others hold
to the contrary, and / am rather dis
posed to think with them, for this rea-
son that when these meteors are ex-
eesdingly numerous, some being
brighter than Venus or Mercury, we
never see them come to the ground nor
hear from them at all; as, for instance,
in the great star-shooting showers of
1888 and 1867 nothing came down, al.
though the sky was full of stars. Ny
father has described it as like snow
storm, although in place of the snow.
flakes it was showing stars.
AS for the distance of these from
the earth, they appear at as great an
elevation as seventy-fve to eighty
miles, and disappear after shooting
about forty miles through the air.
Their velocity is about the same as that
Of other meteors, averaging perhaps a
little less, as they are more checked by
the air. AS for the materials in them,
we cannot get hold of them to exam
inc them. Ii is ONLY occasionally that
we get a shot on the wing by means of
the SpeCtrOscope, which shows lines of
sodium and magnesium, easily made,
out, and occasionally iron. There is,
in fact, good deal of reason for sus-
pecting the presence Of consider
able iron in many of them.