The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-02-22
IT WON'T HIT US.
Mr.. Perrine's Comet, That is
Headed This Way.
We Shall Be Forty Million Miles
Away
WHEN 1T DOES ARRIVE
At the Spot Where We Now
Are.
The Comet is a Huge Gaseous
Dust Cloud.
DOES ARRIVE

NEW YORK, Feb. 22-Mr. Garrett
P. Serviss in an interview discussed the
report that Perrine's comet is travelling
towards the earth at rate of 100000
miles a day and that a collision was pos
sible.
He said: ST judge the comet is a
small one. perhaps as large as the earth.
That would not be very large for comet.
1t probably is not coming towards
US, as the dispatches say. If it
is there is no possibility of
its hitting us. We are trav-
cling 10 miles second and by March IA,
the date they talk about. its arriving we
shall be millions of miles from where we
are now. To hit us it must be travelling
towards the spot about 100000 miles
from where we shall be on March IA.
Whether or not the calculations that have
been made about the present comet, its
velocity and its course are exact depends
npOn whether the observations have
been good. 1t is not likely
comet is hazy body and it
is difficult to get good observations. If
it was poiut like star it could be told
with mathematical certainty just where
it would be at certain minute or hour,
but being a hazy thing, it is difficult 10
of condensation, and to tell exactly what
the comet is doing. You remember in
1892 it was thought for some days that
comet was going to hit us, and then It
was discovered that the comet was going
away from US instead of coming toward
us.
ga comet is not solid body like the
earth. 1t is made up of minute bodies.
We might compare it with dust cloud.
While in size it compares with the earth,
there is no comparison in the solidity of
the two. So far as we have been able
to learn, there are no large particles OF
matter in the comet. They are made up
other metal.
sour atmosphere is practically i'm
pervious to such a body. Seventy or
eighty miles above the earth, where the
atmosphere is so rare that the vacuum is
almost as good as that OF
Crooke's tube, there is still enough
resistance to disiutegrate and destroy a
body like a comet travelling with the
swiftness with. which a comet travels.
The particles would become infinitely
fine, no larger than the ultimate atoms
of m after. They would ultimately reach
the earth.
awhile in bulk or in space, the comet
may occupy the room of the earth, and in
that sense if it was as big as the earth il
is not packed solid like the earth. Take
an ordinary dust cloud for example; it
may cover a mile square of space, but if
the particles were compressed into the
smallest possible space they would occupy
very little room. So a comet as large as
the earth might not contain more than
enough matter to make layer one ten
thousandth of a millimetre deep, if
spread over the earth. If the comet was
made of solid chunks of matter, the re-
suit would be different.
"The heat generated by the contact
W it'll the atmosphere would be sufficient
to melt things. For instance, one hun
dred ton piece of iron might burn hole
as big as the state of New
York. Under the tremendous heat
the earth and stone in the
immediate neighborhood would be
vaporised Immediately. But there are
no large particles of matter in the
make up of comet. There
is Just one possibility of unpleasantness
in comets hitting the earth. That is,
the subsequent effects on the atmosphere.
1t would seem likely that the Amos
phere would be filed with; gaseous mat
ter, and if the comet was a very big one,
made up in part of gases. as they are, it
might induce matter into the Amos
phere deleterious to health. 1t might
give us the grip or predispose us to the
attack of other diseases"