The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-11-29
The Mystery of the Meteors.
BY o. T. DENNY.

= VERY observer of the heavens,
L. even every child, has frequently
seen small bright bodies shoot
across the sky, with a brief, eyanes-
cent glory
Bright for moment, then lost to the
eye,"
fash in the night, and CLEAN in the
sky,
A voice from the heavens, a message
from space,
Revealing new truth to earths curious
race.
Such bodies are variously termed
meteors, meteorites, aerolites and
shooting stars, according to the mean
ing or the whin of the writer. If the
meteor actually succeeds in penetrat-
ing the atmosphere and falling upon
the earth it is usual to call it a me-
teorite; if 1t vanishes before falling
being consumed in the air-Me shall
call it simply a meteor. The term
shooting star, usually employed with
nearly the same meaning as meteor, is
misleading, and gives to children and
the misinformed the belief that the
stars actually leave their places in the
sky, and after Shooting above our
heads to considerable distance, either
burn up or fall upon the ground. Such
a belief is almost too absurd to need
correction; and yet the writer has fire.
quently found it with persons who
ought to know better. Since the stars
are thousands of times as large as the
earth, Shooting star" if it were
really star falling upon the earth,
would be like an elephant stepping
upon a mouse. One such star falling
upon the earth would wipe the earth
out of existence.
The number of meteors which can be
seen by an observer is much larger
than ordinarily supposed. If the sky
is clear from three to six meteors can
be seen almost any hour of the night
and at particular times the number is
much larger. About twice as many can
be seen before Sufl-up as after sun
set, because the observer is then on
the front of the earth in it's forward
motion.
Consequently he sees all the meteors
which meet the earth, as we'll as those
which the earth overtakes. In the
evening he sees only those which
overtake the earth. If all the meteors
which reach our atmosphere could be
counted the number would be about
20000Oo0 daily
What, then, are meteors? So far as
known to us, they are cold dark
bodies, flying swiftly through space,
and doubtlessly revolving round the
sun, just as the planets and the plan
etoids do. In their course some of
them encounter the earth. Moving
with velocities ranging from perhaps
ten to thirty-five miles per second,
astonishing speed that the friction
soon raises their temperature to white
heat, and we see them as intensely
glowing bodies. AS the meteor is
heated so rapidly the inner portions
are still comparatively COOL while the
outer parts are exceedingly hot, and
unequal expansion causes violent ex-
ploSion.
This explosion is Immediately fol-
lowed by others caused by the heating
of the fragments. Possibly. too, gases
are generated by the intense heat, and
thus aid in the explosion. A stream
of luminous matter seems to follow the
meteor, which is simply the waste mat
ter from melting and vaporizing, swept
off by resistance Of the atmosphere
and streaming behind
In most cases the meteor is entire
ly consumed by this process while
nigh up III our atmosphere, ana Only
the fine waste particles reach the
ground. But at rare intervals it sue
ceeds in falling upon the earth, either
as one body or as a multitude of frag-
nfents, sometimes. scattered over
wide area. These naeteoriteS have been
collected until in the various mu-
seulns of the country there are about
275, most of them in the collections of
colleges and universities. Their weight
varies from a few grains to hundreds
of pounds.
OF those actually seen to fall, per-
haps the largest is not over 500
pounds, but some that have been
found and conclusively identified as
meteorites weigh nearly or quite
ton.