The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-02

beautiful ever seen, and which was taken by many as the forerunner of the civil war, will not return again for 1000 years. The one which ap- peared in 1911 is reported to have an orbit to cover which requires 3.065 years of travel. at the rate of twenty six miles a second. At it's last appear- ance before 1911 it had looked down on ancient Troy, but a few years be- fore the birth cf the immortal Helen. Before this 1t had made the Egyptians fear their final doom was at hand. a full thousand years before they had studied astronomy.
 What would happen if Halley's comet shouie strike the earth? This
 Is question which has been often asked and sometimes with the se-
 riousness that is born of sense of real danger. Not moro than. gener-
 alton ago the French government
 took up the question, and invited the
 leading astronomers of the world to assist in it's solution. After much fig- uring the conclusion was reached that there is only one chance in 1000 900 of any given comets colliding with our sphere.
 It seems wonderful to the layman. however, that there are not collisions between the comets and the planets. For instance, Halley's comet is travel ing in a general direction at right angles with that of all the planets. In order to get from the heart of the solar system out into empty space 1t must cross the path of every one of the planets. When 1t comes back 1t has to repeat the performance. It might be likened to a blind mans crossing a series of railroad tracks and going through without harm to himself, except that the crossing of the orbits of the planets by the comet stretches the danger through millions of years instead of compressing 1t in to few minutes.
 The Builder of the great Universe thought out all things well when He started it to going through the end- less cycles of time. If 1t were not that the atmosphere of the earth is as soft, elastic and protective as 1t is, neither man nor beast could live here any more than they could sur vive a constant shower of shot and shele through all their lives. There is a perpetual bonn mbardmeHt of the earth going on. Five hundred million meteoroids are hurled at the earth every day. They come at the incon- ceivabie rate of twenty-six miles 6 second--a hundred times faster than the muzzlo speed of the swiftest rife bullet. Most of them are no larger than a buckshot, but if they were not checked by our atmosphere. the earth would degenerate into an un- inhabited globe. Just as palmetto logs. spongy and yielding, have proved an admirable defense against bullets, so our atmosphere is the defense of the earth against the missiles of the heavens.
 When a piece of matter is hurling headlong through cold space 1t is neither hot nor bright. There Is no friction in space to make 1t so. It strikes our atmosphere its force is checked by the elastic air, and on the same principle that a blacksmith may make a piece of iron hot by ham mering 1t, motion is converted into heat. and the celestial visitor begins to glow. It Is then a meteor, or shoot ing star, that we see in the heavens. Most of them are consumed by fer vent heat before they have passed through more than fifty miles of our atmosphere, The few that do get to the earth are small, and show large percentages of iron, which Is the only truly universal metal. Every planet, the sun, and every star possesses It. The largest meteor ever known to strike the earth was that brought from the coast of Greenland by Peary. e4iO <AASSAN SAPAOACAs 4I HSlBllb over ninety tons and Is 92 per cent. pure iron. The remainder is nickel.
 The human mind can hardly con ceive of the immensity of space. Ac- cording to Professor Newcomb. if you were to make a small model of the universe you would represent the earth by grain of mustard seed. and the moon would be but a speck placed an inch away. The sun would be a very large apple placed forty feet away, and the planets would be represented by little balls varying from the size or a speek to that of a pea. The outermost one would be Neptune. and IL would have to be placed a quarter or mile from the sun. This model representing the solar system would require a circular field containing half acre. Beyond that with the same scale maintained, there would be empty space of perhaps 1000 miles. Then would come the other parts of the universe, each star being a bIaz- ing sun, larger than our own,
 copyright, 1908. by Frederick J. Has,
 kin.) TO-MOrrOw-Birthday of PhiIadeIph,a