Arizona republican., 1921-03-21
By FREDERIC ]. HAsKlN

WASHINGTON. March live are to be visited this summer by Win necke's comet. To many people who do not realize that about five comets are casually hailed by astronomers every year the approach of this comet has been taken as significant or war famine, the end of the earth. or some other great change in the worlds for tunes. The superstitions connected with comets are being repeated In awe struck whispers
 It seems written in the stars that men should regard the law abiding comet as a portent displayed express ly as an advertisement of calamity. for | all through history comets have been l linked with unusual happenings The fall of Troy was accompanied l by the appearance of a comet, accordv ing to Virgil. and the deaths of Con stantine, Attila the Hun. and Charley magne were said to have been an- nounced each by a hairy star passing across the sky. comet appeared the 1 year Napoleon was born, or perhaps to l be more accurate, Napoleon was born 1 the year the great comet of 1769 ap- | peared.
 An English magazine in 1912 scien l tifioally explained that through the l influence of sthe comet of 1911, the | winter following was very mild-the 1 summer cool and very little appear ance of the sun to ripen the produce of the earth, yet the harvest was not deficient; and some fruits not only | abundant, but deliciously ripe, such l as figs, melons and wall fruft. Very few wasps appeared and the flies be- came blind and disappeared early in the season"
 Even in 1910, before Halley's comet shot past, people in this country sold their property and prepared for sud den death while more conservative alarmists who believed that Halleys comet had some mysterious message were on every hand
 Science says it is about time that people did little thoughtful reason ing. instead of flying off at a tangent every time they happen to learn that a comet lis passing few million miles off.
 It is regarded as possible that g l comet might come into contact witt
 the earth. The comets that we gree
 by name every time they whiz by arc
 speeding around the sun as the eartf
 is- The sun is pulling on them bu
 they do not smash into it because the
 planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus
 or Neptune, also exert a pull. Thi.
 joint influence keeps the comet in it:
 path. But if 1t loses some of its weight
 as it supposedly is doing all the time
 the comet travels more swiftly, and tn,
 pull of gravitation is affected, so tha o InG comet course Cn3nSeS somewhat f Comet Carries Poison Gas
 If this course changed very radically z in time a comet might head on towarC . . the earth. What would happen thel
 nobody knows. because nobody know l. exactly what comet is made of. w
 know something bout the tail-that 7 is generally millions of miles in length = something over 100,000,0oO miles. Tn T tail is supposed to contain poisonou
 gas but so vaporous is this streame of light that if it came into conta c
 with the earth very little of the poiso
 would withstand the resistance of tn : earths atmosphere. In 1861 astrono ' mers declared that the earth di . actually pass into the long vaporou
 tail of a comet to depth of 273,00 Y miles, but there was no discomfort no T. interruption to business.
 But if the comet itself. the nucleu! s should strike the earth it might easil | mean the end of us. A weather burea e expert has figured the possible effec
 supposing a comet head were sirnila e in force to a small iron ball about S4 Is miles in diameter. and weighing F e 100000 tons. Such a ball travelling a
 a comet does and overtalling the cart d would strike with a velocity of nc a- less than seven miles a second. Com s pairing the effect of this impact wit l the effect Of a shell fired from d bi l. naval gun, he says. the striking energ
 S,600.000,00 tons-a force so immens
 that man cnnot even dimly compre
 hend it.
 l. But the jolt would he only one rc
 suit of the meeting of the earth wit to a comet. The heat generated by u J. impact he says, if expressed in carlo
 ries. would have to ha written 2L0.