The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1923-05-10
EARTH DOMBARDED BY
MILLIONS OF METEORS
USUALLY BURN UP BY FRICTION
BEFORE REACHING THE
PLANET.

Go to the American museum of nat.
ural history and the finest exhibit you
see as you enter the foyer is a Druid,
circle OF chunks Of iron and rock
There is nothing more fascinating il
the whole museum, says the New
York World.
Visitors stand before these far
flung mysteries by the hour, wonder
ing, giving wing to imagination. What
are they? Whence came they?
If science is right these chunks.
substantially as we see them, or as
parts of larger bodies, but not so
very large, circled for aeons through
space. where all is as black as mid
night and cold as absolute zero, until
they came within the earth's field of
gravitation. The earth has lured
them from their wanderings. They
shot toward us so fast that the fric-
ton caused by their motion and our
resisting atmosphere generated ire
mendous heat, which made their sur
face incandescent.
If men were near and it was night
when this happened they saw a ball
Of fire rushing across the sky, with
perhaps a luminous streak in its wake
If men were near enough they heard.
perhaps a swishing sound like some
giant rocket and if they were partic-
ularly fortunate they saw the ball
burst into small fragments of fire as
a rocket explodes into a myriad of
stars.
Called Shooting Stars.
Men, indeed, have even been so
close that they heard heaven wrack-
ing noise as the fire ball "blew up"
and have seen around them a rain of
stones as the fragments struck the
earth. Though such explosions are
rare, most of the meteorites that are
found evidently came through our at
mosphere intact except for the melt
ing and burning away of the surface
Such is the end of a meteorite-a
flare and thud and a lying still af-
ter, so it is thought-trillions of miles
and maybe trillions of years of order
ed, unimpeded movement in orbits I'M
known to us.
1t is estimated that from Is to 20
million of them enter the earths en-
velope of air. every day, but FORUM
ately for us nearly all are burned up
by the friction and do not reach our
planet. This is the fate of the great
majority of meteors which we see
crossing the sky at night and which
we call shooting stars.
Not Dangerous.
1t is also estimated that the amount
of matter from outside which reaches
the earth in a year is from to mil
lion tons. Most of it strikes the
ocean. But be not disturbed; it will
hardly fill the ocean in our time;. at
the present rate it would take so bill
lion years for these heavenly showers
to cover the bottom with a layer one
foot thick.
Nor are meteorites-the pieces that
strike the earth-terribly dangerous |
The only recorded instance of a ia
tality occurred near Mhow, India il
1927, when a man was killed by
stone from the sky" A few of them
are believed to have struck buildings |
For example, a blot of fire shout out
of a cloudless SIX yon July 81 1921
and dived into Henry McBurney's barn |
in StOckbridge, Mass. 1t started a |
blaze which consumed the barn. Me-
teorites that have played such tricks
have been found.
There are stories of ships barely |
escaping, of their being spiashed with
spray as perilous terrestrial mi
grant plunged into the sea. Some |
mariners indeed believe that the fall
of meteorites accounts for the loss of
many ships which have disappeared !
without leaving a trace. There is no
proof of this, however, and we have
the fact that on land no great catas-
trophe was ever caused by a meteor
tie.
Bur we were speaking about the
collection in the natural history mu-
scum. There is to be seen the largest
of Ill known meteorites, although no
one would be so rash as to say that
no larger one ever fell 1t is Ahnigh-
ito, familiar to the Eskimo from time
immemorial but first seen by a white
man, the late Admiral, then Lieuten-
ant Robert r. Peary, in 1894. 1t lay
on the north coast of Melville Bay,
near Cape York, Greenland. 1t was
one of a group of three to which the
Eskimo had given names suggested
by their shape. They were the Tent,
the Woman and the Dog. The natives
had tradition that they had been
thrown from the sky from evil spir-
its. In former times they had chip
ped bits of iron from them to strength
en- their knives and spears for hunt
ing. 1.-THE Great Irons" the Eskimo
called them.