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Show I Outermost Deptks of Space WkicL 1 ! Show Both Vegetable and Animal Life jWB W ' wT' ! j Photograph cf a Chondrite, or Stone Meteor, Fallen to Earth Out of the I Depth f Space, Carrying With It Evi dence of Life cn Other Worlds. 2 A Microscopic Section of the Meteor Called the Cuilison Chondrite, Show-i Show-i raj in It Centre Mineralized C.inoids a Deep-Sea Life Forn: cn of the Tcnnasilm Chondrite) in Which Were Found Mineralized Spoage, Jne of Which Is Plainly Shown jj the Lower Lcft-Hand Half of the Slice. K Shcc- of the famnllee Stone, a Chon-tfcTrS Chon-tfcTrS Which Wa Found Fragment. WV r p" delated "Chondrule,"tbe Organic CW" ia StnC Mo Which. Under "KM Analysis, Revealed Usclf as Coal . The Minora' red Substances Whatcvs .Oest-oyed vVo.-!ds ?I toncs Had Come from Had sed Oceans Much the Same ioiitr No' 5 Proved Th::t Its i htll Possessed Vegetable Similar to That Which in the rDHiierous Age of Earth Made Our Coal Beds. By Dr. W. H. Ballou. WHETHER the world upon which we live Is the only one on which there is life as we know life, or whether throughout space there spin other worlds od which dwell plants and livinc. mobile creatures, has long been a bitterly contested question. it has hn ansvered definitely and finally. Science now believes, in the affirmative. af-firmative. Meteors falling to our earth's surface out of the illimitable interstellar depths have been subjected to the most exacting I microscopic and chemical analysis. Undei this they have revealed not only the mineralized min-eralized forms of such lower animals as the ennoids to which the star-fish and the sea-urchin belong corals and sponges, but peat and coal as well. Furthermore. In some of these aerolites water has been found and in others oxygen! i These four things imbedded in the stony masses form a message compact, unequivocal unequivo-cal and startling. They 6how that the world they hae been torn from must havo been much like our own. The erinolds. sponges and corals prove that, it possessed an ocean; the peat and coal that it had vegetation; the water and oxygen that it possessed an atmosphere. Where rolled Th2t world of which the meteorite was a part" What ruled it creatures comparable to man. lower forms, higher forms, or strange shapes produced by processes of evolution unknown to us here? And what happened to that world'.' The first and second questions can he guessed at only. Anything might hac become its dominant race. It might have been a "olanet of our own sohir system, destroyed de-stroyed aeons ago it might have been a world spinning about a oun incalculable distances away from us. But vo the third question there, is a definite defi-nite answer. Whatever wor'a it was of which it was a part was destroyed In some vast cataclysm that sent Its fragments hurtling through ihe void .ike those of an exploding shell! But, it will be asked, could not these aerolites or meteors be parts of our own earth projected into space beyond the range of earth's gravitation in the frightful vOiCanic convulsions of ;'oe oast' Meteors ar of tw kinds th stony nr litholites, and ;nc metallic 'raiments whu h contain no trace of stony matter. The evidences of or ric life are found onlv in the .ft iiolitas ; the metallic meteors arc composed ?rtir?l: of iron, with now and then traces f cobaT, chromium, tin, sulphur, sul-phur, arsenic, phosphorus, aluminum, chlor ins. nitrogen, hydoren and carbon. It is true that no element has ever been found In any meteor which is not also found in earth But this is oflset in the cases of the metallic me-tallic meteors by the fact that their crystallization crys-tallization ?s absolutely unlike any crystal Ilzatlon of any Iron yet found within earth a difference so striking that it Is one of the things tbac enable scientists to tell at once whether Ihe subBtanee before them is or is not meteoric. It is further offset by the fact that about, no volcano on earth ar such .nasscs of metal found Volcanoes do not eject masses of iron and never did This would seem to dispose of the metal meteors as earth exiles, returning home after long voyages In the infinite. The same argument as to the volcanoes applies to the litholites. And volcanoes are the only guns we have ever had capable of shooting any objects outside the influence influ-ence of earth's gravitational force. But beside that the total mass of the meteors alone whose orbits like tho planets, plan-ets, are around our own sun, Is inconceivably inconceiv-ably vast. Unless we are prepared to admit ad-mit that our earth shot off at leat a thousand thou-sand times its own present bulk Into space before it steadied down, we are up a slump There are countless other swarms v. hich do not revolve around our sun There Is, too, another law. Involving celestial celes-tial mechanics, the possibility of return to our own comparatively tiny sphere, and many other things which space forbids going go-ing into here. It can be set down that Science, on sufficiently suf-ficiently good grounds, has dismissed finally fin-ally tho theory of meteors being volcanic debris of our own wofTd. The conclvsiv evidence that the stony meteors were once parts of worlds like our own has been provided by scores of these litholites, but mainly by one that fell near Knyahlnya, Hungary. It weighed fi.'.O pound3 and is now in the Vienna National Na-tional Museum. It was subjected to minute analysis by Dr. Otto Hahn, an internationally internation-ally distinguished geologist and physicist. "The organf? forms in this Knyahinya Animal of Earth o'" v. ?W Which Almost Exact r wjjjL ' ; Duplicates in Miner- , '"':.'','' j Found in Stono XjcSl SjBS . - j Meteors. v'M mSsSSM Existing Representations of First Forms of Life on Earth Ascidians, Corals, Sponges, etc. All of Which Have Been Found in Chondrites. (From the vflfrop" at the American Mueeim of Natural History, New York.) .hondrite or meteor," writes Dr. Hahn in his report upon it, "are all simple, organic ones, such as sponges, corals, crlnolds, etc., small in form but perfect in external and internal organic structure. "Only the soft pails are lacking All of the rest is preserved, even as it lived and moved in water. The crlnoid stems show this most plainly, for these are notably curved wound up. entangled, and though occasionally broken, one sees their weak resistance to their impinging neighbor?. The half round lohe divides itself into layers, these into tubes, which branch, funning funn-ing arms which a canal unites. Then it develops de-velops itself into a crown between the arms, and the point of their growth, and the simplest crinold 1s there." The next great investigator who verifird the work of Hahn. making and publishing volumes of separate analyses of stone meteorite?, was the German chemist-physicist, Cohen. He states In Meteoriten-kunde: Meteoriten-kunde: "Hydrocarbons (organic matter in meteorites) are of several classes There are compounds of carbon, hydrogen and sulphur; compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, etc. Hydrocarbons especially characterize carbonaceous meteorites and are obtained by a treatment with alcohol and ether, These are resinous or waxlike bodies which completely volatilize on application ap-plication of heat. 'When heated in a closed tube, the res-Ins res-Ins first fuse, and ar "hen decomposi d forming amorphous carbon and an oil having a bituminous or fatty odor (O 1010 International Feftturi Serrlrc loo. "Such subjects are considered by Wohlcr to be similar to ozocerite, and by Shepard to be meteoric petroleum. Kreldheim states that he extracted a substance from the meteorite of Nagaya, by means' of ether, which had a bituminous odor and volatilized volatil-ized at 20 degrees beat. It resembled, was In fact, a product of distillation from brown coal. Roscoe ot the same sub-Btance sub-Btance fron the meteorite of Alais. "Smith and Berthelot got hydrocar bonates of the second class. They obtained oxygon from the meteorites of Orgueii and Hessle. From OrgueM they got peat, humus or lignite in both composition and properties. "When hydrocarbons are prosen. in meteorites, it proves that they have not been subjected to any high degree of heat subsequent to the formation of life mat'er and that their heating during their fall to earth was only superficial. "The trails of light sometimes enduring several minutes, observed in the wake of meteorites, indicate the presence of carbonaceous, car-bonaceous, or life matter in the bodies. Th me'eorito of tho Hesslo fall was accompanied ac-companied by luminous effects and th precipitation pre-cipitation of a brownish blscK powder, which contained 71 per cent of carbou aceous matter Some stone meteorites fall without luminous trails, showing that their carbonaceous matter was not heated to burning. Dthers fall dead cold with no luminous phenomena whatever. "Stone meteors have water as well as oxygen, in appreciable quantities, their substance sub-stance being porous When water Is not found in them, there is always found rusted (Jreat llrlfotn Rlsht Hrs-rroi t friction with our atmosphere gradually heats them. On their final whirls arounc us the organic matter within them at Ippi gets on fire and is consumed in many, al though not all of them, as chondrites are continually reaching us with their organic remains merely mineralized by heat. It i only stone metecrites that circulate in an With luminous, or fiery tails Finally, L there i a loud explosion, which may be heard, according to actual measurements, up to 200 miles away. The chondrite then falls, sometimes burying itself in the soil. One of the largest tone meteorites, rnr.ipc,sed largely oi organic remain? cryi talllzed, weighing 136 pounds, fnli at I Farmlngton, Kansas, in 1S90. It was a blazing flyer and fell near a farmer under .ipjj bis wagon making repairs, with a frightful explosion. He arose in time to see tht earth thrown to a height of 30 feet Th e-p!o. Ion was heard for a radius of 10C miles about. In which circle many people had seen the blazing trail. Great crowds u' were attracted. The stone was dug out ol four feet of hard Shaly earth, quite cool but ! broken into two sections of 44 and 92 U pounds each. Mi ?i '' Jr " ' '"'' 1 - ' 'it Evolution Need Not Proceed in Other Worlds Along the Same Lines Et Did on Earth. This Is a French Artist's Conception of the Bird-Like Rulers of Mars. The Stone Meteors Could Not Have Come, However, from Any of the Planets of Our Own Solar Svstem and Therefore Carry No Message Concerning the Life Upon Them. pores which show the former presence of the liquid in space. Their water supply ranges from 6 to ll per cent. It was copious in tho meteorites of Alais, Cold Bokkeveld, Nagaya, Orgueii, etc., and can readily bo extracted by heating to 100 degrees " Other investigators, the late Lord Kelvin, Kel-vin, etc.. have recognized mineralized impressions im-pressions of bacteria, minute fungi and so on. Meteorites do not fall on the earth vertically, ver-tically, directly out of space; they firs rotate around . us In gradually narrowing circles and although not i.ir from earth, may bo years In reaching it. because of their rotations During these rotations. Why, it will be asKed with all these stones in 3' our path, and striking S3 our atmosphere at the rate of, as the eminent American astronomer Simon Neweomb. ha demonstrated 146,0'tQ,-000,000 146,0'tQ,-000,000 per year. ar not many people klllec by them? The answei is that only a verj .u small percentage reacb the surface of thl M earth. The balanct J burst into flame as a i - suit, of fricticn w itb our atmosphere and are dissipated i nt o dust. There are rec- lefe ords, however, of death b meteors In the year Clt there was a fall of meteors in China which killed ten men; in 9-14, according to th . lironicle of Froissart one that ignited houses; that of March 7 1618 which set fire to thl k' Palais de Justice ir. 5; I s rta; in 1879 a man It Kansas City was klllec by a meteor whlcb shattered a tree under which he was It is a possibility that the earth in Its wander ings may sometime en jfjf counter a gigantic in1 swarm of these space i wanderers which will destroy It. The pittec surface of the moon is considered by some astronomers to be du to such a bombardment . f As yet no form of organic matter Is which life still persists has been found ir any of these meteors. But there is reason to believe that such forms of life have reached earth's surface still filled with vitality and that to them may be due th( very beginnings of life itself on this planet There is. also, reason to believe that comets, of which many are merely swarms of meteors, carry minute organic forms among them disease germs, which the? scatter upon us in their passing Bott these subjects will be dealt with in anothei nn j |
