| OCR Text |
Show EXPLODING METEOR SEEN Those who happened to glance at the western sky at 6:35 o'clock Sunday Sun-day evening saw a rather unusual occurrence. oc-currence. A bright light, which resembled re-sembled a sky rocket, was seen to shoot through the sky at a tremendous tremen-dous rate, and when but a few de-groey de-groey ahove the horizon suddenly dissolved dis-solved Into a vaporous smoke. At first the smoke took the form of the figure fig-ure 1, and a little later resembled the ' figure 8. The spectacle was witness ed by scores of people many of whom were at a loss to know what It was or what caused It. While the light looked like a shooting shoot-ing star. It was much brighter than a star and Its light was moro red. And the fact that when tho light disappeared dis-appeared there was a quantity of smoke perfectly visible to tho naked eye was rather unusual. Tho theory Is, however, that it was one of those meteors or meteroltes known as a bolide, which Is a meteor that explodes when It comey Into contact with the atmosphere. Accepting the theory that the light was a bolide, It must havo been comparatively com-paratively chse to the earth, aa a bolide bol-ide must come in contact with tho atmosphere at-mosphere before it can explode, and the atmosphere only exists about fifty miles from the surface of the earth. The size of tho bojy waa rather uncertain, un-certain, but that It waa of a large slzo there can be no question, owing to it being so plainly eon by tho naked eye and the largo volume of smoke which was visible aftor It had exploded. The largest meteor of which science sci-ence has any record weighed 110 tons. Whether any of the solid matter of tho meteor which was seen Sunday night reached tho earth or not is a matter mat-ter of conjecture. It probably did not; that solid matter which was not dissolved dis-solved IdIo vapor probably flying off Into spaco again. If any of It did touch tho earth it probably fell In Nevada or western Utah, Judging from the distance the light was from the horizon, when It changed Into smoke. Dr. Fred C. Pack of the University of Utah, wa3 of the opinion that It waa a bolide. He did not see It hlm-solf, hlm-solf, although from tho statements of those who did see It he was of tho firm conclusion that It was a meteor which exploded through its contact with the atmosphere. Dr. Pack declared de-clared that while the meteor may have contained much soil! matter originally, original-ly, the friction with the atmosphere caused by the tremendous rate at which It was falling would likely have tho effect of vaporizing much of the solid matter, so that when It exploded the naked eye would see nothing but smoke, although solid particles may have tjccu visible to the telescope. |
