Show T wh IN 49 1 pt R J 4 by ELMO SCOTT WATSON LL the autumn of 1934 see tie earth bombarded with a shower of 0 meteors or falling stars a spectacular display of natures fireworks which jf A will put to shame the most ambitious pyrotechnical effort that the mind of man could possibly demise 1 astronomers believe there Is a cliance that it will for according to their calculations such a display Is at least a year overdue here Is the reason on the nights of november 12 and 13 1833 the world was visited with the greatest shower of meteors of which there Is any certain record all along the eastern seaboard of the united states people looked up at a sky that was wa Ute literally rally aflame with falling failing stars many of them as brilliant as the most brilliant fixell star etar in the firmament the stars fell on this occasion caslon oc like flakes of snow one observer has recorded and it was calculated that at least of them had bad fallen during a period of nine mine hours then people began to recall that exactly on the same date in 1709 34 years earlier there had been a similar shower of falling stars again in there was a great shower and in 1887 1867 one only slightly less spectacular than the preceding year perhaps it was only coincidence that these showers had bad come at 33 or 34 year intervals or perhaps it ft was another manifestation of the regularity of nature at any rate the astronomers looked tor for another shower in 1800 but it failed to materialize neither did it come the next year evidently the 33 or 34 year period had bad been skipped entirely still undaunted by the failure of the leonids for that Is the scientific name of these falling stars to appear on schedule time in IM 1899 the astronomers eyed the hemens hopefully on november 12 and 13 1932 1032 but once more they were disappointed as they were again last year but tome some of them still think that this coming november may see the display of natures fireworks similar to those of the years mentioned above what has happened to these showers of meteors at periods of one third of a century nobody knows the disappearance of the leonids Is one of the mysteries of science meteors except as they come in showers like the leonids are not at all uncommon there Is never a clear moonless night when you cannot step outside your house and see several of then them in the course of 15 minutes the most of them of course are very small mere little wisps of I 1 light bt that shoot across the heavens but now and then you may see a much brighter one at times though not many of us will have the luck to see it it one comes with a thunderous noise like the roar of a cannonade and a brilliance that blinds the eyes what are these theae fiery travelers through our heavens men lien used to think that they were actually stars broken loose from their moorings probably there are still many men who hold to some gome such belief but it Is very tar far from true the stars are great suns many of them vastly larger than our own sun and millions upon millions of miles distant from our solar system meteors are the fiery cery display of stones captured out of space by the gravitation of the earth and heated to incandescence by the friction of the air that blankets our globe these stones pierce our atmosphere at almost unthinkable speeds ranging from to miles per hour what becomes of them they do not pelt the ground around us no the most of them are burned to ashes while still many miles above us every now and then however one that Is too large to burn up before it hits the ground does come such stones are called meteorites and many thousands of them weighing from several ounces to several tons are on exhibit in our museums anyone especially farmers may happen upon a meteorite prof raar haney ey rl nininger of the colorado museum of natural history in denver who Is the worlds greatest authority on the subject says gays that there Is probably not an area ten miles square anywhere in the united states where at least one stone from the sky la IS not dot waiting to be found it may be under the ground especially it if it Is a large one or it may be out in plain sight bight nis his conjecture Is based on alde ide experience for he be has himself collected more than 1500 of them during the past ten tea years ills specimens may be seen in almost every large museum in the world in london paris berlin vienna to in the field museum in chicago in the smithsonian institution in washington in the museum of bf nati nat ural history in new york city and in many others no other man has collected even one tenth as many as he has the most of professor Nin ingers stones have been bought from farmers who turned them up while plowing or who found aberia in tramps across fields and pastures they are easy to recognize when one knows what to look for or most meteorites are one of two kinds iron meteorites or stony meteorites the irons are always black on the outside when newly fallen but when Nl lenone one has lain exposed to the air tor for a time it will probably be reddish brown with crust in either cither case of course it will be very heavy often but not always alway it will have peculiar pits in it ft somewhat uke like a piece of putty into which somebody has baa pushed his thumbs and fingers any strange piece of iron which clearly of some other origin may imay possibly be a meteorite snozy meteorites are a bit harder to identity identify TOO roo are always heavier than the average earth stone and also they are always black on X e ili j ag 1 great crater left by the enormous meteorite which fell near the present site of winslow ariz aril tome some time before the white man came into that country it la Is almost a mile across and feet deep the meteorite weighing several million tons Is burled buried more than 1500 feet below the level of the desert photograph by fairchild fall child aerial surveys Z 2 prof harvey nininger of the colorado museum of natural history examining the para gould meteorite which he found himself and which to Is the largest meteorite ever seen to fall and later recovered it fell at 4 in the morning of february ai 17 1930 near paragould Para gould ark and weighs together with three other fragments broken off from it pounds 3 A typical stony meteorite this one almost hit a man standing in his dooryard 4 A typical iron meteorite this one fell near chihuahua mexico 5 hole in the earth made by the meteorite which fell near paragould Para gould ark 6 figures when whan an iron meteorite Is polished and treated with add acid these lines come into sight they are found only in iron meteorites f 0 the outside when newly fallen turning to red dish brown in the course of time inside however they differ greatly from iron meteorites and also from one another one common kind looks very much like a piece of grayish white cement covered with a coat ot of black paint or if it Is an old fall of black paint mixed with rusty brown another kind Is quite black inside indeed they may be almost any shade between black and white under their outer crust stony meteorites are also often pitted but the pits are seldom as sharply defined as they are in the iron variety after the surface has turned from black to reddish brown it often looks a good deal uko like the crust of a loaf of cracked wheat bread with ith similar little flakes scattered over it IL these lakes flakes may also be seen while the surface Is black they are flakes of metal to see a meteorite actually crash to earth Is one of the most spectacular sights among natural phenomena one vivid description of a tall fall some years ago tells us ua that the noise was like heavy cannonading canno accompanied by an unearthly y hissing and that the ground trembled as in an earthquake people rushed from their houses in fright and though it was they saw a great dazzling ball of fire to in the heavens like to the moon in size sputtering and throwing off a long train of sparks and leaving in its wake a heavy line of black smoke this meteorite fell in more than a thousand fragments near forest city iowa one piece weighing GO gil pounds tell fell near a farmer in a field and burled itself more than three feet in the hard prairie soil hardly a year passes without a fall somewhere in the united states witnessed by persons who testify to its splendor and fortunately homeier ho weier we have nver n ver been visited fay by a meteorite such as fell on the isolated steppes of north central siberia in 1908 the force of the air blasting out from it mowed flat more than hundred square miles of dense forest it killed a herd of 1500 reindeer and forced a train 40 miles south to stop in order to keep on the rails A farmer 50 miles away was knocked unconscious and returned to his bis senses to lind find the air so hot that lie he feared his hl clothes would catch ore fire ills house was demolished this great mass of iron burled buried deep in the ground Is estimated to weigh tons but it Is small indeed when nhen compared to another mass that tell fell on the desert plains near winslow ariz in a time before the white men came there this enormous meteorite which bored its way more than 1500 feet into the earth la Is known to weigh several million tons it left behind it a critter crater almost one mile across and nearly GOO feet deep as it appears today many other tremendous falls have happened since the world began no doubt it if we were to explore the bottoms of the oceans we would find hundreds of great masses of biose and iron burled buried in the slime other great masses are burled buried beneath our feet and the craters which they left behind them have been obliterated by wind and rain it has been discovered very recently however that traces ot of these craters may sometimes be seen when viewed from aloft in an airplane several groups of them have been found in america during the past two years where do meteorites come from it Is 13 sup posed that they are fragments of comets which have been torn apart by the powerful gravitation of the sun and the larger planets of the solar system the leonids are believed to be fragments of temples comet which has disappeared like the meteor showers another comet known as Bl bielas elas was actually seen to break up and finally to vanish entirely but now we are showered with an unusually large number of meteors whenever it should be in the neighborhood of our earth according to the computations of astronomers how many meteorites have really hit the earth professor Nin estimates that more than of them have fallen on every square mile of the earths surface since the mammoth roamed the steaming forests of prehistoric times that means that the very ground on which we walk Is made up largely of the dust into which they have fallen confirmation of that belief Is seen in the the ory advanced recently by ralph W stone assistant arlt state geologist of pennsylvania that a coating of meteorite dust 19 inches thick lies on the surface of the earth this coating ts Is an accumulation of GO years or more he says and Is constantly being increased although at such it a slow rate that it ft Is not noticeable out of meteorite falls since meteorites became known and accredited years ago individual meteorites have been recovered reco v ered or an average of a fall this figure supplies one meteoric stone tor for each square miles of land surface of the globe in a century and a quarter most of the falls were observed in areas of comparatively dense population and where surface conditions were favorable tor for observation of f the landing and for recovery if we consider the witnessed falls in european countries russia russia india japan and the united states amounting to individual in meteorites ete orites or stones a tall fall in a combined area of square miles we have one meteorite tor for every 65 miles sir mr stone says during the years only two falls alls from which stones were reco recovered ered were observed in the whole western third of the united states apparently due to spare population and the nature of the terrain although practically heally all observed falls from which stones are recovered occurred in daytime there Is no reason for assuming that falls are not just as frequent at night on these assumptions it Is conservative to estimate that in these twelve countries at least ten times as many meteorites fell as were recovered or one to each five and a halt half square miles it if the rate ot of fall of the last century has been constant according to the assistant state geologist each square mile dille of surface has received meteoric units in the years yeara since the beginning of tertiary times on tills this basis of computation the earth received meteorites a square mile the weight of the stones recovered he be continued was pounds this Is a very low average since the larger stones usually bury themselves but this figure gives about two ounces a stone this would mean a five ton a square mile average for the entire earth in the last years should we continue the computation for longer periods we get into figures then it if we figure not from the beginning of the tertiary time but from early tine time GOO rather than vears ago we get a weight of material which certainly would make the earth on its axis ails it if concentrated in one spot on the surface besides the meteorites which land about a million an hour dally daily are consumed in our atmosphere mo sphere before striking the earth mr stone estimates considering live five pounds the average weight of these that would mean tons of meteoric over dust sifting down dally distributed over the globe however the result would be a layer one millimeter thick in years or a blanket 19 feet deep in CO years a 0 by western union |