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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 21, 1919)
''-.".,-. -."'"r-':'..: THE, OREGON SUNDAY JOUBNAL,, PORTLAND, SUNDAY HORNING, DECEMBER 21, 1919. sr.- . :.:.. i vvT - ; r r y ; I ijl V i ? ; ,. : - .J- -t.-"l.:::.;-: v:t. I""11 j 1 . . -V IlilililtiBiiBil liillii illllll iM m iiiiSliiBliliilIW IlllliSl tffiHmmtti i' Lord Kelvin's Idea . That the Original Germ of Life May Have Come to Our Earth on a Meteor Suggests an Explanation of Some . By Dr. W. H. Ballot! .of OUT TUB recent. fall of a meteor Into Lake Michigan a meteor io great that IvPIi) the flaming out of Its IncandMcence X 1 sJU when it itruck our atmosphere wai visible TTTT In three States has served to focus the M2JlTjm attention of science upon the fact that oar earth Is under Its greatest known vlsita- ft (Si tloa of comets and to cause scientists to ask: what consequences may reasonably he apprehended therefrom. Thirteen of these mysterious pilgrims In the Told will he visible either to the eye or to the glass during this Winter and early Spring. But -what connection can there he, It will first he asked, between the fall of a meteor, no matter how tremendous, and a comet? The answer is that science has Anally proved that while some comets are only masses of gas the majority f them are formed of enormous swarms of meteors of all dimensions, sometimes sur rounded by a vast cloud of intermingled gases and dust, and sometimes without the gaseous envelope save when closest to the sun, when the well nigh inconceivable heat of that luminary volatizes a portion of their components. - Through the operation of various forces these cometary nuclei formed of meteors are sometimes partly broken up, some times entirely scattered. In the first case the units torn from the attraction of the cometary mass become compara tive outlaws and add to the scat tered particles which the earth meets in its progress through space. In the latter case they become diffused meteor swarms which per iodically produce what we call "shooting ster showers." The most notable of these phenomena was Biela's comet, which broke up into two such swarms, ceasing to be a comets as such, hut since that time regularly encountering the earth when our planet's orbit and their own orbits Intersect, and dropping In on us more or less numerously when they do so In tersect. The Lake Michigan meteor might have been, and most probably was, fragment from some such partly or wholly disrupted cometary visitor. - This, then. Is the connection which science has established be tween meteors and comets. To the. Question of -what consequences may reasonably be apprehended either from comets or meteors which have made up their mass It may be said ' that the most startling conclusion is that the old belief of pestilence following in. their wake may have a great deal of truth In it It is, in Piiliiiiiiiii 1 tfi) 1 ? ( ,.Tf. . t,L sob, 1 V V f : OHklMHM iiiiiiiiilii mmmm i J, mi ' I ' ' . ;-iwsi miteg- S7?. Mi HiHiliHiili iiillliiiiiiiliipipiiiii if " I 1 ft i" ' 1 A Photograph of Donati'a Comet Whose Tail, as Shown in the Picture, Met with a Mysterious Accident in Space, Thus Proving That It Wat Composed of Substantial Matter. - . H tfeir'i'iiiirT''-,:Mjiito Sss9sw Siii "3. fact, entirely possible that comets can, ana atmosphere from suca s actually have, sprinkled our world with distance? And how could disease germs. The ancient superstition Is that the "hairy stars" were harbingers both of -war and pestilence. That war can be caused by them is, of course, absurd. But let us examine the evidence that disease can be communicated by them. It was the great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who said that there was no How the Earth Was Bathed in the Tail of Halley'a Comet During the Fall of 1910. A, Is the Head of the Comet; B, the Earth; C, the Intersecting Point of Earth's Orbit D and the Comet's Orbit E, Showing How Narrowly Actual Collision Was Missed. A Little After Our Immersion in the Comet's Streamers Began the Outbreak of a New Form of Influenza Plague in Manchuria and the East beat, might readily he projected on to the earth's surface. But where. It will be asked, could the comets derive such organisms? How could a comet "catch the disease" In the first place. This leads ua to the question of what comets are. Lord Kel vin, 6ir Oliver Lodge, the fam ous French astronomer, Flam niarlon, and a host of other scientists dead and living held and hold that the majority of the comets are fragments of worlds torn to pieces by , some cause or another the debris of shattered planets. Others hold that the most of them are stuff left over after the shaping of our sun and his family. Or, as Professor Shipley, of San Fran cisco, who has compiled the list of visiting comets, puts it: "They are composed of star dust, gases and meteoric matter, gathered from far outskirts of the narent nebula from which 9 such living organisms survive the cold of outer space? Science declares that the process can be car ried on In two ways: by the presence of ultra-mi-croscoDic organizations in the gas and almost infinitely finely di vided dust of a comet's tall, and by their The Hon. John Collier's Remarkable Painting "The Black Death," the Plague Which Swept Asia, England and Europe Shortly After the Appearance of a Great Comet. human belief, no matter how apparently presence inside meteors disrupted from the wild, that did not have Its origin In fact, nucleous. As forjthe cold of outer space It would seem that a belief so widespread it is proven that certain malignant bacilli and so time-worn as the comet-war-pestll- we know not only can live under such cold, ence one ought to have records to support hut seem to derive strength from it As it. As a matter of fact there are such for the heat engendered by friction with wotld be that of being burnt when the will only germinate un meteorite is heated by friction with the der varied high tempera earth's atmosphere; hut if the spore lay In tuxes or varied low tem- records, but the trouble in accepting them as final la a lack of knowledge of other conditions which might have brought about the consequences ascribed to the comets. The Chinese, whose astronomical observations are the oldest we have, record at least ten epidemics following great comets. The pestilence which decimated the atmosphere in the meteor's fall that is answered In the following quotation from the "Making of the Earth," by the distinguished Dr. J. W. Qregoryr-Professor of Geology at the University of Glas gow. "Lord Kelvin maintained that life may have come to the earth as a spore borne Asia andEurope to the fifteenth century ty a meteorite from some other world. anu wnica we mow u uw eiac Areata, ,g certainly a possible explanation of occurred the year after -the visit of a great the arrival of life upon our earth; for comet The most modern coincidence, if apores may retalli their vitality for pro It can he so called, was the outbreak of longed periods, and can survive exposure gat mysterious disease we call influence, to the most Intense cold. Hence, if a world Irhlch. began eight months after we were were shattered by the disruptive approach last immersed In the tall of Holler's of softer heavenly body some of the frag comet. ments might carry with them germs which How could comet passing us millions of might retain their vitality even during a miles away deposit disease germs upon long Journey through the Intense cold of the surface of our planet? How could it our outer space. ' . cast living organisms Into and through our "The most serious danger to the germ, a deep crack It might remain quite cold, although the Burface of the meteorite 'were rendered white hot; for the heat due to. friccion with the atmosphere is only suffi cient to fuse a very, thin skin on the sur face of a large meteorite. The interior remains Intensely cold." While the possibility that such was the' eource of life upon our earth is minimized, it will be seen that the possibility of cer tain forms of life originating in this man ner is admitted. ' Disease germs belong In a class of very low organisms, akin to the lowest type of fungi, which seem to he part animal and part vegetable. In some cases it Is diffi cult to tell where the plant leaves off and the animal begins- Most of such organ isms breed by- spores, which correspond to Beeds of higher plants. Spores, however, differ vastly In their, methods and periods of germination. The mass of them ger minate under . normal - conditions, like plants In general, conditions of favorable temperature, moisture and soil. Others Q Hit. Ifttcnutbmtl FcatoN Serrte, lac - peratures. We have fungi and kindred germs, for instance, which can only germinate under terrific heat Given a great forest conflagration and thou sands of such low organ isms will breed afteo the flames have died; , their spores opening, their mycelium plant) running rapidly in the form of white threads, which soon bear fruit Again, there are organisms the spores of which will only germinate under conditions of intense cold s,now and Ice. . Apply these conditions to germs of low organization, both animal and plant In or ganization, to germs borne by a comet Besides such germs as breed under normal conditions and .which, as Dr. Gregory points out, would be protected within the meteor, such germs as are favored by the intense cold of space far from the sun. and such germs as He dormant until friction: and the approach to the sun cause terrific : Great BrlUla HlcM Kcwrrtd,' ' - Diagram of the Orbit of the Best Known Comet, Show ing Their Path Around the Sun and Their Intersection With the Orbit of the Earth. nnr mlan eta nrar 4. rived, Had the cos- A Cress Section of a Meteorite mlo material been Showing the Narrow Belt of more abundant with- Matte FasJ by Friction with comets' developing CreTe WW. Whole nuclei, they would la Colonies of Bacilli Could Lurk time -have become Untouched ty tfc Heat Gun small planets, per- rated' by the Meteorites FalL haps only to be cap- tared later -by the aiant Junlter as satel- hovonr. nt it. v T Utes, or by Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, that it must have been rich in hydnxar wtth orbits becoming ever more nearly ctr- bonlo substances and that It was therefore cular as a result of collision with still - a fra'rment of a wnrtA ftnea r1h with Hf richly diffused nebular material, actio r at ami wituui t k. t... r... an effective medium." reachlnr throurh tha Cosmos. In those comets which originated in de struction of worlds the organisms would have been carried away with the debris and remained dormant In the cold of space. There is practically no limit to this dor mancy of certain organisms. Bacilli re maining In this condition for ages In the dust of the sun-baked deserts and the frozen soil of the Southern Pole have revived in the laboratories. Proof of such tragedies in space are ample in the stony meteors, as I pointed out In a recent article of mine In this magazine. The-most marvelous comet visitant of all expected this year by many is tbe Mexican war observer, Dl Vlco's long period chap, labeled 1848 ir. While this comet has until 1922 to get here, Its per iod of 75.71 years has an uncertainty of three years, according to von Hepperger, who defined Us elements, and hence Is generally expected now. It was first dis covered by Professor W. C. ond, at the Tarvard Observatory, on February 26, Just before the outbreak of the Mexican War. Two days later it was picked up by Pro fessor F. Di Vice at tbe Rome, Italy, ob servatory, for whom it was somehow named Instead of Bond. Professor Shipley thus describes what we will see when this celestial wonder bursts upon our telescopes: "At first It will be a faintly glowing, spherical object of hazy, nebulous aspect, later developing a nucleus of star-like lus ter, approaching our region of space. with ever accelerating speed; its enveloping gases, frozen solid by Inconceivably low temperature of far distant space, will be gin, to glow and expand in the warm rays of the energizing sun. The hydrocarbonio substances, In which the more or less solid nucleus Is enveloped, will first be vaporized by the solar heat, then minute particles of cometary' dost will be drawn sunward by gravity, and then Holently repelled by tbe pres sure of the solar light waves, the latter being more potent than gravitation." I would like to point out his reference to the hydro-car-bonlo substances In his de scription of the Oi Vico comet Tou cannot have hydro-carbons except through the agency of living organ isms. The fact that this comet reveals them proves that It was once a part of a world closely akin to our own. As for the great take Michigan meteor it Is not at all probable that we have anything to fear from any possible contents ft may have borne. It is most likely that it burst into atoms when it struck the cold waters of the lake, ; and the disruptive shock minimizes its potential dangers. The description.
