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THE, OREGON SUNDAY JOUBNAL,, PORTLAND, SUNDAY HORNING, DECEMBER 21, 1919.
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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
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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.
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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.