METEORS
Great meteorites--"aerolites" as they are called--are like great comets,
chance visitors to our world. Now and then they come, but we cannot
foretell their coming. Such an aerolite exploded some fifteen miles
above Madrid at about 9{h} 29{m}, on the morning of February 10, 1896:--
"A vivid glare of blinding light was followed in 1-1/2 minutes
by a loud report, the concussion being such as not merely to
create a panic, but to break many windows, and in some cases
to shake down partitions. The sky was clear, and the sun
shining brightly, when a white cloud, bordered with red, was
seen rushing from south-west to north-east, leaving behind it
a train of fine white dust. A red-tinted cloud was long
visible in the east."
Many fragments were picked up, and analyzed, and, like other aerolites,
were found to consist of materials already known on the earth. The outer
crust showed the signs of fire,--the meteoric stone had been fused and
ignited by its very rapid rush through the air--but the interior was
entirely unaffected by the heat. The manner in which the elements were
combined is somewhat peculiar to aerolites; the nearest terrestrial
affinity of the minerals aggregated in them, is to be found in the
volcanic products from great depths. Thus aerolites seem to be broken-up
fragments from the interior parts of globes like our own. They do not
come from our own volcanoes, for the velocities with which they entered
our atmosphere prove their cosmical origin. Had our atmosphere not
entangled them, many, circuiting the sun in a parabolic or hyperbolic
curve, would have escaped for ever from our system. The swift motions,
which they had on entering our atmosphere, are considerably greater on
the average than those of comets, and probably their true home is not in
our solar system, but in interstellar space.
The aerolites that reach the surface are not always exploded into very
small fragments, but every now and then quite large masses remain
intact. Most of these are stony; some have bits of iron scattered
through them; others are almost pure iron, or with a little nickel
alloy, or have pockets in them laden with stone. There are hundreds of
accounts of the falls of aerolites during the past 2,500 years. The
Greeks and Romans considered them as celestial omens, and kept some of
them in temples. One at Mecca is revered by the faithful Mohammedans,
and Jehangir, the great Mogul, is said to have had a sword forged from
an iron aerolite which fell in 1620 in the Panjab. Diana of Ephesus
stood on a shapeless block which, tradition says, was a meteoric stone,
and reference may perhaps be found to this in the speech of the
town-clerk of the city to appease the riot stirred up against St. Paul
by Demetrius the silversmith and his companions:--
"Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there who knoweth not how
that the city of the Ephesians is temple-keeper of the great
Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?"
Aerolites come singly and unexpectedly, falling actually to earth on
land or sea. "Shooting stars" come usually in battalions. They travel
together in swarms, and the earth may meet the same swarm again and
again. They are smaller than aerolites, probably mere particles of dust,
and for the most part are entirely consumed in our upper atmosphere, so
that they do not actually reach the earth. The swarms travel along paths
that resemble cometary orbits; they are very elongated ellipses,
inclined at all angles to the plane of the ecliptic. Indeed, several of
the orbits are actually those of known comets, and it is generally held
that these meteorites or "shooting stars" are the _débris_ that a comet
sheds on its journey.
We can never see the same "shooting star" twice; its visibility implies
its dissolution, for it is only as it is entrapped and burnt up in our
atmosphere that we see it, or can see it. Its companions in a great
meteoric swarm, are, however, as the sand on the sea-shore, and we
recognize them as members of the same swarm by their agreement in
direction and date. The swarms move in a closed orbit, and it is where
this orbit intersects that of the earth that we get a great "star
shower," if both earth and swarm are present together at the
intersection. If the swarm is drawn out, so that many meteorites are
scattered throughout the whole circuit of its orbit, then we get a
"shower" every year. If the meteor swarm is more condensed, so as to
form a cluster, then the "shower" only comes when the "gem of the ring,"
as it is termed, is at the intersection of the orbits, and the earth is
there too.
Such a conjunction may present the most impressive spectacle that the
heavens can afford. The Leonid meteor shower is, perhaps, the most
famous. It has been seen at intervals of about thirty-three years, since
early in the tenth century. When Ibrahim ben Ahmed lay dying, in the
year 902 A.D., it was recorded that "an infinite number of stars were
seen during the night, scattering themselves like rain to the right and
left, and that year was known as the year of stars." When the earth
encountered the same system in 1202 A.D. the Mohammedan record runs that
"on the night of Saturday, on the last day of Muharram, stars shot
hither and thither in the heavens, eastward and westward, and flew
against one another, like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right
and left." There are not records of all the returns of this meteoric
swarm between the thirteenth century and the eighteenth, but when the
earth encountered it in 1799, Humboldt reported that "from the beginning
of the phenomenon there was not a space in the firmament equal in extent
to three diameters of the moon that was not filled every instant with
bolides and falling stars;" and Mr. Andrew Ellicott, an agent of the
United States, cruising off the coast of Florida, watched this same
meteoric display, and made the drawing reproduced on the opposite page.
In 1833 a planter in South Carolina wrote of a return of this same
system, "Never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell towards
the earth; east, west, north, south, it was the same." In 1866 the
shower was again heavy and brilliant, but at the end of the nineteenth
century, when the swarm should have returned, the display was meagre and
ineffective.
[Illustration: METEORIC SHOWER OF 1799, NOVEMBER 12.
Seen off Cape Florida, by Mr. Andrew Ellicott.]
The Leonid system of meteorites did not always move in a closed orbit
round our sun. Tracing back their records and history, we find that in
A.D. 126 the swarm passed close to Uranus, and probably at that time the
planet captured them for the sun. But we cannot doubt that some such
similar sight as they have afforded us suggested the imagery employed by
the Apostle St. John when he wrote, "The stars of heaven fell unto the
earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken
of a mighty wind. And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled
together."
And the prophet Isaiah used a very similar figure--
"All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens
shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall
fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a
falling fig from the fig-tree."
Whilst the simile of a great aerolite is that employed by St. John in
his description of the star "Wormwood"--
"The third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from
heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third
part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters."
St. Jude's simile of the "wandering stars, to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness for ever," may have been drawn from meteors rather
than from comets. But, as has been seen, the two classes of objects are
closely connected.
The word "meteor" is sometimes used for any unusual light seen in the
sky. The Zodiacal Light, the pale conical beam seen after sunset in the
west in the spring, and before sunrise in the east in the autumn, and
known to the Arabs as the "False Dawn," does not appear to be mentioned
in Scripture. Some commentators wrongly consider that the expression,
"the eyelids of the morning," occurring twice in the Book of Job, is
intended to describe it, but the metaphor does not in the least apply.
The Aurora Borealis, on the other hand, seldom though it is seen on an
impressive scale in Palestine, seems clearly indicated in one passage.
"Out of the north cometh golden splendour" would well fit the gleaming
of the "Northern Lights," seen, as they often are, "as sheaves of golden
rays."