Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1892 — Dust In Space. [ARTICLE]

Dust In Space.

Some of the oldest records of human’ history contain accounts of the fall of| great stones from the sky. Until the, opening of the present century it wasi generally believed by men of science'; that the ancients only imagined that they had seen rocks fall out of the heavens. j Modern science, however, has verified the truth of the ancient records, and •we now know not only that stones and; metallic masses, called aerolites or meteorites, do come tumbling down out of space, but that a fine dust, called cosmic dust, is continually sifting down through the atmosphere. It is like the smoke and dust of a journey, for the earth is really journeying, along with the sun, toward the northern part of the universe, and as it goes it draws in with its attraction the refuse paFtlcles that apparently exist throughout space. But while there can be so doubt of the existence of this silent rain of minute matter upon the earth, the difficulty has been to recognize It after it reaches the ground. Of late years, however, it has been found mingled in the ooze dredged up Irom the sea-bottom, and a few years ago when Baron Norden9kjold visited Greenland he gathered a quantity of dust particles from the great snowfields there, which were believed to have come from the sky. , This conclusion was Afterwards disputed, but lately a new analysis has been made, which seems to show decisively that a large part of the material really Is cosmic dust A computation bas d upon the amount found on thp Greenland moors indicates that the earth must gather in, over the whole of its surface, at least one hundred and thirty-two thousand tons of the dust of space every year!—Youth's Companion.