Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1909 — VISIT OF HALLEY’S COMET AND WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN. [ARTICLE]

VISIT OF HALLEY’S COMET AND WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN.

But Don’t Worry, for Scientists. Say We Are Not In the Least Danger —Coming Next May. Our astronomer has indulged in the following conjecture of what would happen if Halley’s comet were to scrape the earth. Halley’s comet, the moat famous comet of history and astronomy which appears every sixty-seven years, is about to be in sight once more. It will not enter the plane of the earth until May 10, 1910, and therefore will not be visible to the naked eye many days previous. . When the statement is made that Halley’s comtet will come into the same plane of the earth the inevitable question is asked “Can the comet possibly strike the earth?” Many astronomers have considered this question and the decision has come that Halley’s comet will not hurt anyone on this earth, this trip at least. The earth and the comet, it is calculated will meet in the same plane, but not on the same path. There will then be a distance of 10,000,000 miles between the two and the comet will be visible to the naked eye for a short time. The tail of the comet will sweep across the plane of the earth’s orbit. Should a collision occur it is interesting to know just what would be the consequence. Suppose, for instance, Halley’s eomet would on a certain day the coming summer hit the earth squaYely In the center of the continent of North America —say In the neighborhood of St. Louis. It is not the least interesting fact concerning such a collision that it would be forseen. Astronomers would know beforehand that it was coming. They could trace the course of the approaching comet. The whole world would fall on its knees in uncontrollable terror! But nothing could avert the blow. If we can Imagine a man possessing sufficient sang froid to watch the phenomenon as the crists was at hand, this is what he would see.

As the comet struck the upper limit of the atmosphere there would be a tremendous flash of light, filling the whole heavens. Friction would instantly begin to fill the mass. The gases of the atmosphere wbuld themselves be inflamed. But the rush of the on-coming comet would be so swift that it would keep pace with the actual flames. Over all the United States the glare would be spread. The universe would appear on fire. Warned by the predictions of the astronomers, mankind in Europe and at the antipodes would await their fate. They would not see what was to be seen in America where in a few seconds after the first blaze broke forth in the sky the awful rock would come. The ribbon of the Mississippi would disappear. The underlying strata of the great valley, smitten with a blow like that of tJhe projectile striking the boiler of %Hhan-o-war, would bend and break and then gush up in the clouds of vaporized rock. A vast cavity, perhaps 500 miles in diameter, would be melted in the center of the continent. Whole states would subside into it and disappear like cakes of ice liquefying in a pot of boiling water. The Rocky mountains and the Alleghenies would tumble down and dissolve. A terrible wave of heat would sweep through the atmosphere and run through the frame of the globe. A large part of the water of the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico would turn into steam. The internal fires, bursting upward as the crust above them was broken, would shoot skyward in gigantic jets of lava, which would fall back in a fiery rain covering millions of square miles. The body of the comet melting and vaporizing as it went, would penetrate the bowels of the earth. The shock, racing with more than earthquake speed, would shake down cities all over the earth, and the oceans topped from their beds, would inundate their shores, drown the islands and change the whole configuration of the earth'B face. The peaks of the Andes, the Alps, and even of the distant Himalayas, would come down in rout and. ruin, ao4, the poles would shake off their barriers of ice and block the steaming oceans. Every volcano on the earth would burst its flapks and break into a fury of eruption never dreamed of before. Immense fiery fissures would open in the shell of the globe and lava would burst forth in floods. _ln short, the destruction and demolition would be universal. It would be virtually the end of the world. The destruction of the earth must involve the destruction of some other body, and probably of many other bodies, as great as, or greater than itself. Bren the moon, running wild would suffice to put an end to us. The moon weighs 75,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. Thrown to the earth it would strike with a velocity of more than six miles per second. To calculate the unite of heat developed by that crash would furnish no dlear idea, because the figures would be beyond grasping, It is sufficient to say that the shock alon# would shatter our globe, as well as that of the moon, as a glass ball is shattered by a charge of shot. The mere approach to a "dead star"

as large a 8 the sun would suffice to throw the moon out of Its orbit, and if the direction of its motion was toward the earth, then the consequences Just described would inevitably follow. If the earth is really destined to a fiery end, the means to that end are provided by the strange and unexplained flight of the solar system. One of the most remarkable facts that comets have recently revealed, through signals flashed by their tails, Is the existence of places in surrounding space where some kind of resisting medium, invisible to our eyes, exercises a great disturbing power upon small bodies traversing it. The earth, with its relatively immense bulk, runs such obstructions down, regarding them no more than a great steamship regards the little fishing boat .that it has erusbed while rushing through an Atlantic fog. But these resisting shoals in space may not always prove insignificant even to so large a body as the earth.