Perrine's Comet Misses the Earth

1896

CHANGED ITS COURSE.

The Comet Concluded Not To Hit the Earth.

The fine accuracy with which your modern astronomers can calculate the movements of the heavenly bodies as they whirl onward through space has been excellently illustrated in the case of Perrine's comet.

This nebulous hobo was due to hit the earth today, according to the calculations of some of the leading sky-gazers, and the Scimitar, with its usual enterprise, had made all arrangements to get out a special edition as soon as the impact transpired, containing interviews with some of the prominent citizens of the visiting orb and some estimates about how they stood on the money question. But up to the hour of going to press the concussion has failed to concuss, and The Scimitar is in receipt of heliographic advices from this wandering pilgrim in infinite space that the visit has been postponed, but that it will surely be made as soon as the national democratic committee shall have adopted a free silver platform.

It appears that the comet approached within 27,000,000 miles of the earth and then, tucking its tail between its legs, made a sneak. The comet was discovered by Professor Perrine, of Lick Observatory, on February 13th, but its identity could not be fixed with certainty, as no one appears to have mislaid a comet lately. Without knowing its identity, the astronomers were at a loss as to its habits or condition in life. Professor Leuschren, of California, did some ciphering and concluded that the stranger was an irresponsible gob of atoms, moving toward the earth at a rate of 1,700,000 miles per day and evidently purposing to give this planet a dig in the ribs or an upper-cut on the proboscis. But it now appears that ten days before its discovery the comet had passed perihelion, and a few days after that event made a turn in its orbit and started in a parabolic orbit on its road back into impenetrable and illimitable space. It was at no time nearer to the earth than 27,000,000 miles, and as its tail is always stretched out away from the sun, once it had turned on its orbit it could not touch the earth. There is little danger from the tail of a comet, but one having a nucleus would very likely make an end of things earthly. The chances, however, of any comet striking the earth are always infinitely small.

The danger is also past of the comet falling into the sun, a possibility that had been more than hinted at by some astronomers. This would be a real catastrophe, for all learned astronomers acknowledge that if a comet fell into the sun it would produce such an increase of solar heat people on earth would all be broiled or frizzled or fried up. With this danger staring the world in the face, it seems that if the matter were left to popular vote the people on the earth would elect to have the comet hit the earth and take the attending chances, rather then have it fall into the sun and burn everything up.

Other astronomers who wish, evidently, to reassure the public, claim that in 1861 a comet several times larger than the one now in question hit the earth while traveling at the rate of 10,000,000,000 miles a day and nobody knew it. How they discovered it so many years after they refuse to make plain. But if these astronomers are telling the truth, it places the other astronomers who say that a comet only hits once in fifteen hundred million years in an awkward position. Clearly either one set of astronomers or the other is making a terrible blunder.

Few people have a clear idea as to what a comet really is and for their benefit the opinion of Professor Young is set forth as follows: "A comet is nothing but a 'sand bank,' that is, a swarm of solid particles of unknown size and widely separated, say pinheads several hundred feet apart, each particle carrying with it an envelope of gas largely hydrocarbon, in which gaslight is produced, either by electrical discharges between the particles or by some other light, the evolving action due to the sun's influence. This hypothesis derives its chief plausibility from the modern discovery of the close relationship between meteors and comets."

Another astronomer on the subject of the make-up of the comets says

"It is not a solid body like the earth. It is made up of minute bodies. We might compare it with a dust-cloud. While in size it compares with the earth, there is no comparison with the solidity of the two. So far as we have been able to learn there are no large particles of matter in the comet. They are made up of atoms of dust of iron, nickel or some other metal. Our atmosphere is practically impervious to such a body. Seventy or eighty miles above the earth, where the atmosphere is so rare that the vacuum is almost as good as that of a Crookes tube, there is still enough resistance to disintegrate and destroy a body like a comet traveling with the swiftness with which a comet travels. The particles would become indefinitely fine, no larger than the ultimate atoms of matter. They would ultimately reach the earth." – From The Memphis Scimitar.

–The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, March 16, 1896, page 9.