Meteoric astronomy: A treatise on shooting-stars, fire-balls, and aerolitesKirkwood, Daniel
Science
Meteoric astronomy: A treatise on shooting-stars, fire-balls, and aerolites
Kirkwood, Daniel
Meteors
The foregoing list contains but a small proportion even of those
meteoric stones the date of whose fall is known. But besides these,
other masses have been found so closely similar in structure to
aerolites whose descent has been observed, as to leave no doubt in
regard to their origin. One of these is a mass of iron and nickel,
weighing sixteen hundred and eighty pounds, found by the traveler
Pallas, in 1749, at Abakansk, in Siberia. This immense aerolite may be
seen in the Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg. On the plain of Otumpa,
in Buenos Ayres, is a meteoric mass 7-1/2 feet in length, partly buried
in the ground. Its estimated weight is thirty-three thousand six
hundred pounds. A specimen of this stone, weighing fourteen hundred
pounds, has been removed and deposited in one of the rooms of the
British Museum. A similar block, of meteoric origin, weighing twelve
or thirteen thousand pounds, was discovered some years since in the
Province of Bahia, in Brazil.
Some of the inferences derived from the examination of meteoric stones,
and the consideration of the phenomena attending their fall, are the
following:
1. R. P. Greg, Esq., of Manchester, England, who has made luminous
meteors a special study, has found that meteoric stone-falls occur
with greater frequency than usual on or about particular days. He
calls attention especially to five aerolite epochs, viz.: February
15th-19th; May 19th; July 26th; November 29th, and December 13th.
2. It is worthy of remark that no new elements have been found in
meteoric stones. Humboldt, in his _Cosmos_, called attention to this
interesting fact. "I would ask," he remarks, "why the elementary
substances that compose one group of cosmical bodies, or one planetary
system, may not in a great measure be identical? Why should we not
adopt this view, since we may conjecture that these planetary bodies,
like all the larger or smaller agglomerated masses revolving round
the sun, have been thrown off from the once far more expanded solar
atmosphere, and have been formed from vaporous rings describing their
orbits round the central body?"[13]
3. But while aerolites contain no elements but such as are found in
the earth's crust, the manner in which these elements are combined
and arranged is so peculiar that a skillful mineralogist will readily
distinguish them from terrestrial substances.
4. Of the eighteen or nineteen elements hitherto observed in meteoric
stones, iron is found in the greatest abundance. The specific gravities
vary from 1·94 to 7·901: the former being that of the stone of Alais,
the latter, that of the meteorite of Wayne County, Ohio, described by
Professor J. L. Smith in _Silliman's Journal_ for November, 1864, p.
385. In most cases, however, the specific gravity is about 3 or 4.
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