Fig. 96.—Meteor stream crossing field of telescope.
Fig. 97.—Diagram of direction of earth's orbital motion, showing that after midnight, i.e. between midnight and noon, more asteroids are likely to be swept up by any locality than between noon and midnight. [From Sir R.S. Ball.]
Even if the earth were moving laterally, the same thing would occur. But if earth and stone happened to be moving in the same direction, there would be only the differential velocity of seven miles a second; and though this is in all conscience great enough, yet there might be a chance for a residue of the nucleus to escape entire destruction, though it would be scraped, heated, and superficially molten by the friction; but so much of its speed would be rubbed out of it, that on striking the earth it might bury itself only a few feet or yards in the soil, so that it could be dug out. The number of those which thus reach the earth is comparatively infinitesimal. Nearly all get ground up and dissipated by the atmosphere; and fortunate it is for us that they are so. This bombardment of the exposed face of the moon must be something terrible.[31]
Thus, then, every shooting-star we see, and all the myriads that we do not and cannot see because they occur in the day-time, all these bright flashes or streaks, represent the death and burial of one of these flying stones. It had been careering on its own account through space for untold ages, till it meets a planet. It cannot strike the actual body of the planet—the atmosphere is a sufficient screen; the tremendous friction reduces it to dust in an instant, and this dust then quietly and leisurely settles down on to the surface.
Evidence of the settlement of meteoric dust is not easy to obtain in such a place as England, where the dust which accumulates is seldom of a celestial character; but on the snow-fields of Greenland or the Himalayas dust can be found; and by a Committee of the British Association distinct evidence of molten globules of iron and other materials appropriate to aërolites has been obtained, by the simple process of collecting, melting, and filtering long exposed snow. Volcanic ash may be mingled with it, but under the microscope the volcanic and the meteoric constituents have each a distinctive character.