Art. XI. Outline of a Theory of Meteors.
By Wm. G. Reynolds, M.D. Middletown Point, New-Jersey.
Should the progress of science, for a century to come, keep pace with its rapid advancement for the last fifty years, many appearances in the physical world, now enveloped in obscurity, will then admit of as easy solution as the combustion of inflammable substances, or any familiar process in chemistry does at this day. Among the many subjects from which the veil of mystery would thus be raised, we may include those luminous appearances, in the aerial regions, called meteors, which I am about to consider in the following essay; and which seem to constitute a distinct class of bodies of considerable variety.
Meteors were regarded by the ancients as the sure prognostics of great and awful events in the moral and physical world; and were divided by them into several species, receiving names characteristic of the various forms and appearances they assumed; but of their opinions, as to the physical cause of these phenomena, the ancients have left us nothing solid or instructive. The moderns, more enlightened, have ceased to regard these bodies with the superstitious awe of former ages; but in respect to the cause thereof, are perhaps but little in advance of their predecessors, having, I believe, produced nothing yet that will bear the test of philosophical investigation.
Doctor Blagden (Philosophical Transactions, 1784,) considers electricity as the general cause of these phenomena; Doctor Gregory, and others, think they depend upon collections of highly inflammable matter, as phosphorus, phosphorated hydrogen, &c. being volatilized and congregated in the upper regions of the air. Doctor Halley ascribes them to a fortuitous concourse of atoms, which the earth meets in her annual track through the ecliptic; and Sir John Pringle seems to regard them as bodies of a celestial character, revolving round centres, and intended by the Creator for wise and beneficent purposes, perhaps to our atmosphere, to free it of noxious qualities, or supply such as are salutary. Many other theories, as ingenious as fanciful, might be enumerated; but without commenting on their comparative merit, I must acknowledge that none of them have yet impressed my mind with a conviction of their truth. A series of observations, however, have enabled the moderns to ascertain, with apparent accuracy, several particulars relative to these stupendous bodies, which add much to our knowledge of their general character:—their velocity, equal to 30, and even 40 miles in a second of time; their altitude, from 20 to 100 miles; and their diameter, in some instances, more than a mile, are facts we derive from respectable authority, and may aid us, essentially, in forming just conceptions of their nature and properties.
I believe meteoric stones to result from all meteoric explosions; limiting, however, the term meteor to those phenomena, in the higher regions of the air, denominated fire-balls, shooting-stars, &c. That these bodies move in a resisting medium, must be evident to every attentive observer; and that this medium is our atmosphere, is pretty certain, 1st. Because we know of no other resisting medium round the earth; 2dly. Because the same kind of resistance is apparent at every intermediate altitude, from their greatest to their least, which last we know to be far within our atmospheric bounds; and, 3dly. Calculation has, in no instance, assigned them an elevation beyond the probable height of the atmosphere.
That meteors proceed from the earth, that they arise from certain combinations of its elements with heat, and that meteoric stones are the necessary result of the decompositions of these combinations, are opinions I will endeavour to support, by the following considerations.
1st. The properties and habitudes of matter, under certain conditions and combinations.
2dly. The situation of the earth's surface in respect to the sun, the influence of his rays thereon, and the nature of the elements or compounds on which these rays act: