Science in Short Chapters

by W. Mattieu Williams

I can only state the general results, which are that the meteors which we see every year, more or less abundantly, on the nights of the 10th and 11th of August, and which always appear to come from the same point in the heavens, are then and thus visible because they form part of an eccentric elliptical zone of meteoric bodies which girdle the domain of the sun; and that our earth, in the course of its annual journey around the sun, crosses and plunges more or less deeply into this ellipse of small attendant bodies, which are supposed to be moving in regular orbits around the sun.

Schiaparelli has compared the position, the direction, and the velocity of motion of the August meteors with the orbit of the great comet of 1862, and infers that there is a close connection between them, so close that the meteors may be regarded as a sort of trail which the comet has left behind. He does not exactly say that they are detached vertebræ of the comet’s tail, but suggests the possibility of their original connection with its head.

Similar observations have been made upon the November meteoric showers, which by similar reasoning, are associated with another comet; and further yet, it is assumed upon analogy that other recognized meteor systems, amounting to nearly two hundred in number, are in like manner associated with other comets.

If these theories are sound, our diagrams and mental pictures of the solar system must be materially modified. Besides the central sun, the eight planets and the asteroids moving in their nearly circular orbits, and some eccentric comets traveling in long ellipses, we must add a countless multitude of small bodies clustered in elliptical rings, all traveling together in the path marked by their containing girdle, and following the lead of a streaming vaporous monster, their parent comet.

We must count such comets, and such rings filled with attendant fragments, not merely by tens or hundreds, but by thousands and tens of thousands, even by millions; the path of the earth being but a thread in space, and yet a hundred or two are strung upon it.

In this article Mr. Proctor seems strongly disposed to return to the theory which attributes solar heat and light to a bombardment of meteors from without, and the solar corona and zodiacal light as visible presentments of these meteors. Still, however, he clings to the more recent explanation which regards the corona, the zodiacal light, and the meteors as matter ejected from the sun by the same forces as those producing the solar prominences. For my own part I shall not be at all surprised if we find that, ere long, these two apparently conflicting hypotheses are fully reconciled.

The progress of solar discovery has been so great since January, 1870, when my ejection theory was published, that I may now carry it out much further than I then dared, or was justified in daring to venture. Actual measurement of the projectile forces displayed in some of the larger prominences renders it not merely possible, but even very probable, that some of the exceptionally great eruptive efforts of the sun may be sufficiently powerful to eject solar material beyond the reclaiming reach of his own gravitating power.

In such a case the banished matter must go on wandering through the boundless profundity of space until it reaches the domain of some other sun, which will clutch the fragment with its gravitating energies, and turn its straight and ever onward course into the curved orbit. Thus the truant morsel from our sun will become the subject of another sun—a portion of another solar system.

What one sun may do, another and every other may do likewise, and, if so, there must be a mutual bombardment, a ceaseless interchange of matter between the countless suns of the universe. This is a startling view of our cosmical relations, but we are driving rapidly towards a general recognition of it.

The November star showers have perpetrated some irregularities this year. They have been very unpunctual, and have not come from their right place. We have heard something from Italy, but not the tidings of the Leonides that were expected. Instead of the great display of the month occurring on the 13th and 14th, it was seen on the 27th. We have accounts from different parts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, also from Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.