[meteorite-list] NP Article, 12-1919 Does Earth Catch Diseases From Comets?

From: MARK BOSTICK <thebigcollector_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:23:51 2004
Message-ID: <OE79W3WVZDzETo2GXAk000089b6_at_hotmail.com>

Title: The Register
City: Sandusky, Ohio
Date: Sunday, December 14, 1919


Does The Earth Catch New Diseases From Comets?

Lord Kelvin's Idea That the Original Germ of Life May Have Come to Our Earth
on a Meteor Suggests an Explanation of Some of Our New Epidemics

By Dr. W. H. Ballou

     The recent fall of a meteor into Lake Michigan - a meteor so great that
the flaming out of its incandescence when it struck our atmosphere was
visible in three States - has served to focus the attention of science upon
the fact that our earth is under its greatest known visitation of comets and
to cause scientists to ask what conseqences may reasonably be apprehended
therefrom.
     Thirteen of these mysterious pilgrims in the void will be visible
either to the eyeor to the glass during this Winter and early Spring.
     But what connection can there be, it will first be asked, between the
fall of a meteor, no matter how fremendous, and a comet? The answer is that
science has finally proved that while some comets are only masses of gas the
majority of them are formed of enormous swarms of meteors of all dimensions,
sometimes surrounded by a vast cloud of intermingled gases and dust, and
sometimes without the gaseous envelope save when closest to the sun, when
the well high inconceivable heat of that luminery volatizes a portion of
their components.
     Through the operation of various forces these cometary neclei formed of
meteors are sometimes partly broken off, sometimes entirely scattered. In
the first case the units torn from the attraction of the cometary mass from
the become comparative outlaws and add to the scattered particles which the
earth meets in its progress through space.
     In the latter case they become diffused meteor swarms which
perlodically produce what we call "shooting star showers." The most notable
of these phenomena was Biela's comet, which broken up into two such swarms,
ceasing to be a comets as such, but since that time regularly encountering
the earth when our planet's orbit and their own orbits intersect, and
dropping in on us more or less numerously when they do so intersect.
     The Lake Michigan meteor might have been, and most probably was, a
fragmen from such such partly or wholly disrupted cometary visitor.
     This, then, is the connection which science has established between
meteors and comets. To the question of what consequences may reasonably be
appreheaded either from comets or meteors which have made up their mass it
may be said that the most startling conclusion is that the old belief of
pestilence following their wake may have a great deal of truth in it. It
is, in fact, entirely possible that comets can, and actually have, sprinkled
our world with disease germs.
     The ancient superstition is that the "hairy stars" were harbingers both
of war and pestilence. That war can be caused by them is, of course,
absurd. But let us examine the evidence that disease can be communicated by
them.
     It was the great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who said that there was
no human belief, no matter how apparently wild, that did not have its origin
in fact. It would seem that a belief so widespread and so time-worn as the
comet-war-pestilence one ought to have records to support it. As a matter
of fact there are such records, but the trouble in accepting them as final
is a lack of knowledge of other conditions which might have brought about
the consequences ascribed to the comets. The Chinese, whose astronomical
observations are the oldest we have, record at least ten epidemics following
great comets. The pestilence which decimated Asia and Europe in the
fifteenth century and which we know as the Black Death, occurred the year
after the visit of a great comet. The most modern coincidence, if it can be
so called, was the outbreak of that mysterious disease we call inflienze,
which began eight months after we were last immersed in the tail of Hally's
comet.
     How could a comet passing us millions of miles away deposit disease
germs upn the surface of our planet? How could it cast living organisms into
and through our atmosphere from such a distance? And how could such living
organisms survive the cold or outer space?
     Science declared that the process can be carried on in two ways: by
the presence of ultra-microscopic organizations in the gas and almost
infinitely finely divided dust of a comet's tail, and by their presence
inside meteors disrupted from the nucleous. As for the cold of outer
space - it is proven that certain malignant bacilli we know not only can
live under such cold, but seem to derive strength from it. As for the heat
engendered by friction with the atmosphere in the meteor's fall - that is
answered in the following quotation from the "Making of the Earth," by the
distinguished Dr. J. W. Gregory, Professor of Geology at the University of
Glasgow.
     "Lord Kelvin maintained that life may come to the earth as a spore
borne by a meteorite from some other world. This is certainly a possible
explanation of the arrival of life upon our earth; for spores may retain
their vitality for prolonged periods, and can survive exposure to the most
intense cold. Hence, if a world were shattered by the disruptive approach
of another heavenly body some of the fragments might carry with them germs
which might retain their vitality even during a long journey through the
intense cold or our outer space.
     "The most serious danger to the germ would be that of being burnt when
the meteorite is heated by friction with the earth's atmosphere; but if the
spore lay in a deep crack it might remain quite cold, although the surface
of the meteorite were rendered white hot; for the heat due to friction with
the atmosphere is only sufficient to fuse a very thin skin on the surface of
a large meteorite. The interior remains intensely cold."
     While the possiblity that such was the source of life upon our earth is
minimized, it will be seen that the possibility of certain forms of life
origination in this manner is admitted.
     Disease germs belong in a class of very low organisms, akin to the
lowest type of fungi, which seem to be a part animal and part vegetable. In
some cases it is difficult to tell where the planet leaves off and the
animal begins. Most of such organisms breed by spores, which corresponds to
seeds of higher plants. Spores, however, differ vastly in their methods and
periods of germination. The mass of them germinate under normal conditions,
like plants in general, conditions of favorable temperature, moisture and
soil. Others will only germinate under varied high temperatures or varied
low temperatures. We have fungi and kindred germs, for instance, which can
only germinate under terrific heat.
     Given a great forest conflagration and thousands of such low organisms
will breed after the flames have died; their spores opening, their mycelium
(plant) running rapidly in the form of white threads, which soon bear fruit.
Again, there are organisms the spores of which will only germinate under
conditions of intense cold snow and ice.
     Apply these conditions to germs of low organization, both animal and
plant in organization, to germs borne by a comet. Besides such germs as
breed under normal conditions and which, as Dr. Gregory points out, would be
protected within the meteor, such germs as are favored by the intense cold
of space far from the sun, and such germs as lie dormant untill friction and
the approach to the sun cause terrific heat, might readily be projected on
to the earth's surface.
     But where, it will be asked, could the comets derive such organisms?
How could a comet "catch a disease" in the first place.
     This leads us to the question of what comets are. Lord Kelvin, Sir
Oliver Lodge, the famous French astronomer, Flammarion, and a host of other
scientists dead and living held and hold that the majority of the comets are
fragments of worlds torn to pieces by some cause or another - the debris of
shattered planets. Others hold that the most of them are stuff left over
after the shaping of our sun and his family. Or, as Professor Shipley, of
San Francisco, who has compiled the list of visiting comets, put it:
     "They are composed of star dust, gases and meteoric matter, gathered
from far outskirts of the parent nebular from which out planets were
derived. Had the cosmic material been more abundant within the sphere of
attraction of the comets' developing nuclei, they would in time have become
small planets, perhaps only to be captured later by the giant Jupiter as
satellites, or by Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, with orbits becoming ever most
nearly circular as a result of collision with still richly diffused nebular
material, acting as an effective medium."
     In those comets which originated in destruction of worlds the organisms
would have been carried away with the debris and remained dormant in the
cold of space. There is practically no limit to this dormancy of certan
organisms. Bacilli remaining in this condition for ages in the dust of the
sun-baked deserts and the frozen soil of the Southern Pole have revived in
the laboratories. Proof of such tragedies in space are ample in the stony
meteors, as I pointed out in a recent article of mine in this magazine.
     The most marvelous comet visitant of all expected this year by many is
the Mexican war observer, Di Vico's long period chap, labeled 1846 iv.
While this comet has until 1922 to get here, its period of 75.71 years has
an uncertainty of three years, according to von Hepperger, who defined its
elements, and hence is generally expected now. It was first discovered by
Professor W. C. Bond, at the Harvard Observatory, on February 26, just
before the outbreak of the Mexican War. Two days later it was picked up by
Professor F. Di Vico at the Rome, Italy, observatory, for whom it was
somehow hamed instead of Bond.
     Professor Shipley thus describes what we will see when this celestial
wonder bursts upon our telescopes.
     "At firsr it will be a faintly glowing spherical object of hazy,
nebulous aspect later developing a nucleus of star-like luster, approaching
our region of space with ever accelerationg speed; its enveloping gases,
frozen solid by inconceivably low temperature of far distant space, will
begin to glow and expand in the warm ray; of the energizing sun. The
hydrocarbonic substances, in which the more or less solid nucleus is
enveloped, will first be vaporized by the solar heat, then minute particles
of cometary dust will be drawn sunward by gravity, and then violently
repelled by the pressure of he solar light waves, the latter being more
potent than gravitation."
     I would like to point out his reference ot the hydro-carbonic
substances in his description of the Di Vico comet. You cannot have
hydro-carbons except through the agency of living organisms. The fact that
this comet reveals them proved that it was once part of a world closely akin
to our own.
    As for the great Lake Michigan meteor - it is not at all probable that
we have anything to fear from any possible contents it may have borne. It
is most likely that it burst into atoms when it struck the cold waters of
the lake, and the disruptove shock minimizes its potential dangers. The
description however, of its tremendous flame shown that it must have been
rich in hydro-carbonic substances and that it was therefore a fragment of a
world once rich with life and wiped out by the hand of Destiny reaching
through the Cosmos.
Received on Wed 26 Mar 2003 01:43:51 PM PST