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NEW CASTLE NEWS. FRIDAY, JUNE 10. 1921.2j3i I• •Discounts Theory Of Collision Of Comet With Earthntit*t i\oto«l Astronomer Says World Is Safe From I\ns-\Vinnecke—To lie Meteoric ShowerM• • i 1I;lly W. W. C'AMPHKIJi. Director Lick Observatory, University of C alifornia.Written .Especially for Internationa! News Servii'O.ni-»a •i ilini •? 1 i iUI• •« 5i!:uMMT HAMILTON'. Cal. June 10 — The Pons-Winnecke comet, discovered by Pons at Marseilles in 1819 and next observed by Winnecke at Bonn in 1858, travels around the sun in 5.8 years, and during the month of June it will he only a few millions of miles from the earth. While there is not even the remotest possibility of a collision between tho two bodies, a meteoric shower — a display of so-called shooting stars—1 may occur at some time in the latter half of June. However, no one is justified in saying that the shower will or will not occur, and in any case the slightest cause for anxiety exists.A comet is not a solid body such as the earth or moon, but is believed, according to all the evidence, to he a collection of gases, vapors anti innumerable solid masses, the latter varying from microspocic dust particles up to bodies a few inches or a few feet in diameter. When a comet is in the vicinity of the sun, as the present comet is every six years, the extremely finely divided materials in its makeup are expelled in a direction away from the comet's head by some repulsive force originating in the sun, and it is this finely divided material traveling out from the headwhich forms the comet's tail This procedure, repeated at successive returns of a comet, finally robs it of all its tail materials. Again, when the comet is near the sun, the sun’s gravitational attractions acts more strongly upon the nearer cometary masses than upon the more distant ones. The nearer ones are compelled to travel more rapidly in smaller orbits and the farther ones more slowly in larger orbits, with the consequence that the component bodies ate scattered more and more along the orbit of the comet. The orbits of the several particles will in due time develop considerable differences of position and what we may call the bundle of cometary orbits will acquire a great diameter; the distance between the orbits may amount to several million miles.Brightest on June 11.It is a well-established fact that many comets have actually become fainter and fainter to a final state of invisibility, in the manner and for the reasons just described. For several such comets whose orbits pass close to the earth's orbit there are meteor showers resulting from col lisions of the scattered cometary particles with the earth’s atmosphere. Many of these particles enter the atmosphere with speeds of twenty-three or forty miles per second, and the friction with the atmosphere and the compression of the atmosphere immediately in front of the rapidly moving bodies generate heat in a mere fraction of a second sufficient to make the small masses burst into flames and be consumed long before they can get down to the earth's surface. The mild display of meteors always visible on the nights of August 9, Id and 11, especially after midnight, is due to collisions with the fragments of the third comet of 1S62. The startling shower of shooting stars observed in 1833 and again in 18 66 resulted from collisions with small masses which formerly belonged to the first comet of 1 866. Tens of milions of such small bodies, ranging in excess fromfhp ( n f Ini t phi mri 1 lin tn thcup timml-
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