The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBOENE, NOV. 12, 1906.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1930, 12 November 1906, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBOENE, NOV. 12, 1906.

Those who woro fortunate enough to

have their faces turned towards the east about a quarter to seven o’clock last evening, with nothing to obscure a yiew of the heavens, must have noticed the arrival of a mcst interest-

ing visitor in the shape of a brilliant meteor. Suddenly he thrust himself upon the gaze of all observers, and saunterod leisurely towards the horizon in a wide elliptical course trending southwards and downwards until he

faded into nothingness just before reaching the lioriz m formed by the hills near Tuahine Point. The arrival of a mundano magnate of far less brilliancy has many a time set journa»

listic pens scrawling, and overy detail and movement has been described and read with gusto by a news loviDg public, so that no excuse is needed for “ spreading out ” to a limited extent over this unusual visitor from unknown regions- To the uninitiated ho appeared as a bail of intense light simply, and gave but a mod eat notion of his real size and importance, for he seemed po bigger tljan* a cricket ball j

but certain facts obaorvablo added to what is alroady known of tho family to which ho belongs make n. story worth relating in cold print. In tin* fust placo the decided cuivo of his courso through spaco with its centre opposite tho observer showod cloai ly that his motion was not controlled by this earth or tho sun which had jus set on tho other side of this globe, nor did it appear probable that tho mo >u lay at tho contra of bis ollipse, so that

tho conclusion is inevitable that some , other heavenly monster controlled h ; a path, and that his distance from us i was enormously grantor than it. appeared to be, though ho seemed to bo only a few leagues distant for sevoral seconds of time. If that is so his size, too, must have boon enormous, aud tho unusually slow velocity which enabled him to remain in viow so long and thou to disappear so suddenly without obsorvablo sound or explosion, somotimesnoticed with such visitations, enables ub to conclude that ho was travelling towards us when first seen and thou having rounded tho apox of his ollipso, rotirod at enormously inoroaaod spood. 13at tho curious fact is that the light emitted by this visitor showed a distinct tiDgo of yellow and green in addition to his whito light, and it shows beyond all doubt that his composition is largely made up of sodium of copper as will presently bo demonstrated. The discovery of spectrum analysis hn enabled scientists to toll with accuracy what each star or comet is c omposed of, and this is done by picking up a ray of tight from the body and splitting it up by moans of glass prisms arranged in the spectroscope so that the white ray is divided iuco a senes of beautiful colors interspersed by distinct dark lines, an! auy burning substance treated in this way will give its corresponding colors and lines without variation, sodium always showing its lines in the yellow spectrum and copper in the green, and so on. Gases, too, can bo discerned in this way, and the smallest proportion of hydrogen, helium, crypton, neon, or other gases can be detected in the light rays of a planet or sun if they exist there at all. In fact, gases have been discovered in the sun that were unknown on this earth until they were found there, and some have not been found anywhere olse; but the familiar hydrogen is found to exist in all. Thus we are enabled to mako comparisons between this earth and the heavenly bodies, and wo know that, generally speaking, the earth, the sun, the stars, comets, and meteors are all composed of practically the same metallic substances as this earth is, and there is not a vast difference in the gases that exist in each. Our last night’s visitor, therefore, we know to be a flying mass of burning metals dissipating itself into gaseous form, and is most probably part of a shattered world that once existed like our own away back in the remote ages of time and the infinite abysses of space. That a fragmentary portion of that ancient and shattered world has nearly met our little globe for the first and last time most likely, is but the result of a mere accident —a collision between two flying orbs w 7 hich crashed against each other and so altered the orbital courses as well as the shape of each. Space limitless and unfathomable is filled with millions of these bodies, some in a state of incandescence like our sun, and others coolod down into solidity like the earth on which we live. Some are of dimen> sions so huge that our earth compared with their size is but a football compared with the earth itself, and others of the meteoric order weigh but a couple of tons, while immense tracts of space aro filled with nebulous dust that will some day find its atomic parts gravitated one upon the other to form new worlds, These in turn will swing round in their orbital courses and live their lives, so to speak, only to be dissipated again into fiery dust probably when roons of time has passed and the possible collision occurs. Meantime thoy go through their processes, in obedience to tho unvarying law’s of the Great Architect of the Universe, of what may be shortly described as birth, maturity, and decay to which all matter, muauane or celestial, is uumistakeably subjected, and yet not a particle is destroyed, for the Cosmos as a whole is eternal. This statement, we are aware, is opposod to the conclusions of tho greatest physicist of the present day, Lord Kelvin, whoso theory of “ dissipation of energy ” leaves no hope of

an everlasting life and makes it but a matter of mere time when all force and matter (which are, scientifically, synonymous terms) will become inert and death will reign supreme. But we purpose in a future article to deal with that view of the question and to give some reasons for concluding that science has not yet upset the orthodox notion that life is eternal, notwithstanding Lord Kelvin’s authoritative conclusions to the contrary.