THE COMET AGAIN.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2691, 22 November 1882, Page 3

THE COMET AGAIN.

[special to press association.] > DUNEDIN, November 21. Mr Arthur Beverly writes as follows on comets in the “Daily Times” this morning :—" As to the fears of certain wiseacres lest the sun get a square'meal at some early date and become vicious in consequence, I believe them to be entirely groundless. Mr Ellery, of Melbourne, has sent me a recently computed set of elements in which the perihelion distance slightly exceeds mine, instead of almost grazing the sun as in his first set; so it is now almost certain that the present comet is not a return of that of 1880. Helmholtz has shown that if a body as massive as the earth wore to drop into the sun it would only supply him with energy to last a hundred years at his present rate of waste. The immediate consequence of such a plunge would probably be a slight commotion for a short time about the spot where the body entered, accompanied by auroras and electrical disturbance on the earth’, then all would be quiet, and the sun wouldbe just as he was a hundred years ago, the difference in his mass being almost imperceptible. Ho would have to collide with a body comparative to himself in magnitude, before there could be suoh a destructive flare-up as many people are in dread of.”