EARTH'S NARROW ESCAPE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 25, 23 February 1909, Page 4

EARTH'S NARROW ESCAPE.

NEARLY DESTROYED BY A GREAT' COMET. If one may believe Camille Flanunarion, the earth has had a very narrowescape from nothing less than our old friend the comet. Had it come a little nearer than it did, it would have left the earth as dead as the moon, so far as living creatures arc concerned, an earth on which buildings, monuments, machines, ships would have remained as they are, but peopled only with rotting corpses. Some of the trees might have survived, but the birds and beasts that inhabit the forest and fields would have perished instantly, and all that would have been left of animal life in this world would have been the fishes iu the ■sea and the worms and the larvae that live iu the earth.

All the rest of the animal kind would have died-of poison! For this comet was made of cyanogen, a gas so deadly that a few whits of it would have annihilated everything that breathes. Flainmarioa asserts that its progress was watched from an observatory in Marseilles. When, first seen, it is 'said, it was a pale and minute nebula of the ninth magnitude. But it increased rapidly in brilliancy; in fifteen days later it was in the eighth magnitude ; then it mounted to the seventh, and in these last days it has attained the sixth—that is to .say, the limit of visibility of the naked eye. In its first days a tail began to form; then it gradually grew and showered divisions, jets of light, separated parted from one another over great an gular distances. Thanks to the clearness of the sky, photographs were taken oi two or three hours' and more exposure, and the Lumiere plates have given marvellous results. The nature of comets is still one of the mysteries of science, comments Flammariou. Here is a sort of ball oi wind, bigger than the earth, which rushes across the immensity of the heavens with a speed of 150,000 kilometres an hour, squirting out, not behind it, but opposite to or away from the sun, smoke, vapour, gas, to a distance of millions and millions of kilometres. These gases may leave it and remain in the ether. A repellaut force emanating from the sun produces these enigmatic tails, but at the same time there arc at work phenomena, mechanical, chemical, physical, unknown, which, imperil the comet itself, contort it, dislocate it, utterly eha-.ige it. Electricity is probably at work, solar heat also exerts its inllueuce, and these burning daughters of the infinite develop in unheard of proportion as fast as they ap-t proach the sun, but all these, phenomena are taking place in the fcosom oi 1 the ultra-glacial cold of space, abouifl 700 deg. V. below zero. Truly we can form no idea of them.