A TORPEDO-NET FOR THE EARTH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 75, 24 April 1909, Page 3

A TORPEDO-NET FOR THE EARTH.

The gigantic meteor which was seen j in the sky recently by some scores of independent observers must have been I one of the most extraordinary visitors from miter space that has ever entered tile earth's atmosphere (says a Home paper). 100 TONS IN WEKiIIT. | To begin with, it left behind it a trail of luminous vapor lasting for between ' tw o and three hours, This proves it to have been of very large size indeed, probably many yards in circumference, and j weigliing between fifty and one hundred tons. I Such it remarkably large mass would not be consumed, as would the smaller meteorites, during its downward flight, alio it follows, therefore, that it is lying embedded in a crater of its own making somewhere upon the earth's surface (it this present moment; unless, of course, it chanced to fall into the sea. It is exceedingly fortunate that it did not happen to fall upon any public building. say St. Pnill's Cathedral, for example. i»f it would hive demolished it like a house of cards. This we know.! because of the ell'ect wrought by a seventy-Urn meteor which felfnear Tucson, Arizona, some years back. j MOSTLY CONSUMED 13Y FRICTIOX. ' Til's monster also, ns luck would have it, fell in the open country, some miles away from the nearest inhabited dwelling. Yet the shock was felt over a very wide radius, and the crater-like pit in which it buried itself measured eighty feet in depth by over two hundred yards' in circumference, measured around its extreme outermost edge. j Of course, it is only very rarely indeed ; that meteors of this size land upon the i surface of our globe. Indeed, it may be taken for granted i that the vast majority cif tliein are so I small that they do not reach the earth j at all. but are consumed by friction with i our atmosphere, which (bus acts as a sort of torpedo-net protecting us from aerial bombardment. Otherwise the outlook would be extremely unpleasant.