If We Met A Comet
"THE question of whence the comets came, however, does not attain such importance in the public mind as where they are likely to go. We all know that comets can come very close to the earth, and some of us wonder what might be our fate if we actually collided with one. Astronomical knowledge has robbed these transient visitors of the role they played in the darker ages as portents of wars and pestilences, famines and the deaths of princes, but in the memories of most of us articles have been published with illustrations even more terrible than the vivid word-pictures they contained of the fate of humanity enveloped in the deadly exhalations of the tail or encountering the mass of the comet in head-on collision.
The astronomer’s answer is that there is little to fear. We know that the matter in the head of a comet may amount to many thousands of tons, but it is distributed among many millions of tiny pellets. Even if the worst happened and we collided head-on with a swarm of cometary fragments’ the result, although spectacular, would not
be cataclysmic. There would be a magnificent display of shooting stars-nothing more. For hours, as the earth ploughed through the scattered fragments in the head of the comet, the sky would be filled with flying streaks of light, as it has been on many notable occasions in the past. The earth’s atmosphere, however, would absorb the shock. The frictional resistance it would provide to the passage of the meteors would result in more than 90 per cent. of them being burned into dust many miles above our heads. Those few larger or more durable bodies which succeeded in penetrating completely through the atmosphere would strike the earth as meteorites, but it is comforting to reflect that, although hundreds of meteorites fall every year, there is no authentic record of a human life having been lost through such a cause.-("Comets in Their Courses," by R. A. McIntosh, F.R.A.S., 1Y A, March 10.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 92, 28 March 1941, Page 5
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341If We Met A Comet New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 92, 28 March 1941, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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