The Story of the Heavens Part 23

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 72.--Bredichin's Theory of Comets' Tails.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 73.--Tails of the Comet of 1858.]

An interesting ill.u.s.tration of this theory is afforded in the case of the celebrated comet of 1858 already referred to, of which a drawing is shown in Fig. 73. We find here, besides the great tail, which is the characteristic feature of the body, two other faint streaks of light.

These are the edges of the hollow cone which forms a tail of Type I.

When we look through the central regions it will be easily understood that the light is not sufficiently intense to be visible; at the edges, however, a sufficient thickness of the cometary matter is presented, and thus we have the appearance shown in this figure. It would seem that Donati's comet possessed one tail due to hydrogen, and another due to some of the compounds of carbon. The carbon compounds involved appear to be of considerable variety, and there is, in consequence, a disposition in the tails of the second type to a more indefinite outline than in the hydrogen tails. Cases have been recorded in which several tails have been seen simultaneously on the same comet. The most celebrated of these is that which appeared in the year 1744. Professor Bredichin has devoted special attention to the theory of this marvellous object, and he has shown with a high degree of probability how the multiform tail could be accounted for. The adjoining figure (Fig. 74) is from a sketch of this object made on the morning of the 7th March by Mademoiselle Kirch at the Berlin Observatory. The figure shows eleven streaks, of which the first ten (counting from the left) represent the bright edges of five of the tails, while the sixth and shortest tail is at the extreme right.

Sketches of this rare phenomenon were also made by Cheseaux at Lausanne and De L'Isle at St. Petersburg. Before the perihelion pa.s.sage the comet had only had one tail, but a very splendid one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 74.--The Comet of 1744.]

It is possible to submit some of the questions involved to the test of calculation, and it can be shown that the repulsive force adequate to produce the straight tail of Type I. need only be about twelve times as large as the attraction of gravitation. Tails of the second type could be produced by a repulsive force which was about equal to gravitation, while tails of the third type would only require a repulsive force about one-quarter the power of gravitation.[33] The chief repulsive force known in nature is derived from electricity, and it has naturally been surmised that the phenomena of comets' tails are due to the electric condition of the sun and of the comet. It would be premature to a.s.sert that the electric character of the comet's tail has been absolutely demonstrated; all that can be said is that, as it seems to account for the observed facts, it would be undesirable to introduce some mere hypothetical repulsive force. It must be remembered that on quite other grounds it is known that the sun is the seat of electric phenomena.

As the comet gradually recedes from the sun the repulsive force becomes weaker, and accordingly we find that the tail of the comet declines. If the comet be a periodic one, the same series of changes may take place at its next return to perihelion. A new tail is formed, which also gradually disappears as the comet regains the depths of s.p.a.ce. If we may employ the a.n.a.logy of terrestrial vapours to guide us in our reasoning, then it would seem that, as the comet retreats, its tail would condense into myriads of small particles. Over these small particles the law of gravitation would resume its undivided sway, no longer obscured by the superior efficiency of the repulsion. The ma.s.s of the comet is, however, so extremely small that it would not be able to recall these particles by the mere force of attraction. It follows that, as the comet at each perihelion pa.s.sage makes a tail, it must on each occasion expend a corresponding quant.i.ty of tail-making material. Let us suppose that the comet was endowed in the beginning with a certain capital of those particular materials which are adapted for the production of tails. Each perihelion pa.s.sage witnesses the formation of a tail, and the expenditure of a corresponding amount of the capital. It is obvious that this operation cannot go on indefinitely. In the case of the great majority of comets the visits to perihelion are so extremely rare that the consequences of the extravagance are not very apparent; but to those periodic comets which have short periods and make frequent returns, the consequences are precisely what might have been antic.i.p.ated: the tail-making capital has been gradually squandered, and thus at length we have the spectacle of a comet without any tail at all. We can even conceive that a comet may in this manner be completely dissipated, and we shall see in the next chapter how this fate seems to have overtaken Biela's periodic comet.

But as it sweeps through the solar system the comet may chance to pa.s.s very near one of the larger planets, and, in pa.s.sing, its motion may be seriously disturbed by the attraction of the planet. If the velocity of the comet is accelerated by this disturbing influence, the orbit will be changed from a parabola into another curve known as a hyperbola, and the comet will swing round the sun and pa.s.s away never to return. But if the planet is so situated as to r.e.t.a.r.d the velocity of the comet, the parabolic orbit will be changed into an ellipse, and the comet will become a periodic one. We can hardly doubt that some periodic comets have been "captured" in this manner and thereby made permanent members of our solar system, if we remark that the comets of short periods (from three to eight years) come very near the orbit of Jupiter at some point or other of their paths. Each of them must, therefore, have been near the giant planet at some moment during their past history. Similarly the other periodic comets of longer period approach near to the orbits of either Saturn, Ura.n.u.s, or Neptune, the last-mentioned planet being probably responsible for the periodicity of Halley's comet. We have, indeed, on more than one occasion, actually witnessed the violent disturbance of a cometary orbit. The most interesting case is that of Lexell's comet. In 1770 the French astronomer Messier (who devoted himself with great success to the discovery of comets) detected a comet for which Lexell computed the orbit, and found an ellipse with a period of five years and some months. Yet the comet had never been seen before, nor did it ever come back again. Long afterwards it was found, from most laborious investigations by Burckhardt and Le Verrier, that the comet had moved in a totally different orbit previous to 1767. But at the beginning of the year 1767 it happened to come so close to Jupiter that the powerful attraction of this planet forced it into a new orbit, with a period of five and a half years. It pa.s.sed the perihelion on the 13th August, 1770, and again in 1776, but in the latter year it was not conveniently situated for being seen from the earth. In the summer of 1779 the comet was again in the neighbourhood of Jupiter, and was thrown out of its elliptic orbit, so that we have never seen it since, or, perhaps, it would be safer to say that we have not with certainty identified Lexell's comet with any comet observed since then. We are also, in the case of several other periodic comets, able to fix in a similar way the date when they started on their journeys in their present elliptic orbits.

Such is a brief outline of the princ.i.p.al facts known with regard to these interesting but perplexing bodies. We must be content with the recital of what we know, rather than hazard guesses about matters beyond our reach. We see that they are obedient to the great laws of gravitation, and afford a striking ill.u.s.tration of their truth. We have seen how modern science has dissipated the superst.i.tion with which, in earlier ages, the advent of a comet was regarded. We no longer regard such a body as a sign of impending calamity; we may rather look upon it as an interesting and a beautiful visitor, which comes to please us and to instruct us, but never to threaten or to destroy.

CHAPTER XVII.

SHOOTING STARS.

Small Bodies of our System--Their Numbers--How they are Observed--The Shooting Star--The Theory of Heat--A Great Shooting Star--The November Meteors--Their Ancient History--The Route followed by the Shoal--Diagram of the Shoal of Meteors--How the Shoal becomes Spread out along its Path--Absorption of Meteors by the Earth--The Discovery of the Relation between Meteors and Comets--The Remarkable Investigations concerning the November Meteors--Two Showers in Successive Years--No Particles have ever been Identified from the Great Shooting Star Showers--Meteoric Stones--Chladni's Researches--Early Cases of Stone-falls--The Meteorite at Ensisheim--Collections of Meteorites--The Rowton Siderite--Relative Frequency of Iron and Stony Meteorites--Fragmentary Character of Meteorites--Tschermak's Hypothesis--Effects of Gravitation on a Missile ejected from a Volcano--Can they have come from the Moon?--The Claims of the Minor Planets to the Parentage of Meteorites--Possible Terrestrial Origin--The Ovifak Iron.

In the preceding chapters we have dealt with the gigantic bodies which form the chief objects in what we know as the solar system. We have studied mighty planets measuring thousands of miles in diameter, and we have followed the movements of comets whose dimensions are often to be told by millions of miles. Once, indeed, in a previous chapter we have made a descent to objects much lower in the scale of magnitude, and we have examined that numerous cla.s.s of small bodies which we call the minor planets. It is now, however, our duty to make a still further, and this time a very long step, downwards in the scale of magnitude. Even the minor planets must be regarded as colossal objects when compared with those little bodies whose presence is revealed to us in an interesting and sometimes in a striking manner.

These small bodies compensate in some degree for their minute size by the profusion in which they exist. No attempt, indeed, could be made to tell in figures the myriads in which they swarm throughout s.p.a.ce. They are probably of very varied dimensions, some of them being many pounds or perhaps tons in weight, while others seem to be not larger than pebbles, or even than grains of sand. Yet, insignificant as these bodies may seem, the sun does not disdain to undertake their control. Each particle, whether it be as small as the mote in a sunbeam or as mighty as the planet Jupiter, must perforce trace out its path around the sun in conformity with the laws of Kepler.

Who does not know that beautiful occurrence which we call a shooting star, or which, in its more splendid forms, is sometimes called a meteor or fireball? It is to objects of this cla.s.s that we are now to direct our attention.

A small body is moving round the sun. Just as a mighty planet revolves in an ellipse, so even a small object will be guided round and round in an ellipse with the sun in the focus. There are, at the present moment, inconceivable myriads of such meteors moving in this manner. They are too small and too distant for our telescopes, and we never see them except under extraordinary circ.u.mstances.

When the meteor flashes into view it is moving with such enormous velocity that it often traverses more than twenty miles in a second of time. Such a velocity is almost impossible near the earth's surface: the resistance of the air would prevent it. Aloft, in the emptiness of s.p.a.ce, there is no air to impede its flight. It may have been moving round and round the sun for thousands, perhaps for millions of years, without suffering any interference; but the supreme moment arrives, and the meteor perishes in a streak of splendour.

In the course of its wanderings the body comes near the earth, and within a few hundred miles of its surface begins to encounter the upper surface of the atmosphere with which the earth is enclosed. To a body moving with the appalling velocity of a meteor, a plunge into the atmosphere is usually fatal. Even though the upper layers of air are excessively attenuated, yet they suddenly check the velocity almost as a rifle bullet would be checked when fired into water. As the meteor rushes through the atmosphere the friction of the air warms its surface; gradually it becomes red-hot, then white-hot, and is finally driven off into vapour with a brilliant light, while we on the earth, one or two hundred miles below, exclaim: "Oh, look, there is a shooting star!"

We have here an experiment ill.u.s.trating the mechanical theory of heat.

It may seem incredible that mere friction should be sufficient to generate heat enough to produce so brilliant a display, but we must recollect two facts: first, that the velocity of the meteor is, perhaps, one hundred times that of a rifle bullet; and, second, that the efficiency of friction in developing heat is proportional to the square of the velocity. The meteor in pa.s.sing through the air may therefore develop by the friction of the air about ten thousand times as much heat as the rifle bullet. We do not make an exaggerated estimate in supposing that the latter missile becomes heated ten degrees by friction; yet if this be admitted, we must grant that there is such an enormous development of heat attending the flight of the meteor that even a fraction of it would be sufficient to drive the object into vapour.

Let us first consider the circ.u.mstances in which these external bodies are manifested to us, and, for the sake of ill.u.s.tration, we may take a remarkable fireball which occurred on November 6th, 1869. This body was seen from many different places in England; and by combining and comparing these observations, we obtain accurate information as to the height of the object and the velocity with which it travelled.

It appears that this meteor commenced to be visible at a point ninety miles above Frome, in Somersets.h.i.+re, and that it vanished twenty-seven miles over the sea, near St. Ives, in Cornwall. The path of the body, and the princ.i.p.al localities from which it was observed, are shown in the map (Fig. 75). The whole length of its visible course was about 170 miles, which was performed in a period of five seconds, thus giving an average velocity of thirty-four miles per second. A remarkable feature in the appearance which this fireball presented was the long persistent streak of luminous cloud, about fifty miles long and four miles wide, which remained in sight for fully fifty minutes. We have in this example an ill.u.s.tration of the chief features of the phenomena of a shooting star presented on a very grand scale. It is, however, to be observed that the persistent luminous streak is not a universal, nor, indeed, a very common characteristic of a shooting star.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 75.--The Path of the Fireball of November 6th, 1869.]

The small objects which occasionally flash across the field of the telescope show us that there are innumerable telescopic shooting stars, too small and too faint to be visible to the unaided eye. These objects are all dissipated in the way we have described; it is, in fact, only at the moment, and during the process of their dissolution, that we become aware of their existence. Small as these missiles probably are, their velocity is so prodigious that they would render the earth uninhabitable were they permitted to rain down unimpeded on its surface. We must, therefore, among the other good qualities of our atmosphere, not forget that it const.i.tutes a kindly screen, which s.h.i.+elds us from a tempest of missiles, the velocity of which no artillery could equal. It is, in fact, the very fury of these missiles which is the cause of their utter destruction. Their anxiety to strike us is so great, that friction dissolves them into harmless vapour.

Next to a grand meteor such as that we have just described, the most striking display in connection with shooting stars is what is known as a shower. These phenomena have attracted a great deal of attention within the last century, and they have abundantly rewarded the labour devoted to them by affording some of the most interesting astronomical discoveries of modern times.

The showers of shooting stars do not occur very frequently. No doubt the quickened perception of those who especially attend to meteors will detect a shower when others see only a few straggling shooting stars; but, speaking generally, we may say that the present generation can hardly have witnessed more than two or three such occurrences. I have myself seen two great showers, one of which, in November, 1866, has impressed itself on my memory as a glorious spectacle.

To commence the history of the November meteors it is necessary to look back for nearly a thousand years. On the 12th of October, in the year 902, occurred the death of a Moorish king, and in connection with this event an old chronicler relates how "that night there were seen, as it were lances, an infinite number of stars, which scattered themselves like rain to right and left, and that year was called the Year of the Stars."

No one now believes that the heavens intended to commemorate the death of the king by that display. The record is, however, of considerable importance, for it indicates the year 902 as one in which a great shower of shooting stars occurred. It was with the greatest interest astronomers perceived that this was the first recorded instance of that periodical shower, the last of whose regular returns were seen in 1799, 1833, and 1866. Further diligent literary research has revealed here and there records of startling appearances in the heavens, which fit in with successive returns of the November meteors. From the first instance, in 902, to the present day there have been twenty-nine visits of the shower; and it is not unlikely that these may have all been seen in some parts of the earth. Sometimes they may have been witnessed by savages, who had neither the inclination nor the means to place on record an apparition which to them was a source of terror. Sometimes, however, these showers were observed by civilised communities. Their nature was not understood, but the records were made; and in some cases, at all events, these records have withstood the corrosion of time, and have now been brought together to ill.u.s.trate this curious subject. We have altogether historical notices of twelve of these showers, collected mainly by the industry of Professor H.A. Newton whose labours have contributed so much to the advancement of our knowledge of shooting stars.

Let us imagine a swarm of small objects roaming through s.p.a.ce. Think of a shoal of herrings in the ocean, extending over many square miles, and containing countless myriads of individuals; or think of those enormous flocks of wild pigeons in the United States of which Audubon has told us. The shoal of shooting stars is perhaps much more numerous than the herrings or the pigeons. The shooting stars are, however, not very close together; they are, on an average, probably some few miles apart. The actual bulk of the shoal is therefore prodigious; and its dimensions are to be measured by hundreds of thousands of miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 76.--The Orbit of a Shoal of Meteors.]

The meteors cannot choose their own track, like the shoal of herrings, for they are compelled to follow the route which is prescribed to them by the sun. Each one pursues its own ellipse in complete independence of its neighbours, and accomplishes its journey, thousands of millions of miles in length, every thirty-three years. We cannot observe the meteors during the greater part of their flight. There are countless myriads of these bodies at this very moment coursing round their path. We never see them till the earth catches them. Every thirty-three years the earth makes a haul of these meteors just as successfully as the fisherman among the herrings, and in much the same way, for while the fisherman spreads his net in which the fishes meet their doom, so the earth has an atmosphere wherein the meteors perish. We are told that there is no fear of the herrings becoming exhausted, for those the fishermen catch are as nothing compared to the profusion in which they abound in ocean. We may say the same with regard to the meteors. They exist in such myriads, that though the earth swallows up millions every thirty-three years, plenty are left for future showers. The diagram (Fig. 76) will explain the way in which the earth makes her captures. We there see the orbit in which our globe moves around the sun, as well as the elliptic path of the meteors, though it should be remarked that it is not convenient to draw the figure exactly to scale, so that the path of the meteors is relatively much larger than here represented. Once each year the earth completes its revolution, and between the 13th and the 16th of November crosses the track in which the meteors move. It will usually happen that the great shoal is not at this point when the earth is pa.s.sing. There are, however, some stragglers all along the path, and the earth generally catches a few of these at this date. They dart into our atmosphere as shooting stars, and form what we usually speak of as the November meteors.

It will occasionally happen that when the earth is in the act of crossing the track it encounters the bulk of the meteors. Through the shoal our globe then plunges, enveloped, of course, with the surrounding coat of air. Into this net the meteors dash in countless myriads, never again to emerge. In a few hours' time, the earth, moving at the rate of eighteen miles a second, has crossed the track and emerges on the other side, bearing with it the spoils of the encounter. Some few meteors, which have only narrowly escaped capture, will henceforth bear evidence of the fray by moving in slightly different orbits, but the remaining meteors of the shoal continue their journey without interruption; perhaps millions have been taken, but probably hundreds of millions have been left.

Such was the occurrence which astonished the world on the night between November 13th and 14th, 1866. We then plunged into the middle of the shoal. The night was fine; the moon was absent. The meteors were distinguished not only by their enormous mult.i.tude, but by their intrinsic magnificence. I shall never forget that night. On the memorable evening I was engaged in my usual duty at that time of observing nebulae with Lord Rosse's great reflecting telescope. I was of course aware that a shower of meteors had been predicted, but nothing that I had heard prepared me for the splendid spectacle so soon to be unfolded. It was about ten o'clock at night when an exclamation from an attendant by my side made me look up from the telescope, just in time to see a fine meteor dash across the sky. It was presently followed by another, and then again by more in twos and in threes, which showed that the prediction of a great shower was likely to be verified. At this time the Earl of Rosse (then Lord Oxmantown) joined me at the telescope, and, after a brief interval, we decided to cease our observations of the nebulae and ascend to the top of the wall of the great telescope (Fig. 7, p. 18), whence a clear view of the whole hemisphere of the heavens could be obtained. There, for the next two or three hours, we witnessed a spectacle which can never fade from my memory. The shooting stars gradually increased in number until sometimes several were seen at once.

Sometimes they swept over our heads, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, but they all diverged from the east. As the night wore on, the constellation Leo ascended above the horizon, and then the remarkable character of the shower was disclosed. All the tracks of the meteors radiated from Leo. (_See_ Fig. 74, p. 368.) Sometimes a meteor appeared to come almost directly towards us, and then its path was so foreshortened that it had hardly any appreciable length, and looked like an ordinary fixed star swelling into brilliancy and then as rapidly vanis.h.i.+ng. Occasionally luminous trains would linger on for many minutes after the meteor had flashed across, but the great majority of the trains in this shower were evanescent. It would be impossible to say how many thousands of meteors were seen, each one of which was bright enough to have elicited a note of admiration on any ordinary night.

The adjoining figure (Fig. 77) shows the remarkable manner in which the shooting stars of this shower diverged from a point. It is not to be supposed that all these objects were in view at the same moment. The observer of a shower is provided with a map of that part of the heavens in which the shooting stars appear. He then fixes his attention on one particular shooting star, and observes carefully its track with respect to the fixed stars in its vicinity. He then draws a line upon his map in the direction in which the shooting star moved. Repeating the same observation for several other shooting stars belonging to the shower, his map will hardly fail to show that their different tracks almost all tend from one point or region of the figure. There are, it is true, a few erratic ones, but the majority observe this law. It certainly looks, at first sight, as if all the shooting stars did actually dart from this point; but a little reflection will show that this is a case in which the real motion is different from the apparent. If there actually were a point from which these meteors diverged, then from different parts of the earth the point would be seen in different positions with respect to the fixed stars; but this is not the case. The radiant, as this point is called, is seen in the same part of the heavens from whatever station the shower is visible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 77.--The Radiant Point of Shooting Stars.]

We are, therefore, led to accept the simple explanation afforded by the theory of perspective. Those who are acquainted with the principles of this science know that when a number of parallel lines in an object have to be represented in a drawing, they must all be made to pa.s.s through the same point in the plane of the picture. When we are looking at the shooting stars, we see the projections of their paths upon the surface of the heavens. From the fact that those paths pa.s.s through the same point, we are to infer that the shooting stars belonging to the same shower are moving in parallel lines.

We are now able to ascertain the actual direction in which the shooting stars are moving, because a line drawn from the eye of the observer to the radiant point must be parallel to that direction. Of course, it is not intended to convey the idea that throughout all s.p.a.ce the shooting stars of one shower are moving in parallel lines; all we mean is that during the short time in which we see them the motion of each of the shooting stars is sensibly a straight line, and that all these straight lines are parallel.

In the year 1883 the great meteor shoal of the Leonids (for so this shower is called) attained its greatest distance from the sun, and then commenced to return. Each year the earth crossed the orbit of the meteors; but the shoal was not met with, and no noteworthy shower of stars was perceived. Every succeeding year found the meteors approaching the critical point, and the year 1899 brought the shoal to the earth's track. In that year a brilliant meteoric shower was expected, but the result fell far short of expectation. The shoal of meteors is of such enormous length that it takes more than a year for the mighty procession to pa.s.s through the critical portion of its...o...b..t which lies across the track of the earth. We thus see that the meteors cannot escape the earth. It may be that when the shoal begins to reach this neighbourhood the earth will have just left this part of its path, and a year will have elapsed before the earth gets round again. Those meteors that have the good fortune to be in the front of the shoal will thus escape the net, but some of those behind will not be so fortunate, and the earth will again devour an incredible host. It has sometimes happened that casts into the shoal have been obtained in two consecutive years. If the earth happened to pa.s.s through the front part in one year, then the shoal is so long that the earth will have moved right round its...o...b..t of 600,000,000 miles, and will again dash through the critical spot before the entire number have pa.s.sed. History contains records of cases when, in two consecutive Novembers, brilliant showers of Leonids have been seen.

As the earth consumes such myriads of Leonids each thirty-three years, it follows that the total number must be decreasing. The splendour of the showers in future ages will, no doubt, be affected by this circ.u.mstance. They cannot be always so bright as they have been. It is also of interest to notice that the shape of the shoal is gradually changing. Each meteor of the shoal moves in its own ellipse round the sun, and is quite independent of the rest of these bodies. Each one has thus a special period of revolution which depends upon the length of the ellipse in which it happens to revolve. Two meteors will move around the sun in the same time if the lengths of their ellipses are exactly equal, but not otherwise. The lengths of these ellipses are many hundreds of millions of miles, and it is impossible that they can be all absolutely equal. In this may be detected the origin of a gradual change in the character of the shower. Suppose two meteors A and B be such that A travels completely round in thirty-three years, while B takes thirty-four years. If the two start together, then when A has finished the first round B will be a year behind; the next time B will be two years behind, and so on. The case is exactly parallel to that of a number of boys who start for a long race, in which they have to run several times round the course before the distance has been accomplished. At first they all start in a cl.u.s.ter, and perhaps for the first round or two they may remain in comparative proximity; gradually, however, the faster runners get ahead and the slower ones lag behind, so the cl.u.s.ter becomes elongated. As the race continues, the cl.u.s.ter becomes dispersed around the entire course, and perhaps the first boy will even overtake the last. Such seems the destiny of the November meteors in future ages. The cl.u.s.ter will in time come to be spread out around the whole of this mighty track, and no longer will a superb display have to be recorded every thirty-three years.

It was in connection with the shower of November meteors in 1866 that a very interesting and beautiful discovery in mathematical astronomy was made by Professor Adams. We have seen that the Leonids must move in an elliptic path, and that they return every thirty-three years, but the telescope cannot follow them during their wanderings. All that we know by observation is the date of their occurrence, the point of the heavens from which they radiate, and the great return every thirty-three years.

Putting these various facts together, it is possible to determine the ellipse in which the meteors move--not exactly: the facts do not go so far--they only tell us that the ellipse must be one of five possible orbits. These five possible orbits are--firstly, the immense ellipse in which we now know the meteorites do revolve, and for which they require the whole thirty-three years to complete a revolution; secondly, a nearly circular orbit, very little larger than the earth's path, which the meteors would traverse in a few days more than a year; another similar orbit, in which the time would be a few days short of the year; and two other small elliptical orbits lying inside the earth's...o...b..t. It was clearly demonstrated by Professor Newton, of New Haven, U.S.A., that the observed facts would be explained if the meteors moved in any one of these paths, but that they could not be explained by any other hypothesis. It remained to see which of these orbits was the true one.

Professor Newton himself made the suggestion of a possible method of solving the problem. The test he proposed was one of some difficulty, for it involved certain intricate calculations in the theory of perturbations. Fortunately, however, Professor Adams undertook the inquiry, and by his successful labours the path of the Leonids has been completely ascertained.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 78.--The History of the Leonids.]

When the ancient records of the appearance of great Leonid showers were examined, it was found that the date of their occurrence undergoes a gradual and continuous change, which Professor Newton fixed at one day in seventy years. It follows as a necessary consequence that the point where the path of the meteors crosses the earth's track is not fixed, but that at each successive return they cross at a point about half a degree further on in the direction in which the earth is travelling. It follows that the orbit in which the meteors are revolving is undergoing change; the path they follow in one revolution varies slightly from that pursued in the next. As, however, these changes proceed in the same direction, they may gradually attain considerable dimensions; and the amount of change which is produced in the path of the meteors in the lapse of centuries may be estimated by the two ellipses shown in Fig.

78. The continuous line represents the orbit in A.D. 126; the dotted line represents it at present.

This unmistakable change in the orbit is one that astronomers attribute to what we have already spoken of as perturbation. It is certain that the elliptic motion of these bodies is due to the sun, and that if they were only acted on by the sun the ellipse would remain absolutely unaltered. We see, then, in this gradual change of the ellipse the influence of the attractions of the planets. It was shown that if the meteors moved in the large orbit, this s.h.i.+fting of the path must be due to the attraction of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Ura.n.u.s, and the Earth; while if the meteors followed one of the smaller orbits, the planets that would be near enough and ma.s.sive enough to act sensibly on them would be the Earth, Venus, and Jupiter. Here, then, we see how the question may be answered by calculation. It is difficult, but it is possible, to calculate what the attraction of the planets would be capable of producing for each of the five different suppositions as to the orbit. This is what Adams did. He found that if the meteors moved in the great orbit, then the attraction of Jupiter would account for two-thirds of the observed change, while the remaining third was due to the influence of Saturn, supplemented by a small addition on account of Ura.n.u.s. In this way the calculation showed that the large orbit was a possible one. Professor Adams also computed the amount of displacement in the path that could be produced if the meteors revolved in any of the four smaller ellipses. This investigation was one of an arduous character, but the results amply repaid the labour. It was shown that with the smaller ellipses it would be impossible to obtain a displacement even one-half of that which was observed. These four orbits must, therefore, be rejected. Thus the demonstration was complete that it is in the large path that the meteors revolve.

The movements in each revolution are guided by Kepler's laws. When at the part of its path most distant from the sun the velocity of a meteor is at its lowest, being then but little more than a mile a second; as it draws in, the speed gradually increases, until, when the meteor crosses the earth's track, its velocity is no less than twenty-six miles a second. The earth is moving very nearly in the opposite direction at the rate of eighteen miles a second, so that, if the meteor happen to strike the earth's atmosphere, it does so with the enormous velocity of nearly forty-four miles a second. If a collision is escaped, then the meteor resumes its onward journey with gradually declining velocity, and by the time it has completed its circuit a period of thirty-three years and a quarter will have elapsed.

The innumerable meteors which form the Leonids are arranged in an enormous stream, of a breadth very small in comparison with its length.

If we represent the orbit by an ellipse whose length is seven feet, then the meteor stream will be represented by a thread of the finest sewing-silk, about a foot and a half or two feet long, creeping along the orbit.[34] The size of this stream may be estimated from the consideration that even its width cannot be less than 100,000 miles. Its length may be estimated from the circ.u.mstance that, although its velocity is about twenty-six miles a second, yet the stream takes about two years to pa.s.s the point where its...o...b..t crosses the earth's track.

On the memorable night between the 13th and 14th of November, 1866, the earth plunged into this stream near its head, and did not emerge on the other side until five hours later. During that time it happened that the hemisphere of the earth which was in front contained the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and consequently it was in the Old World that the great shower was seen. On that day twelvemonth, when the earth had regained the same spot, the shoal had not entirely pa.s.sed, and the earth made another plunge. This time the American continent was in the van, and consequently it was there that the shower of 1867 was seen. Even in the following year the great shoal had not entirely pa.s.sed, and since then a few stragglers along the route have been encountered at each annual transit of the earth across this meteoric highway.