HALLEY'S COMET.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 63, 16 March 1910, Page 7

HALLEY'S COMET.

THE POSSIBLE DANGERS

The opinion of the well-known French astronomer, M. Camille Flammarion, that there is possibly considerable danger in the approach of the Hialley comet, which may .gravely affect the earth on May 18, is mot shared by all astronomers, although the astronomers, are slightly at variance with biologists and physiologists and chemists. M. Bigourdan, member of the Academy of Sciences, and one of the directors of the' Observatory in Paris, thus answers a question put to him by the Martin: "It is possible that the gaseous atmosphere of the comet will touch up when it passes, but we shall be no more upset than we were in 1819 and 1861." M. Baillaud, director of the Observatory, says: "We shall scarcely perceive the passage of the earth through the comet's tail. The gases that form the tail are so rarified, and are spread over such great distances, that it is possible that if there be any shook between the two atmospheres the comet will be the loser." M. Daslamdres, of the Meudon Observatory, quotes the earlier experiences of this kind, and says that, according to exact calculations, the earth was touched 1 by the tails of different comets in the eighteenth century. The chroniclers of the time note the prevalence of fear. More recently, says M. Deslandres, a comet almost touched the surface of Jupiter, but apparently there was no perturbation. "Probably there will be seen a shower of shooting stars in the upper regions of the sky," says M Deslandres. "It seems that the tails of certain comets, perhaps when they aire on the decline, break up, and form meteors, which follow their directions and have the same orbit as the original comet." On the other hand, it is pointed out that the spectroscope lias shown that there is a large quantity of cyanogen gas ,hi the atmosphere surrounding the comet, and different chemists, such as M. Dastre, state that, being practically without odour, the presence of the gas would not easily be perceived. A mixture of this gas with air would lead to certain poisoning. M. Armand Gautios adds the cheerful information that in the presence of fire or a small electric spark a mixture of cyanogen gas and air will explode.