A Mysterious Runaway Planet

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 12332, 22 April 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

A Mysterious Runaway Planet

“On October 2S last. Dr. Keinmuth photographed an object moving with extraordinary rapidity, which was evidently very near the earth. Its rapid motion soon removed it from our vicinity, and seriously limited the number of observations which could be secured. An accurate orbit has therefore been very difficult to calculate, but happily, when search, was made, it was found that the asteroid had left its undetected trace on certain photographs taken a few days before its actual discovery. Two of these were taken at Johannesburg on the previous night, and one at Harvard, U.S.A., on October 25. “From these and all other available observations” (says "Scientific Opinion” discussing the event), “it appears that the asteroid made its closest approach to the earth during the evening of October 30. and its minimum distance was less than 400,000 miles. “Excluding the meteors which continuously bombard our atmosphere, the moon at its distance of about 240,000 miles, and the qccasional approach of the inconceivable tenuous material which forms a comet’s tail, ‘Object Reinmuth, 1937, U.B.’ comes nearer to the earth than any other body. “By comparing the amount of light reflected by it with that reflected by Mars, allowance being made for their different distances, it is possible to make a rough, estimate of the size of the new body. It appears that it has a diameter round about a mile, and is therefore a piece of rock about the size of a small mountain. “Millions of small meteors plunge into the earth’s atmosphere every day, but they are nearly all burnt up before they get far, and an average of onlv five a year are collected on the ground. However, the earth bears evidence of occasional encounters with much more formidable visitants. “The celebrated meteor crater in Arizona is believed to mark the spot of one such impact, and the meteor which fell in Siberia on June 30, 1908, caused a gale of hot air which left hardly a tree standing throughout a surrounding area, of nearly 100 square miles. “One theory of the origin of the thousands of craters visible on the surface of the moon is that they are the result of falling meteorites; and the study of terrestrial meteoric craters has yielded good evidence to show that the size and other characteristics of the lunar craters could be similarly explained. “A serious objection to this theory, however, is that although the moon has been constantly under observation now for a good many years, no formation of new craters has been detected. Astronomers have thus been inclined to argue that meteor bombardments of the moon—and so, presumably, of the earth—must have been far more intensive in the past than to-day. “This explanation would imply that the regions of space passed through by the orbits of earth and moon have by now been largely cleared of heavy meteorites and asteroids, and that dangers threatening the earth from this source are thus not very great.

“However, it appears certain that the earth has now come fairly near a collision with ‘Object Reinmuth, 1937, U.8.,’ and the possibility that this or another asteroid may one day score a direct hit on our own globe cannot be wholly ruled out. “Speculations about cosmic necessity, however, should be tempered by a refusal to dogmatise about laws and conditions which may of may not prevail outside our limited field of terrestrial observation. What we do know is that the earth's atmosphere, with its electrically-charged

layers, affords us an invariable.

tection against meteors, and p> against many other dangero;*'' gies surging through the de--

inter-stellar space