MATERIAL FROM SPACE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10108, 6 August 1898, Page 2

MATERIAL FROM SPACE.

. Recent researches have gone far to render possible the assertion of Nordenskjold and others, tih&t a large portion of the.earth'J constituents may be of cosmic origin—that; . in other words, in the course of ages the die tant stars and' other heavenly bodies may have contributed of their substance td thicken the ciust of our world. For ex* ample, at various times, and in varjoue places, there has been collected from /the snow a black powder containing metallic iron, and, ill some instances, cobalt andnickel, while on the "inland" ice which covers,.Greenland a peculiar mineral powder, named kryokonite, mixed with grains of metallic iron), has been detected. Thi» dust consists of small, angular, double-re--fracting crystal fragments, without any mix-. ture of particles of glass, and is, therefore, very different from the glass dust that is •commonly ejected from volcanoes. From these and similar data Nordenskjold ventures on the assertion that not improbably, if this'-dust falls in an equal amount all over thefgiobe—and though the snow enables it to be detected more easily than on .earth, , no reason for supposing that it floes * not—something like half a million tons drop .from tihe celestial spaces in the course of * year. The shooting stars must discharge an immense quantity of those luminous pat 1 ; tides. For hours at a time we see them falling; and when we remember that thi* has been going on during unnumbered gw*;\ logical ages it is not impossible to regard-it' as an important factor in the history of our planet. In brief, it may be found "that ft considerable quantity of the constituents of our sedimentary strata, especially of those that have been deposited in the open sea far from land, are of cosmic origin, and will throw ah unexpected light on the origin of the fire-hearths of the volcanoes, and afford a simple explanation of the remarkable resemblance which unmistakably exists be* tween plutonic rocks and meteoric stonee, namely, by showing that the principal material of the plutonic and volcanic rocks is of, cosmic origin, and that the phenomena of heat which occur in these layers depend on chemical changes to which the cosmic sediment, after being covered by thick terres* trial formations, is subjected." Without quite homologating this idea, it is certain that meteoric, or native, iron is^—and has from the remotest ages beenr-failing-" on the ' earth's surface from the inuneaeurably distant regions outside our atmosphere.—Our Earth and its Story.