FIFTY-TON METEORITE HURLED INTO SPACE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6947, 28 June 1929, Page 3

FIFTY-TON METEORITE HURLED INTO SPACE

AFRICA’S NOTABLE VISITOR.

Grootfontein in South-West Africa is keeping up the reputation of Africa for always producing something lheie has just been found in its sterile wastes a meteorite that in some unknown era fell from the sky, and weighs 50 tons. . There arc two kinds of these missiles which have been hurled at the earth, one kind resembling the older igneous reeks and the other containing iron. The Urootfonlein meteorite is of the second kind, and seems to have been subjected at some time In such, terrific heat that a great part of it has been turned into nickel steel. The origin of meteors is a mystery. According to one reckoning they may be the debris of the solar system, primal matter evolved from stuff from which stars and nebulae arc being born. Or they may have been east out bv planets not our own, and thus acquire the ‘cuotpaous speed at which they 'ifgk'

travel; or, again, they may bo parts . of comets, flung out ahead and from : the rear, thousands of miles in extent, and cut periodically by the earth during her yearly course round the sun. fStiil more romantic, and not less scientific, is the theory worked out on i careful mathematical lines by Sir Rob- i erf Bail. To him fireball, meteor, ' shooting-star, were simply prodigals or ] exiles returning home to the earth. Ac- ] cording to his investigations the Earth, i during the eras of frightful volcauic ; convulsion which shock her, hurled ( from gigantic, craters enormous masses ; of material. These, passing beyond the i

gravitational pull of the world, would assume orbits of their own, he thought, in Which they have ever since moved, until we have at last crossed their paths and drawn them homo again. There are romance and mystery in every meteor that comes to earth. No element upknown on earth, is in them. They bring even diamonds, formed by pure carbon, acted upon by heat and pressure iu the flying projectile. There is terror in a. meteorite, too. Some astronomers, when they read the story of a ship lost at sea without trace write against, the record a verdict in one word; Meteorite l