NON-EXISTENCE OF THUNDERBOLTS

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 47, 13 July 1908, Page 8

NON-EXISTENCE OF THUNDERBOLTS

A PROFESSOR'S VIEWS

It is still believed that during severe thunderstorms a bolt Is some-, times discharged from the clqMds and reaches the earth as a solid mass of stone or metal. There is, says Professor R. A. Gregory, writing in the “Sunday at Home," not a partidaj of material evidence in support of this belief. No thunderbolt originat-j ing in the clouds has ever been found - and none exists, whatever conviction j ; may be held to the contrary. What are mistaken for thunderbolts as popularly understood are j>eculiar mineral objects, meteorites, cr particles of soil or rock which have been fused by lightning striking the earth through them. SHOOTING STARS OR METEORS* V Masses of a metallic or stony nature do fall from the skv occasionally, but they have nothing to do with thunderstorms, and really ieach tire earth from outer spaee. In its annual journey round the sun the eaith now and then encounters suay fragments of cosmic matter, and draws them towards itself by the lorce of gravitation. When the mass retches 4 the earth’s atmosphere, friction against the air makes it vhite hot, and like a mqth rushing into a flame it is consumed, the streak of light thus produced being a % hooting star - or meteor. Sometimes 11 u: pio'M of m cosmic material is *0 1 irgo that it is not completely consumed as it traverses the atmosph jre. and in this case it reaches the earth a* a solid mass—a meteorite—which may weigh a few ounces or a few tons. Many of these meteorites are preserved in our museums, but tlU'ugh they may make a noise or a scries of explosions as they hurl themselves towards the earth, they are nut connected in any way with thunderstorms, and cannqt correctly be termed thunderbolts. HOW FULGURITES ARE FORMED, ! Another class of objects often mistaken for thunderbolts are Known to w geologists as fulgurites, ami are produced by the fusion of grains of loose sand by a lightning discharge. At the mouth of the river Irr, in Cumberland, fulgurites have been found extending to a depth of forty feet in the sand, and a fulgurite found in a sandy stratum at Macclesfield reached to a depth of twenty-two feet. It is perhaps natural to conclude that tubes or patches of fused rock, found after lightning has been seen to £ strike the earth in a place where only loose sand could be seen, actually came from the clouds, but here again the view that “seeing Is believing" leads to an erroneous con- v , elusion. THUNDERBOLTS UNKNOWN.

In the absence of any precise knowledge of the nature of globular or ball lightning, it may bo undesirable to assert that nothing solid can come from a thunder-cloud ; nevertheless, it can be stated with confidence that no so-called thunderbolt has ever proved to bo one, so that the possessor of a true specimen would have an object qf unique value and interest.