HALLEY'S COMET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 41

HALLEY'S COMET.

ASTI? 0N 0 M ER'S SP ECU LAT lONS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND, January 16. A somewhat startling statement of thw eminent French astronomer. M. Flammarion, to the New York Herald, as to the possibility of the tail of Halley’s comet colliding with the earth, commends itself as to Mr F. J. Stevenson, F.R.A.S., as having something in it. M. Flammarion, according to the . account, remarked that if the oxygen in the atmosphere were to combine with the hydrogen of the comet’s tail, the inhabitants of the earth would die from suffocation. Mr, (Stevenson, in discussing the question with' a Herald representative, said he did not think there would be any solid matte* in the tail of the comet. It was very, probable that gas would be liberated front it on to our planet in May next (ha fixed the likely date as the 19th or 20th), when he thought the comet’s tail would be projected across the earth’s orbit. to the nature of the gas that w r ould ha emitted, it was difficult to say anything definite, as very little was known r - -e-< garding the composition of comets’ tails. Mr Stevenson points out that the earth passed through the tail of a comet in 1861, but all that w T as noticed on that' night was a phosphorescent appearance in the sky. It was supposed that on that occasion the earth passed through the very extremity of the tail, and what> would have happened had the pasaga! through been made nearer the head is only a matter of conjecture. As regards Halley’s comet. Me Stevenson said it was not possible, owing to the rotation of th» earth, to say which side of the planet would come into collision with the comet’s tail, but the probability was that in tha event of gas being infused into our owi< atmosphere, it w'ould most likely be the southern hemisphere that would get tha brunt of it. What the effect would be he was not able to say. As far as the composition of comets and their tails w'as concerned, many people were of opinion that a comet was itself formed of myriads of shooting stars, the tail consisting of finer particles repulsed from it by" the action of the sun’s light.