HALLEY’S COMET.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXV, Issue 13053, 22 April 1910, Page 5

HALLEY’S COMET.

Press Assonation.—Telegraoh.—Copyright. Received April 22, 9.15 a.m. , GIBRALTAR, April 21. Halley s comet has been observed from the signal station here.

NO DANCER FROM THE TAIL,

Proposal to Bottle the Air or May 18,

Professor H. H. Turner, who holds the Saviliau Professorship of Astronomy at Oxford held by Hailey in 1704, lectured to a crowded audience at the Royal Institute in Albemarle Street (London) on Februai'y 18 on Halley’s comet. In the course of a fascinating address, Professor Turner made this very striking suggestion: On May 18 wc shall be in the tail of the comet. If you like to bottle some of the air and hand it down to your grandchildren they will have in their possession some of Halley's comet of 1910. ‘ think,” added the lecturer, “that this institution ought to bottle large quantities of air on that night, and find out what is really iu the comet’s tail.”

Professor Turner dismissed any fear that may exist of the consequences of passing through the comet’s tail by stating that only one hundred-thousandth part of the air on May 18 will be comet s tail.

From the investigations of Professor A. Fowler, of the Royal College of Science, South Kensington, it would seem, said Professor Turner, that the contents of the tail are similar to some substance which is present in a tube winch has contained hydrogen when tne hydrogen is extracted. \Vhat that substance is Professor Fowler has not yet been able to determine, but it has the same spectrum as the comet’s tail, and therefore it is reasonably certain that this extremely attenuated and unknown substance found in the hydrogen tube is present in the tail, and some of’it will be added to the air we breathe on the night of May 18. Some of the peculiarities of the tails of comets were described by Professor Turner with the aid of graphic drawings and lantern slides. Sometimes, he observed, comets lost their tails. That is not always because the tail disappears, but sometimes because it is behind the comet, and for a time, therefore, invisible. At times the tail lies across the direction of movement, pointing away from the sun, and apparently blown outwards by some force from the sun. This force, which blows the tail of the comet from the sun “like chaff,” is either electrical or the light of the sun itself, which has a force of its own. The dissipation of the tails of comets is now accepted as a fact, and leads to the conclusion that comets gradually become smaller until they “probably break up into small meteors."