meteors

57:7.6The prim­i­tive plan­e­tary at­mo­sphere is slowly evolv­ing, now con­tain­ing some wa­ter va­por, car­bon monox­ide, car­bon diox­ide, and hy­dro­gen chlo­ride, but there is lit­tle or no free ni­tro­gen or free oxy­gen. The at­mo­sphere of a world in the vol­canic age pre­sents a queer spec­ta­cle. In ad­di­tion to the gases enu­mer­ated it is heav­ily charged with nu­mer­ous vol­canic gases and, as the air belt ma­tures, with the com­bus­tion prod­ucts of the heavy me­te­oric show­ers which are con­stantly hurtling in upon the plan­e­tary sur­face. Such me­te­oric com­bus­tion keeps the at­mo­spheric oxy­gen very nearly ex­hausted, and the rate of me­te­oric bom­bard­ment is still tremen­dous.

57:7.9Even in the later pe­ri­ods the con­tin­u­ing lava flows and the in­com­ing me­te­ors kept the oxy­gen of the air al­most com­pletely used up. Even the early de­posits of the soon ap­pear­ing prim­i­tive ocean con­tain no col­ored stones or shales. And for a long time af­ter this ocean ap­peared, there was vir­tu­ally no free oxy­gen in the at­mo­sphere; and it did not ap­pear in sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties un­til it was later gen­er­ated by the sea­weeds and other forms of veg­etable life.

85:1.2Stones first im­pressed early man as be­ing out of the or­di­nary be­cause of the man­ner in which they would so sud­denly ap­pear on the sur­face of a cul­ti­vated field or pas­ture. Men failed to take into ac­count ei­ther ero­sion or the re­sults of the over­turn­ing of soil. Stones also greatly im­pressed early peo­ples be­cause of their fre­quent re­sem­blance to an­i­mals. The at­ten­tion of civ­i­lized man is ar­rested by nu­mer­ous stone for­ma­tions in the moun­tains which so much re­sem­ble the faces of an­i­mals and even men. But the most pro­found in­flu­ence was ex­erted by me­te­oric stones which prim­i­tive hu­mans be­held hurtling through the at­mo­sphere in flam­ing grandeur. The shoot­ing star was awe­some to early man, and he eas­ily be­lieved that such blaz­ing streaks marked the pas­sage of a spirit on its way to earth. No won­der men were led to wor­ship such phe­nom­ena, es­pe­cially when they sub­se­quently dis­cov­ered the me­te­ors. And this led to greater rev­er­ence for all other stones. In Ben­gal many wor­ship a me­teor which fell to earth in A.D. 1880.

49:3.2There are so very few of the non­breather type of in­hab­ited worlds in Sa­ta­nia be­cause this more re­cently or­ga­nized sec­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek still abounds in me­te­oric space bod­ies; and worlds with­out a pro­tec­tive fric­tion at­mo­sphere are sub­ject to in­ces­sant bom­bard­ment by these wan­der­ers. Even some of the comets con­sist of me­teor swarms, but as a rule they are dis­rupted smaller bod­ies of mat­ter.

49:3.3Mil­lions upon mil­lions of me­te­orites en­ter the at­mo­sphere of Uran­tia daily, com­ing in at the rate of al­most two hun­dred miles a sec­ond. On the non­breath­ing worlds the ad­vanced races must do much to pro­tect them­selves from me­teor dam­age by mak­ing elec­tri­cal in­stal­la­tions which op­er­ate to con­sume or shunt the me­te­ors. Great dan­ger con­fronts them when they ven­ture be­yond these pro­tected zones. These worlds are also sub­ject to dis­as­trous elec­tri­cal storms of a na­ture un­known on Uran­tia. Dur­ing such times of tremen­dous en­ergy fluc­tu­a­tion the in­hab­i­tants must take refuge in their spe­cial struc­tures of pro­tec­tive in­su­la­tion.

15:6.12Mi­nor Space Bod­ies. The me­te­ors and other small par­ti­cles of mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing and evolv­ing in space con­sti­tute an enor­mous ag­gre­gate of en­ergy and ma­te­rial sub­stance.

41:7.74. Space mat­ter and me­te­ors which are in­ces­santly div­ing into the blaz­ing suns.

57:7.10The prim­i­tive plan­e­tary at­mo­sphere of the vol­canic age af­fords lit­tle pro­tec­tion against the col­li­sional im­pacts of the me­te­oric swarms. Mil­lions upon mil­lions of me­te­ors are able to pen­e­trate such an air belt to smash against the plan­e­tary crust as solid bod­ies. But as time passes, fewer and fewer prove large enough to re­sist the ever-stronger fric­tion shield of the oxy­gen-en­rich­ing at­mo­sphere of the later eras.

57:6.5Shoot­ing stars oc­cur in swarms be­cause they are the frag­ments of larger bod­ies of mat­ter which have been dis­rupted by tidal grav­ity ex­erted by near-by and still larger space bod­ies. Sat­urn’s rings are the frag­ments of a dis­rupted satel­lite. One of the moons of Jupiter is now ap­proach­ing dan­ger­ously near the crit­i­cal zone of tidal dis­rup­tion and, within a few mil­lion years, will ei­ther be claimed by the planet or will un­dergo grav­ity-tidal dis­rup­tion. The fifth planet of the so­lar sys­tem of long, long ago tra­versed an ir­reg­u­lar or­bit, pe­ri­od­i­cally mak­ing closer and closer ap­proach to Jupiter un­til it en­tered the crit­i­cal zone of grav­ity-tidal dis­rup­tion, was swiftly frag­men­tized, and be­came the pres­ent-day clus­ter of as­ter­oids.

57:8.20Since the con­den­sa­tion of the earth’s hy­dro­sphere, first into the world ocean and sub­se­quently into the Pa­cific Ocean, this lat­ter body of wa­ter should be vi­su­al­ized as then cov­er­ing nine tenths of the earth’s sur­face. Me­te­ors falling into the sea ac­cu­mu­lated on the ocean bot­tom, and me­te­ors are, gen­er­ally speak­ing, com­posed of heavy ma­te­ri­als. Those falling on the land were largely ox­i­dized, sub­se­quently worn down by ero­sion, and washed into the ocean basins. Thus the ocean bot­tom grew in­creas­ingly heavy, and added to this was the weight of a body of wa­ter at some places ten miles deep.

88:1.1Prim­i­tive man al­ways wanted to make any­thing ex­traor­di­nary into a fe­tish; chance there­fore gave ori­gin to many. A man is sick, some­thing hap­pens, and he gets well. The same thing is true of the rep­u­ta­tion of many medicines and the chance meth­ods of treat­ing dis­ease. Ob­jects con­nected with dreams were likely to be con­verted into fe­tishes. Vol­ca­noes, but not moun­tains, be­came fe­tishes; comets, but not stars. Early man re­garded shoot­ing stars and me­te­ors as in­di­cat­ing the ar­rival on earth of spe­cial vis­it­ing spir­its.

57:6.1Sub­se­quent to the birth of the so­lar sys­tem a pe­riod of di­min­ish­ing so­lar dis­gorge­ment en­sued. De­creas­ingly, for an­other five hun­dred thou­sand years, the sun con­tin­ued to pour forth di­min­ish­ing vol­umes of mat­ter into sur­round­ing space. But dur­ing these early times of er­ratic or­bits, when the sur­round­ing bod­ies made their near­est ap­proach to the sun, the so­lar par­ent was able to re­cap­ture a large por­tion of this me­te­oric ma­te­rial.

57:7.1Through­out these early times the space re­gions of the so­lar sys­tem were swarm­ing with small dis­rup­tive and con­den­sa­tion bod­ies, and in the ab­sence of a pro­tec­tive com­bus­tion at­mo­sphere such space bod­ies crashed di­rectly on the sur­face of Uran­tia. These in­ces­sant im­pacts kept the sur­face of the planet more or less heated, and this, to­gether with the in­creased ac­tion of grav­ity as the sphere grew larger, be­gan to set in op­er­a­tion those in­flu­ences which grad­u­ally caused the heav­ier el­e­ments, such as iron, to set­tle more and more to­ward the cen­ter of the planet.

57:7.22,000,000,000 years ago the earth be­gan de­cid­edly to gain on the moon. Al­ways had the planet been larger than its satel­lite, but there was not so much dif­fer­ence in size un­til about this time, when enor­mous space bod­ies were cap­tured by the earth. Uran­tia was then about one fifth its pres­ent size and had be­come large enough to hold the prim­i­tive at­mo­sphere which had be­gun to ap­pear as a re­sult of the in­ter­nal el­e­men­tal con­test be­tween the heated in­te­rior and the cool­ing crust.

57:7.3Def­i­nite vol­canic ac­tion dates from these times. The in­ter­nal heat of the earth con­tin­ued to be aug­mented by the deeper and deeper burial of the ra­dioac­tive or heav­ier el­e­ments brought in from space by the me­te­ors. The study of these ra­dioac­tive el­e­ments will re­veal that Uran­tia is more than one bil­lion years old on its sur­face. The ra­dium clock is your most re­li­able time­piece for mak­ing sci­en­tific es­ti­mates of the age of the planet, but all such es­ti­mates are too short be­cause the ra­dioac­tive ma­te­ri­als open to your scrutiny are all de­rived from the earth’s sur­face and hence rep­re­sent Uran­tia’s com­par­a­tively re­cent ac­quire­ments of these el­e­ments.

57:7.41,500,000,000 years ago the earth was two thirds its pres­ent size, while the moon was near­ing its pres­ent mass. Earth’s rapid gain over the moon in size en­abled it to be­gin the slow rob­bery of the lit­tle at­mo­sphere which its satel­lite orig­i­nally had.

57:7.5Vol­canic ac­tion is now at its height. The whole earth is a ver­i­ta­ble fiery in­ferno, the sur­face re­sem­bling its ear­lier molten state be­fore the heav­ier met­als grav­i­tated to­ward the cen­ter. This is the vol­canic age. Nev­er­the­less, a crust, con­sist­ing chiefly of the com­par­a­tively lighter gran­ite, is grad­u­ally form­ing. The stage is be­ing set for a planet which can some­day sup­port life.

57:7.7Pres­ently, the at­mo­sphere be­came more set­tled and cooled suf­fi­ciently to start pre­cip­i­ta­tion of rain on the hot rocky sur­face of the planet. For thou­sands of years Uran­tia was en­veloped in one vast and con­tin­u­ous blan­ket of steam. And dur­ing these ages the sun never shone upon the earth’s sur­face.

57:7.8Much of the car­bon of the at­mo­sphere was ab­stracted to form the car­bon­ates of the var­i­ous met­als which abounded in the su­per­fi­cial lay­ers of the planet. Later on, much greater quan­ti­ties of these car­bon gases were con­sumed by the early and pro­lific plant life.

15:5.97. Cu­mu­la­tive Spheres. From the vast quan­tity of mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing in space, small plan­ets may slowly ac­cu­mu­late. They grow by me­te­oric ac­cre­tion and by mi­nor col­li­sions. In cer­tain sec­tors of space, con­di­tions fa­vor such forms of plan­e­tary birth. Many an in­hab­ited world has had such an ori­gin.

57:5.8Al­though An­gona suc­ceeded in draw­ing away the an­ces­tral ma­te­rial of the so­lar sys­tem plan­ets and the enor­mous vol­ume of mat­ter now cir­cu­lat­ing about the sun as as­ter­oids and me­te­ors, it did not se­cure for it­self any of this so­lar mat­ter. The vis­it­ing sys­tem did not come quite close enough to ac­tu­ally steal any of the sun’s sub­stance, but it did swing suf­fi­ciently close to draw off into the in­ter­ven­ing space all of the ma­te­rial com­pris­ing the pres­ent-day so­lar sys­tem.