The Bolide of Warsaw.—It explodes Fifty Miles from the Earth.—Supposed to possess a Surface of 2,000 Acres.
[Paris (Sept. 4.) Correspondence New York Times.] But what are we to think of the wonderful bolide of Warsaw, of a few months ago? Here is something more fantastic than anything the astronomer ever dreamed of. On a starlight night, the citizens of Warsaw gazed, petrified with fear, at the rapid approach of an immense ball of fire, which at last burst over their heads, with a noise and shock such as never had been heard nor felt before on the surface of the earth. After the globe burst, each of the pieces in turn broke up, until parts of the mass, before reaching the earth, were in powder, the first discharges representing, for the sound, the discharges of artillery, and the smaller pieces the rolling discharge of many regiments of small arms. M. Daubree, of the French Academy of Sciences, who has just been lecturing on the subject, has obtained for the Academy 942 pieces of the broken bolide. M. Krantz, of Bonn, gathered up, for himself, 1,612 pieces. Other professors have done the same, and millions of pieces yet remain strewed over the section of country where it broke. It was computed that this globe had a surface of 2,000 acres, and was consequently large enough to maintain the life of many microscopic nations of infusoria. Where did it come from, and what was the force that directed it thus in a straight line against the earth? When first seen it appeared half as large as the moon, and never appeared larger till it struck our atmosphere and exploded. This fact shows its frightful rapidity of motion, for, from the distance at which it appeared less than the moon till the time it exploded, it must have shot so rapidly that the eye had not time to perceive its enlargement! Then, again, what was the cause of the explosion, and especially of an explosion so complete as to almost triturate the particle? Was it the density of the earth’s atmosphere that broke it, or was the explosion due to the contact of certain gases of the meteor with the constituents of the air? It is more consoling to adopt the first theory, because we will then feel as if our atmosphere served as a cuirass to the earth, and would continue to protect us from the shocks of stray globes like that of Warsaw. The shock and the spring of the air must have been something beyond the computation of man, for it did not knock people down, and yet it occurred at something like fifty miles from the earth, and the pieces picked up show it to have been a tolerably hard stone.