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RAGNAROK: THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL. BY IGNATIUS DONNELLY

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Author Topic: RAGNAROK: THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL. BY IGNATIUS DONNELLY  (Read 8495 times)
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« Reply #105 on: January 26, 2009, 11:19:22 am »

"It is a finely levigated silico-aluminous earth--formed by the disintegration of feldspathic or granite rocks."[1]

The particles ground out of feldspar are finer than those derived from mica and hornblende, and we can readily understand how the great forces of gravity, acting upon the dust of the comet's tail, might separate one from the other; or how magnetic waves passing through the comet might arrange all the particles containing iron by themselves, and thus produce that marvelous separation of the constituents of the granite which we have found to exist in the Drift clays. If the destroyed world possessed no sedimentary rocks, then the entire material of the comet would consist of granitic stones and dust such as constitutes clays.

The stones are reduced to a small size by the constant attrition:

"The stones of the 'till' are not of the largest; indeed, bowlders above four feet in diameter are comparatively seldom met with in the till."[2]

And this theory is corroborated by the fact that the eminent German geologist, Dr. Hahn, has recently discovered an entire series of organic remains in meteoric stones, of the class called chrondites, and which he identifies as belonging to classes of sponges, corals, and crinoids. Dr. Weinland, another distinguished German, corroborates these discoveries; and he has also found fragments in these stones very much like the youngest marine chalk in the Gulf of Mexico; and he thinks he sees, under the microscope, traces of vegetable growth. Francis Birgham says:

[1. "American Cyclopædia," article "Clay."

2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 10.]

{p. 74}

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« Reply #106 on: January 26, 2009, 11:19:34 am »

"This entire ex-terrestrial fauna hitherto discovered, which already comprises about fifty different species, and which originates from different meteoric falls, even from some during the last century, conveys the impression that it doubtlessly once formed part of a single ex-terrestrial-celestial body with a unique creation, which in by-gone ages seems to have been overtaken by a grand catastrophe, during which it was broken up into fragments."[1]

When we remember that meteors are now generally believed to be the droppings of comets, we come very near to proof of the supposition that comets are the débris of exploded planets; for only on planets can we suppose that life existed, for there was required, for the growth of these sponges, corals, and crinoids, rocks, earth, water, seas or lakes, atmosphere, sunshine, and a range of temperature between the degree of cold where life is frozen up and the degree of heat in which it is burned up: hence, these meteors must be fragments of bodies possessing earth-like conditions.

We know that the heavenly bodies are formed of the same materials as our globe.

Dana says:

"Meteoric stones exemplify the same chemical and crystallographic laws as the rocks of the earth, and have afforded no new element or principle of any kind."[2]

It may be presumed, therefore, that the granite crust of the exploded globe from which some comet was created was the source of the finely triturated material which we know as clay.

But the clays are of different colors--white, yellow, red, and blue.

[1. "Popular Science Monthly," November, 1881, p. 86.

2. "Manual of Geology," p. 3.]

{p. 75}

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« Reply #107 on: January 26, 2009, 11:19:46 am »

"The aluminous minerals contained in granite rocks are feldspar, mica, and hornblende. . . . Mica and hornblende generally contain considerable oxide of iron, while feldspar usually yields only a trace or none. Therefore clays which are derived from feldspar are light-colored or white, while those partially made up of decomposed mica or hornblende are dark, either bluish or red."[1]

The tail of the comet seems to be perpetually in motion. It is, says one writer, "continually changing and fluctuating as vaporous masses of cloud-like structure might be conceived to do, and in some instances there has been a strong appearance even of an undulating movement."[2]

The great comet of 1858, Donati's comet, which many now living will well remember, and which was of such size that when its head was near our horizon the extremity of the tail reached nearly to the zenith, illustrated this continual movement of the material of the tail; that appendage shrank and enlarged millions of miles in length.

Mr. Lockyer believed that he saw in Coggia's comet the evidences of a whirling motion--

"In which the regions of greatest brightness were caused by the different coils cutting, or appearing to cut, each other, and so in these parts leading to compression or condensation, and frequent collision of the luminous particles."

Olbers saw in a comet's tail--

"A sudden flash and pulsation of light which vibrated for several seconds through it, and the tail appeared during the continuance of the pulsations of light to be lengthened by several degrees and then again contracted."[1]

[1. "American Cyclopædia," article "Clay."

2. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 208,

3, "Cosmos," vol. i, p. 143.]

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« Reply #108 on: January 26, 2009, 11:19:58 am »

{p. 76}

Now, in this perpetual motion, this conflict, these great thrills of movement, we are to find the source of the clays which cover a large part of our globe to a depth of hundreds of feet. Where are those exposures of granite on the face of the earth from which ice or water could have ground them? Granite, I repeat, comes to the surface only in limited areas. And it must be remembered that clay is the product exclusively of granite ground to powder. The clays are composed exclusively of the products of disintegrated granite. They contain but a trace of lime or magnesia or organic matters, and these can be supposed to have been infiltrated into them after their arrival on the face of the earth.[1] Other kinds of rock, ground up, form sand. Moreover, we have seen that neither glaciers nor ice-sheets now produce such clays.

We shall see, as we proceed, that the legends of mankind, in describing the comet that struck the earth, represent it as party-colored; it is "speckled" in one legend; spotted like a tiger in another; sometimes it is a white boar in the heavens; sometimes a blue snake; sometimes it is red with the blood of the millions that are to perish. Doubtless these separate formations, ground out of the granite, from the mica, hornblende, or feldspar, respectively, may, as I have said, under great laws, acted upon by magnetism or electricity, have arranged themselves in separate lines or sheets, in the tail of the comet, and hence we find that the clays of one region are of one color, while those of another are of a different hue. Again, we shall see that the legends represent the monster as "winding," undulating, writhing, twisting, fold over fold, precisely as the telescopes show us the comets do to-day.

[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. iv, p. 650.]

{p. 77}

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« Reply #109 on: January 26, 2009, 11:20:10 am »

The very fact that these waves of motion run through the tail of the comet, and that it is capable of expanding and contracting on an immense scale, is conclusive proof that it is composed of small, adjustable particles. The writer from whom I have already quoted, speaking of the extraordinary comet of 1843, says:

"As the comet moves past the great luminary, it sweeps round its tail as a sword may be conceived to be held out at arm's-length, and then waved round the head, from one side to the opposite. But a sword with a blade one hundred and fifty millions of miles long must be a somewhat awkward weapon to brandish round after this fashion. Its point would have to sweep through a curve stretching out more than six hundred millions of miles; and, even with an allowance of two hours for the accomplishment of the movement, the flash of the weapon would be of such terrific velocity that it is not an easy task to conceive how any blade of connected material substance could bear the strain of the stroke. Even with a blade that possessed the coherence and tenacity of iron or steel, the case would be one that it would be difficult for molecular cohesion to deal with. But that difficulty is almost infinitely increased when it is a substance of much lower cohesive tenacity than either iron or steel that has to be subjected to the strain.

"There would be, at least, some mitigation of this difficulty if it were lawful to assume that the substance which is subjected to this strain was not amenable to the laws of ponderable existence; if there were room for the notion that comets and their tails, which have to be brandished in such a stupendous fashion, were sky-spectres, immaterial phantoms, unreal visions of that negative shadow-kind which has been alluded to. This, however, unfortunately, is not a permissible alternative in the circumstances of the case. The great underlying and indispensable fact that the comet comes rushing up toward the sun out of space, and then shoots round that great center of attraction by the force of its own acquired and ever-increasing impetuosity; the fact that it is obedient

{p. 78}

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« Reply #110 on: January 26, 2009, 11:20:23 am »

through this course to the law of elliptical, or, to speak more exactly, of conic-section, movement, permits of no doubt as to the condition of materiality. The comet is obviously drawn by the influence of the sun's mass, and is subservient to that all-pervading law of sympathetic gravitation that is the sustaining bond of the material universe. It is ponderable substance beyond all question, and held by that chain of physical connection which it was the glory of Newton to discover. If the comet were not a material and ponderable substance it would not gravitate round the sun, and it would not move with increasing velocity as it neared the mighty mass until it had gathered the energy for its own escape in the enhanced and quickened momentum. In the first instance, the ready obedience to the attraction, and then the overshooting of the spot from which it is exerted, combine to establish the comet's right to stand ranked at least among the ponderable bodies of space."[1]

And it is to the comet we must look for the source of a great part of those vast deposits of gravel which go to constitute the Drift.

"They have been usually attributed to the action of waves; but the mechanical work of the ocean is mostly confined to its shores and soundings, where alone material exists in quantity within reach of the waves and currents.[2] . . . The eroding action is greatest for a short distance above the height of half-tide, and, except in violent storms, it is almost null below low-tide."[3]

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« Reply #111 on: January 26, 2009, 11:20:37 am »

But if any one will examine a sea-beach he will see, not a vast mass of pebbles perpetually rolling and grinding each other, but an expanse of sand. And this is to be expected; for as soon as a part of the pebbles is, by the attrition of the waves, reduced to sand, the sand packs around the stones and arrests their further waste. To form such a mass of gravel as is found in the Drift we

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 202.

2. Dana's "Text Book," p. 286.

3. Ibid., p. 287.]

{p. 79}

must conceive of some way whereby, as soon as the sand is formed, it is removed from the stones while the work of attrition goes on. This process we can conceive of in a comet, if the finer detritus is constantly carried back and arranged in the order of the size of its particles.

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« Reply #112 on: January 26, 2009, 11:20:54 am »

To illustrate my meaning: let one place any hard substance, consisting of large fragments, in a mortar, and proceed to reduce it with a pestle to a fine powder. The work proceeds rapidly at first, until a portion of the material is triturated; you then find that the pulverized part has packed around and protected the larger fragments, and the work is brought to a stand-still. You have to remove the finer material if you would crush the pieces that remain.

The sea does not separate the sand from the gravel; it places all together at elevations where the waves can not reach them:

"Waves or shallow soundings have some transporting power; and, as they always move toward the land, their action is landward. They thus beat back, little by little, any detritus in the waters, preventing that loss to continents or islands which would take place if it were carried out to sea."[1]

The pebbles and gravel are soon driven by the waves up the shore, and beyond the reach of further wear;[2] and "the rivers carry only silt to the ocean."[3]
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« Reply #113 on: January 26, 2009, 11:21:04 am »

The brooks and rivers produce much more gravel than the sea-shore:

"The detritus brought down by rivers is vastly greater in quantity than the stones, sand, or clay produced by the wear of the coasts."[4]

[1. Dana's "Text Book," p. 288.

2. Ibid., p. 291.

3. Ibid., p. 302.

4. Ibid., p. 290.]

{p. 80}

But it would be absurd to suppose that the beds of rivers could have furnished the immeasurable volumes of gravel found over a great part of the world in the drift-deposits.

And the drift-gravel is different from the gravel of the sea or rivers.

Geikie says, speaking of the "till":

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« Reply #114 on: January 26, 2009, 11:21:16 am »

"There is something very peculiar about the shape of the stones. They are neither round and oval, like the pebbles in river-gravel, or the shingle of the sea-shore, nor are they sharply angular like newly-fallen débris at the base of a cliff, although they more closely resemble the latter than the former. They are, indeed, angular in shape, but the sharp corners and edges have invariably been smoothed away. . . . Their shape, as will be seen, is by no means their most striking peculiarity. Each is smoothed, polished, and covered with striæ or scratches, some of which are delicate as the lines traced by an etching-needle, others deep and harsh as the scores made by the plow upon a rock. And, what is worthy of note, most of the scratches, coarse and fine together, seem to run parallel to the longer diameter of the stones, which, however, are scratched in many other directions as well."[1]

Let me again summarize:

I. Comets consist of a blazing nucleus and a mass of ponderable, separated matter, such as stones, gravel, clay-dust, and gas.

II. The nucleus gives out great heat and masses of burning gas.

III. Luminous gases surround the nucleus.

IV. The drift-clays are the result of the grinding up of granitic rocks.

V. No such deposits, of anything like equal magnitude, could have been formed on the earth.

[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 13.]

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« Reply #115 on: January 26, 2009, 11:21:27 am »

{p. 81}

VI. No such clays are now being formed under glaciers or Arctic ice-sheets.

VII. These clays were ground out of the substance of the comet by the endless changes of position of the material of which it is composed as it flew through space, during its incalculable journeys in the long reaches of time.

VIII. The earth-supplies of gravel are inadequate to account for the gravel of the drift-deposits.

IX. Neither sea-beach nor rivers produce stones like those found in the Drift.

I pass now to the next question.

{p. 82}


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« Reply #116 on: January 26, 2009, 11:21:47 am »

CHAPTER III.
COULD A COMET STRIKE THE EARTH?

READER, the evidence I am about to present will satisfy you, not only that a comet might have struck the earth in the remote past, but, that the marvel is that the earth escapes collision for a single century, I had almost said for a single year.

How many comets do you suppose there are within the limits of the solar system (and remember that the solar system occupies but an insignificant portion of universal space)?

Half a dozen-fifty-a hundred-you will answer.

Let us put the astronomers on the witness-stand:

Kepler affirmed that "COMETS ARE SCATTERED THROUGH THE HEAVENS WITH AS MUCH PROFUSION AS FISHES IN THE OCEAN."

Think of that!

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« Reply #117 on: January 26, 2009, 11:21:59 am »

"Three or four telescopic comets are now entered upon astronomical records every year. Lalande had a list of seven hundred comets that had been observed in his time."

Arago estimated that the comets belonging to the solar system, within the orbit of Neptune, numbered seventeen million five hundred thousand!

Lambert regards five hundred millions as a very moderate estimate![1]

[1. Guillemin, "The Heavens," p. 251.]

{p. 83}

And this does not include the monstrous fiery wanderers who may come to visit us, bringing their relations

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« Reply #118 on: January 26, 2009, 11:22:32 am »



ORBITS OF THE PERIODIC COMETS.

along, from outside the solar system--a sort of celestial immigrants whom no anti-Chinese legislation can keep away.
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« Reply #119 on: January 26, 2009, 11:22:48 am »

Says Guillemin:

"Leaving mere re-appearances out of the question, new comets are constantly found to arrive from the depths of space, describing around the sun orbits which testify to the attractive power of that radiant body; and, for the

{p. 84}

most part, going away for centuries, to return again from afar after their immense revolutions."[1]

But do these comets come anywhere near the orbit of the earth?

Look at the map on the preceding page, from Amédée Guillemin's great work, "The Heavens," page 244, and you can answer the question for yourself.

Here you see the orbit of the earth overwhelmed in a complication of comet-orbits. The earth, here, is like a lost child in the midst of a forest full of wild beasts.

And this diagram represents the orbits of only six comets out of those seventeen millions or five hundred millions!

It is a celestial game of ten-pins, with the solar system for a bowling-alley, and the earth waiting for a ten-strike.

In 1832 the earth and Biela's comet, as I will show more particularly hereafter, were both making for the same spot, moving with celestial rapidity, but the comet reached the point of junction one month before the earth did; and, as the comet was not polite enough to wait for us to come up, this generation missed a revelation.

"In the year 1779 Lexell's comet approached so near to the earth that it would have increased the length of the sidereal year by three hours if its mass had been equal to the earth's."[2]

And this same comet did strike our fellow-planet, Jupiter.

[1. "The Heavens," p. 251.

2. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 205.]

{p. 85}

In the years 1767 and 1779 Lexell's comet passed though the midst of Jupiter's satellites, and became entangled temporarily among them. But not one of the satellites altered its movements to the extent of a hair's breadth, or of a tenth of an instant."[1]

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