"Meteorite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dust—and it falls everywhere, not only in the city streets, but upon the tops of mountains, upon the deck of the ocean steamer, and the Arctic snow—we find some of it does not belong to the earth, and, as it is not terrestrial, we call it cosmical. And when it falls in large pieces we call it a meteorite or shooting star. When the Challenger crossed the Atlantic, and soundings were made in the deep sea, in the mud that was brought up and examined there were found various little particles that were not terrestrial. They were dust particles that were dropped ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... per second will be brought, superficially, to the temperature of "red heat'' by friction with the atmosphere. If its velocity is twenty miles per second the temperature will become thousands of degrees. This is the state of affairs with a meteorite rushing into the earth's atmosphere; its surface is liquefied within a few seconds after the friction begins to act, and the melted and vaporized portion of its mass is swept backward, forming the train of sparks that follows every great fire-ball. However, ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss |
