From the Museums 

 Permanent Collections 



THE FEATURED EXHIBIT 

 FOR NOVEMBER . . . 



Messengers 



From Outer Space 



a 



I 



t is easier to believe that two Yan- 

 kee professors will lie, than to be- 

 lieve that stones will fall from heaven." 

 Such was the brusque and incredulous 

 reply of a person of no less intelligence 

 than Thomas Jefferson, then President of 

 the United States, when he was told that 

 Professors B. Silliman and J. L. Kingsley 

 of Yale College had described a shower 

 of stones as having taken place at Wes- 

 ton, Connecticut, in 1807. Jefferson was 

 not the only skeptic; his views were 

 shared by many of his contemporaries in 

 both the arts and the sciences. The Ta- 

 bor meteorite, which fell in Bohemia in 

 1753, was referred to as: « coelo pluvisse 

 creduliores quidam asseverant (certain more 

 credulous people asserted that "stones" 

 had rained from the sky). The account of 

 the fall of the Barbotan meteorite, which 

 fell in France in 1790 after detonations 

 and the appearance of a fire-ball travel- 

 ing from south to north, was character- 

 ized as: "a recital, evidently false, of a 

 phenomenon physically impossible," 

 and "calculated to excite pity not 

 only of physicists but of all reason- 

 able people." Ernest F. Chladni 



(1756-1824), the German physicist 

 and one of the pioneer students of 

 meteoritics, writing in the latter part of 

 the 18th Century, speaks of meteorites 

 which were thrown away in his day by 

 museum directors because they were 

 ashamed to exhibit stones reported to 

 have fallen from the sky. 



Happily, while the "stones from the 

 sky" were being scoffed at, Jean Baptiste 

 Biot (1774-1862), the distinguished 

 French physicist and astronomer, who 

 accompanied Gay Lussac on the first 

 balloon ascent to study the earth's at- 

 mosphere, was preparing a detailed re- 

 port on the phenomena of the L'Aigle 

 meteorite, which fell in France in 1803. 

 The admirable thoroughness of the re- 

 port at once made a tremendous impact 

 and for the first time established beyond 

 doubt the fact of the fall of stones from 

 outer space. It also compelled many a 



Above: 



Microphotograph of a thin section of a 

 stony meteorite, showing spheroidal bodies 

 known as chondrules. Similar bodies are not 

 found in terrestrial rocks. 



doubting Thomas to give credence to 

 reports that solid cosmic matter, not of 

 terrestrial origin, does at intervals come 

 to the earth. 



Thus came the turning point, and 

 stones that had been scorned and ridi- 

 culed became, overnight, objects of dili- 

 gent search; extraordinary rivalry for 

 their possession by public museums and 

 individuals followed. The study of me- 

 teorites was put on a firmer basis and 

 since then this study has been one of con- 

 stantly widening interest. Today, with 

 the program of exploration of outer space 

 in full swing, this interest has taken an 

 unprecedented leap. Far more physi- 

 cal scientists have joined the rostrum of 

 meteoritics in the past decade and a half 

 than all combined in the past century 

 and a half. The reason for this eager- 

 ness is apparent : meteorites are portions 

 of extraterrestrial bodies that come to us 

 from the reaches of space. They are the 

 only objects known to us from which we 

 can draw information regarding the great 

 outlying universe. 



From the dawn to the end of the first 

 {Continued on page 7) 



PageS 



