TEKTITES AND THE LOST PLANET — STAIR 225 



present, as indicated by the retrograde direction of the outer ones), 

 a collision with one of them would have been a reasonable possibility, 

 especially since they are distributed over distances many millions of 

 miles from the parent planet. Thus in possibly one of tliese ways 

 we could have the meteoric planet smashed and its pieces sent flying 

 off at various speeds in all directions. Some of the material would be 

 expected to become diverted into hyperbolic paths and to leave our 

 solar system forever. Other fragments, together with possible moons 

 originally associated with the lost planet, would continue to circle 

 the sun as meteors, comets, and asteroids in orbits of various sizes, 

 eccentricities, and inclinations. Those portions of the planet that 

 were thrown into orbits extending to great distances from the sun 

 might be expected to collect quantities of various frozen gaseous mate- 

 rials such as carbon, nitrogen, ammonia, carbon monoxide, and carbon 

 dioxide. Those fragments that were significantly crushed, or even 

 shattered, and more or less held together by their mutual gravitational 

 attraction, might be expected to collect large amounts of the frozen 

 gases and thus be welded into a solid mass which, when it returned 

 to the vicinity of the sun, would become a brilliant comet. If suffi- 

 cient amount of the frozen gaseous material were volatilized during 

 the passage by the sun, the solid portions of the comet might fall apart 

 if originally shattered. Such seems to have been the case with a 

 number of comets, in particular the brilliant comet of 1882 which left 

 the region of the sun as four smaller comets. 



From time to time chunks of the shattered planet would be expected 

 to (and do) collide with the earth, the moon, and, presumably, with 

 the other planets and satellites of our solar system. The present orbits 

 of the meteors, the comets, and the asteroids cannot be expected to 

 give any reasonable indication of the original path of the parent planet. 

 Although all the components may be assumed to have been at a single 

 location within the solar system at the time of the collision, perturba- 

 tions by Jupiter and the other bodies of the solar system have changed 

 and rechanged their orbits so many times that about the only safe 

 assumption to be made is that the original planet (or planets) was in 

 an orbit of some shape between Mars and Jupiter. 



Meteor Crater in Arizona is a good example of what happens when 

 a meteor (or comet) composed of chunks of nickel-iron collides with 

 the earth. The craters on the moon, visible through a small telescope, 

 are a pictorial record of such collisions (Baldwin, 1949) through the 

 ages on that body. Not all the craters on the moon, however, should 

 be credited to collision with fragments of the lost planet which is 

 responsible for the meteors, comets, and part or all the asteroids now 

 a part of our solar family. Since the age tests on meteorites and 

 tektites indicate that these objects have been subjected to tlie cosmic- 



