32 
looks more to me as though there was a disintegration all along the 
line of the comet’s orbit, giving us small particles with all sorts of 
loads of electricity and all sorts of differences of central attraction 
and differences of orbits, and thus they get widely scattered so 
as to give us the showers a long distance from the comet itself. 
The amount of this change would have to be something like the 
tenth part, possibly, or something less than that. J should think 
that all the phenomena could be explained by a change amounting 
to one-tenth of the attraction; that is, if the small particle carries 
a load of electricity such as to diminish the attraction to say nine- 
tenths of the original attractive force of the sun, or increase it to 
eleven-tenths, it will explain the phenomena. 
If that is the explanation, we come to this further conclusion of 
interest, that the space through which these comets move is not 
such that the electricity which the particle carries can be lost. An- 
other practical point would be that, in the discussion of the sepa- 
ration of these comet masses that through the telescope we see 
going on as the comets pass the sun, there might fairly be intro- 
duced an unknown correction of the force of central attraction. 
A Memper: Haye you gentlemen, who have made a study of 
this very interesting subject which you have been discoursing on, 
arrived at any hypothesis as to what broke up the Biela comet? 
Pror. Newton: I -can only answer as a working hypothesis, 
in my own mind, is that a mass, not surrounded by an atmosphere, 
coming down from the cold into a warmer region near the sun, be- 
comes heated up, and in that heating there is a disintegration going 
on. If you put the pieces of a meteorite into a vacuum, and heat 
them, you will get gases that will be something like those which 
are thrown off from the tail of a comet, and the comet coming 
down near the sun, with the hot, scorching effect entirely undimin- 
ished by a thick atmosphere, would have pieces broken off, giving 
fresh surfaces. An immense amount of action of some sort follows, 
and those pieces would naturally go off under such excitement, car- 
rying with them, as I conceive, a load of electricity. The process 
goes on in almost all our comets. It is not in Biela alone that we 
see comets going off to pieces. Scores of comets have shown that 
same breaking up under the telescope. 
Adjourned. 
In the afternoon the Society and guests attended a reception 
tendered by the Drexel Institute. 
