Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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!

"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]

And this does not include the monstrous fiery wanderers who may come to visit us, bringing their relations along, from outside the solar system -- a sort of celestial immigrants whom no anti-Chinese legislation can keep away.

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 most part, going away for centuries, to return again from afar after their immense revolutions."[2]

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