Thus, circling in an ever narrowing (or rather shortening) orbit, it
would presently, within a quarter of a century or so perhaps, have
become so far entangled among the atmospheric matter around the sun that
it would have been unable to resist absolute absorption. What the
consequences to the solar system might have been, none ventured to
suggest. Newton had expressed his belief that the effects of such
absorption would be disastrous, but the physicists of the nineteenth
century, better acquainted with the laws associating heat and motion,
were not so despondent. Only Professor Smyth seems to have felt assured
(not being despondent, but confident) that the comet portended, in a
very decisive way, the beginning of the end.
However, we were all mistaken. The comet of 1882 retreated on such a
course, and with such variation of velocity, as to show that its real
period must be measured, not by months, as had been supposed, nor even
by years, but by centuries. Probably it will not return till 600 or 700
years have passed. Had this not been proved, we might have been not a
little perplexed by the return of apparently the same comet in this
present year. A comet was discovered in the south early in January,
whose course, dealt with by Professor Kruger, one of the most zealous of
our comet calculators, is found to be partially identical with that of
the four remarkable comets we have been considering.
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