p>Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 / Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852
A POSSIBLE EVENT
Occupied as most of us are with our respective worldly concerns, and accustomed to see the routine of common events going on smoothly from age to age, we are little apt to reflect on natural events of a tremendous character, which modern science shews might possibly happen, and that on any day of any year. We think of the land as a firm and solid thing—as terra firma, in short—not recollecting that geology shews how it may rise or sink, so as to pass into new relations to the enveloping sea; how it may be raised, for instance, to such an extent as to throw every port inland, or so far lowered as to submerge the richest and most populous regions. No doubt, the relations of sea and land have been much as they are during historical time; but it is at the same time past all doubt, that the last great geological event, in respect of most countries known, was a submergence which produced the marine alluvial deposits; and when we find that Scandinavia is slowly but steadily rising in some parts at this moment, and that a thousand miles of the west coast of South America rose four feet in a single night only thirty years ago, we cannot feel quite assured, that the agencies which produced that submergence, and the subsequent re-emergence, are at an end. We likewise forgot, in these cool districts of the earth, that we are not quite beyond the hazard of subterranean fire. There are numberless extinct volcanoes in both Britain and France; there are some on the banks of the Rhine; indeed, they are thick-sown everywhere. Now, an extinct volcano is not quite so safe a neighbour as many may suppose. Vesuvius was an extinct volcano from time immemorial till the year 63, when it suddenly broke out again, and soon after destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum; since which time it has never again subsided into entire inactivity. Suppose Arthur's Seat, which is 'within a mile of Edinburgh town,' were to recommence business in like manner, we should like to know at how many years' purchase house property in that beautiful New Town would be selling next day. Yet what is there about an old volcano here more than an old volcano in Italy, to give assurance that its means of annoyance and destruction are absolutely extinguished?
There is, however, in the showings of science, a more serious danger than any of these. Comets were once regarded as most terrific objects, but only in a superstitious way, perplexing nations with fear of change, and shaking pestilence from their horrid hair. During an intermediate enlightened time, these notions passed away; and we have even come to think, that such a visitant of our skies may exercise a beneficial influence. We at least recollect when old gentlemen, after dinner, brightened up at the mention of 'claret 1811,' merrily attributing the extraordinary merits of the liquor to the comet of that year. But comets, in the cool eye of modern science, are not without their terrors. Crossing as they often do the paths of the planets in their progress to and from their perihelia, it cannot but be that they should now and then come in contact with one of these spheres. One, called Lexell's, did come athwart the satellites of Jupiter in 1769, and once again in 1779, so as to be deranged in its own course. It made, indeed, no observable change in the movements of the Jovian train, being of too light a consistence for that; but can we doubt, that it might nevertheless seriously affect the condition of their surfaces, and especially any animal life existing thereon? This very comet, on the 28th of June 1770, passed the earth at a distance only six times that of the moon. There is another called Biela's, which revisits the sun every six years, or a little more; and this busy traveller actually crossed our orbit in 1832, only a month before we passed through the same point in space! Another, which made a grand appearance in the western sky in March 1843, would have involved us in its tail, if we had been only a fortnight earlier at a particular place! Rather fine shaving that in the celestial economics. Now, if we consider that as many as eight comets have been observed telescopically in a single year (1846), we must see that the chance of a collision of this kind is not quite so small as to be unworthy of regard. If it be true that there are thousands of comets, all of which make periodical visits to the near neighbourhood of the sun, it must be evident that the earth, being itself not far, comparatively speaking, from that luminary, must be rather liable as otherwise to a brush from one of these wanderers; and, indeed, the wonder is, that several thousand years should have passed without, so far as we know, any one such collision having taken place.
Seeing what a highly-organised system is formed by the physical and organic arrangements upon our planet, one is apt to think that the scheme of Providence must have been framed with a provision for the complete exclusion of such accidents. To allow of the sudden undoing of all this fair scene, which it has taken thousands of years to bring out in its full proportions, seems like a wanton destruction of valuable property, and we are not disposed to believe that such a thing could be permitted. But we must at the same time remember, that our sense of what is important and consequential has a regard to the earth alone, which is but a trifling atom in the universe. Who can tell what are the limits which the Master of worlds has set to mundane calamity? And assuredly, even though a whole solar system were here and there, now and then, to be remodelled in respect of all such arrangements as have been spoken of, it could not be supposed to be a very great event in the progress of the entire scheme, seeing that astronomy has taught us to regard such systems as no more than particles in the dust-cloud or grains of sand on the sea-shore. It must, then, in sober reasoning be admitted, that our mere abhorrence of so much destruction is no guidance to our judgment on this point; and that for anything we can see of the plans of Providence, an entanglement of our globe with a comet may take place any day, with consequences incalculably damaging for the meantime, though not conclusively destructive, and perhaps necessary as a step towards an improved system of things—the bringing in of what Ben Jonson calls 'an age of better metal.'
In the frame of mind which these speculations induce—not very greatly alarmed about such extraordinary contingencies, yet not insensible to the solemnity of the thought of what may come to pass even before our living eyes—it is curious, and not necessarily unpleasant, to consider what might be the actual phenomena attending a cometary collision. We know not what comets are composed of, but are certain that they consist of some palpable matter, however diffused, for they observe the rules of motion in their revolutions round the sun. On the whole, the most plausible supposition as to their composition, is that which regards them as watery vapour or cloud, of great tenuity. How like, for example, to the doings of a cloud, is the splitting into two, which has been occasionally observed in them! Well, if they be clouds, the coming of one into contact with our earth would most likely deposit with us an immense addition to our stock of water. It would be instantaneous, or nearly so. Only think of a sudden fall of water sufficient to raise the ocean a hundred feet, and submerge all parts of the land which were less than that height above the present level of the sea! There would, of course, be a fearful abridgment of our continents; all big islands would be made little; and many littler ones would cease to be. The surviving lands would be so swept by the flood, that scarcely any of the present features would remain unchanged. All animals and movable things would be engulfed. In a few minutes, this brawling, chattering, bustling world would be stilled in universal death. What a settlement of 'questions' there! What a strike of work! What a command of Silence!
A board of bank directors was hesitating about a bill for L.100, some thinking it rather indifferent paper, others viewing it more favourably; when down comes the cometic flood, and while the manager rings his bell to see what is the matter, it enters by doors and windows, and in an instant closes the whole concern. A criminal court was sitting in expectation of the return of the jury with their verdict. There was one thinking that death may not be far from his door, and a hundred pitying him in the contrast of their own assurance from the imminent foe, when lo! the flood, and judges, jury, criminal, and sympathising audience, are all instantly on a level. A sanitary commission was deliberating on impediments to the bringing in of fresh and the taking away of foul water, and wondering if there ever would be a body of their denomination which could do anything it wished to do for the benefit of a mild, expectant, inactive, suffering public. The comet pours in its fresh water on the instant, and the whole difficulties of the case are at once resolved. A synod had been called to consider some nice point, hardly palpable to common understandings, but which everybody thought a very important point notwithstanding, and three gentlemen speaking at once to contrary purposes were about to be interrupted by a fourth of a different opinion still, when enter comet—a real Moderator—and at one stroke decides what poor mankind had been wrangling about for centuries, and what, to all appearance, but for this 'redding straik,'