Rain of Iron and Ice #2

Rain of Iron and Ice continues to discuss the issues with proving that meteors were not heavenly bodies (or that they existed at all).  Lewis brings up the issue that despite people finding a variety of strange iron deposits around the Earth they couldn't be confirmed as meteorites because there wasn't an observed fall to coincide with the found object.  It wasn't until the late 1600's that scientists from the Royal Society of London or the Société Royale decided that uncivilized hicks might have something to offer.  As science developed, our world view changed and more data came in about meteorites so that by 1759 the French Academy could editorialize that, "these meteors are not rare," which says a lot about how much danger we might be in.  While it suggests that meteor impacts happen often, it also suggests that they aren't extraordinarily catastrophic since the world didn't end over and over again. 

The first solid evidence for meteorites extraterrestrial origin came in 1800 and 1801 when E.C. Howard found chemical similarities in the compositions of meteors that were markedly different from local rocks.  This difference in chemical makeup is the first indicator that meteors were, in fact, meteors and not random terrestrial rocks.  France took slightly longer to confirm Howard's discoveries.  It wasn't until 1803 that Antione-François de Fourcroy performed similar research to reach the same conclusion before commenting on the value of eye-witness accounts.  He said, "I could distrust the imagination of a learned man, but I would place all my faith in the testimony of an ignorant person, because, by nature, the ignorant person has no imagination."  Which is a rather back-handed compliment if you ask me.  The book then continues into how people were unable to process the idea that rocks fell from the sky, so they simply ignored it. 

Now we finally get to some good interesting info about the meteorites themselves.  The book describes three types of meteors, Irons, Stones, and Stony-Irons (basically chocolate, vanilla, and swirl).  With the Irons being able to easily pass through the atmosphere and the Stones usually having quite a bit more trouble. 

There was a push against the idea that craters could be the result of the impacts of such bodies because hundreds of years earlier geologists had come to the conclusion that because Earth was so old catastrophic events would have no effect and have never happened.  These impact craters would blow massive holes in a defining theory of geology and so many educated people resisted the idea, but when, in the early to mid 1900's the evidence became irrefutable, many more craters were found all over the world. 

And I have finally found where the book begins to talk about how asteroid/meteorite impacts work!