Excerpt from The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 15: May to October, 1879 Though the calorific effects of the encounters of great spheres have monopolized the attention of modern scientists, many facts show that mechanical action of the most extreme violence is attended with a larger conversion of energy into electricity and magnetism, and that in the case under consideration these forces must be developed on a more gigantic scale than heat and light. On the fall of a meteorite to the sun after a long course through his atmosphere on November 1, 1859, a disturbance occurred in terrestrial magnetism so quick and remarkable as to excite much attention at several stations of Europe and America. Even this circumstance alone would give grounds for a very high estimate of the magnetic agency called into being, if an amount of matter more than a thousand times that contained in our globe were hurled almost horizon tally over a solar surface with a velocity of two or three hundred miles a second. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.