The Bible According to Einstein's book of Meteors

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The New Testament                                       319


The fifteenth book of Planetology, called

Meteors

And there fell a great star from Heaven,
burning as if it were a lamp.

Chapter I: Origin

Now Earth shall have other visitors
from the solar system and beyond.

And it shall come to pass that a pebble of debris in outer space shall pass the orbit of the Earth and pierce its atmosphere. And friction with Earth's air shall make it grow quite hot and glow. And it shall streak across the dark night sky as a streak of light. And this shall be a meteor. It shall be like unto a shooting star.

Chapter II: Showers

And rocks and bits of objects
shall from the heavens fall.

Now during the year at certain times, Earth shall pass through a region filled with outer-space debris. And if ye be looking, ye shall see dozens of meteors each hour. A meteor shower shall be the name for this display of Nature's fireworks. Prominent showers shall have names. And for example, each year on January third shall the Quadrantid shower "rain." On April twenty-two shall come the Lyrid shower. And the Perseids shall transpire in a two-week interval peaking


320                       The Bible According to Einstein

on the twelfth of August.302 And the Orionid shower shall last a few days and peak on October twenty-one. On November seventeen shall the Leonid display its streaks of light. The Geminid shower shall last for a few days but on the fourteenth of December shall it show its real power. Now the debris of showers often shall have come from comets. And for example, the Orionids shall be associated with the comet Halley. An exception is the Geminid shower: its debris shall have originated from the asteroid called Phaethon.

Chapter III: Meteorites
Less commonly, a meteor shall streak across the sky, burn and generate a glowing disk of red as large or larger than a quarter Moon. And this shall be a fire ball.
     Now the energy released within the atmosphere by a one-gram meteor shall be equivalent to one-hundred grams of TNT. Such small meteors shall be pulverized and burn up in the atmosphere. And since most are small, almost all shall vanish in Earth's atmosphere. But those that do survive and land on Earth shall be called meteorites. And quite infrequently, Earth shall encounter one that is relatively large. Such a large meteorite shall create a crater. Now once or twice every hundred-million years, a meteor ten-kilometers or bigger shall strike Earth, creating a blast equivalent to one-hundred-million megatons of TNT or more. And great ecological damage shall ensue; and Earth shall have a holocaust.

____________________

302 The first three weeks of August are the best time to view meteors.


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