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Did A Comet Trigger The Great Chicago Fire?
Alien54 writes "Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives. New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere."
So just how big does a chunk of frozen methane have to be in order to make it all the way to the earth's surface? This is way outside my area of expertise, but I'd have to imagine frozen methane melts pretty darn quick. Apparently comets are bigger than I thought, if a minor broken-off chunk of one can make it all the way down here without melting.
That doesn't rule out the cow, though. I mean, if I were a cow and there were comet fragments raining down on me, you'd better believe I'd be kicking over any lanterns in the general vicinity!
Yes. It is not widely known, especially after more than 100 years, but Mrs. O'Leary's cow was actually a raptor saurus.
Kharma? BADASS
> So, this is the one that killed the dinosaurs as well, yeah?
No, the dinosaurs all died when a stegasaur kicked over a lantern...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I've heard this theory before, but it's certainly an interesting one. I suppose it will be pretty hard to verify though -- nothing destroys evidence like building a city over it.
I don't recall where, but I'd read that a couple of years ago. The main support came from what happend to a small town about 40 miles outside Chicago that was essentially obliterated by a rapid, intense fire. I think it was the center of the activity mentioned as "north of Chicago" in the article. I'm glad to see the theory getting a little more publicity and play.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
was the comet made up of cows?
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Mrs. O'Leary's cow was actually a raptor saurus.
That's one pretty confused raptor...
I like the THEORY, but this is a story from Disney's esteamed peer-reviewed Discovery channel about a theory from a man who has spent decades as a known UFO investigator.
Robert Wood's resume can be found here, at the site MajesticDocuments.com. Not that that necesarily discredits the theory, but it definitly gives some pause to the source.
Braddock Gaskill
This supports my pet theory, that cows are actually from outer space.
They created humanity in order to tend the fields for them, but somewhere along the line, the plan went horribly, terriby wrong for the ruminants.
O'Leary's cow was trying to call in some airstrikes to inspire the resistance. Yet another dismal failure for the Glorious Extraterrestrial Cow Revolution...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Holy Crap! Disney owns Discovery?
I don't think so. Here's a list of what Disney owns. Discover magazine is on there (scroll up to magazine titles), but it has no connection to Discovery Communications that I can find (scroll down to cable TV).
Eisner demoted!
So does this mean now that we'll see a bunch of cheesily dressed up plaster comets all over Chicago? (They did it with cows for anyone who never saw it)
In Republican America phones tap you.
It is worth noting that Chicago fire was not typical in many ways. The fire was unusually hot. One factory that burned melted pig iron 200 feet away. Buildings burned on a timescale of minutes, it was reported. Unlike your normal everyday fire, nothing was left half-burned. It also burned INTO the wind, which is contrary for usual fires. A guy in the New York Evening Post wrote, "buildings far beyond the line of fire, and in no contact with it, burst into flames from the interior". The other facts I noted may be referenced in The Annual Record of Science and Industry for1876, pg. 84 and History of the Great Conflagration Sheahan & Upton, Chicago, Illinois, 1871
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
That meteorite fragments hit Chicago last June(?). My windows was facing away from the city, but I was still able to see a bright flash which I thought was lightning at first. Anybody else in the Chicago area remember the meteorite last year?
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
That doesn't sound like radiation. If so, there is no way the fire marshal could have been so close, but possibly.
So, while there are definately, some things that can be explained by radiation, it is by no means the whole story. Even the firestorms in Germany created by incendiary bombs and the atomic bomb in Japan left charred remains. Something different is going on here.
youl never get it out of your head....
- Is there any physical evidence remaining to qualify or quantify the elements of the fire marshal's account? If not, you're drawing conclusions from zero data.
- Radiation does indeed account for rubbish being burned (radiant heat would ignite it) and for a fire burning upwind (radiation is not affected by the wind, and the leeward side of a windowed building could be ignited just as easily by radiation as the windward side). Once ignited, the building could flash over inside and begin radiating heat on its own windward side, continuing the process. This might be easier after the winds from a firestorm have had some time to dry out buildings.
- Radiation isn't the whole story. Embers falling out of the smoke cloud have their own chance to do their thing.
- Brick and stone buildings are usually supported by internal timbers and have plenty of combustibles inside. Once those ignite (especially all at once, and supported by radiant heat from the environs) they could weaken quickly and bring the whole structure down. Buckling of masonry from radiant heat could account for more of this; typical fires do not involve whole blocks and wouldn't exhibit this phenomenon enough to be familiar.
- You get interesting colors in fires when you add metallic salts. Copper salts in particular burn green, and copper roofs used to be much more common than they are now.
I think that one would need to account as completely as possible for known phenomena before asserting that unknown phenomena were at work in the Chicago fire.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
There's nothing wrong with that and we still love him the same. Besides, we're sure it's just a phase he's going through now that he'll eventually outgrow.
Sincerely,
Mr. and Ms. Raptor
I think this is an overly-complicated explanation for a tragic event. The fires were surrounded by wild-eyed accounts from people who were in mortal panic. Sensational journalism often "enhanced" the facts, and there really wasn't any way to check up on the factual basis of the stories.
There was a very long, bone-dry period before the fires. The whole area was a tinderbox, heavily wooded at the time, with lots of underbrush; houses weren't built to fire codes, communication was slow so people didn't have the chance to evacuate. The physics of forest fires have to be seen to be believed; the fire will follow the fuel, not the wind. The fire creates its own wind and becomes a temporary blast furnace. The sheer heat from such rapid burning will easily cause objects to burst into flame when not in contact with the fire. The oxygen is also rapidly consumed, and suffocating gases produced, without the need for chunks of methane.
There is also no real way to prove that many fires started simultaneously. Communication, again, was patchy and slow at best. The fire could spread along dozens of unpopulated paths and appear to pop up everywhere at once.
Accidentally starting a fire is easy, and it's not so absurd to think that fires might have broken out in a few separate locations, given the tinder-dry conditions at the time. The times could have been separated by hours and still appear simultaneous. Things like lightning, static electricity, spontaneous combustion...they're all possible, but that's looking for an over-glamorous cause to a massive tragedy.
The odds are very good that the fires were started accidentally by very mundane means. Someone's cooking fire might have wafted a spark into some dry grass, or someone might have dropped their pipe and not noticed until it was too late. The conditions were just so dry, the whole place was a firebomb on a hair trigger.
Sometimes people want to take a tragic accidental event and attach some absurd, freak cause to it. It helps distance the event from them; if it can't happen normally, they don't have to worry about the risk, right? Many people prefer the "Navy missile" theory of TWA 800, instead of the "frayed wire" theory. It makes the tragedy the stuff of legends, and it doesn't hit quite so close to home anymore.
...
Damn, so that's why they keep losing...
[TMB]
Three nights ago, when we were all in bed
Old lady Leary left a lantern in the shed
and when the cow kicked it over
she winked her eye and said
"There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!"
Thank you.