[meteorite-list] A Ben Franklin Meteor Mystery

[MexicoDoug at aol.com]

Today (January 17, 2006) is Benjamin Franklin's  300th birthdate anniversary! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEN !!!  Wish we could  have chatted together over some 
drinks!

Ben Franklin is credited with  discovering that lightening is electricity, 
and also for first discussing its  "positive" and "negative" charge 
characteristic.  Ben had no formal  scientific education but was a very formidable 
scientist, not to mention mover  and shaker of the global enlightenment.

Ben believed for a time that  meteors were also caused by electricity, 
however his contemporary, the great  Astronomer Early American astronomer David 
Rittenhouse, had other thoughts and  most obviously discussed them at length with 
Franklin.  They were both  founders and officers in the American Philosophical 
Society - the Innovative and  incomparable Academic Ivory Tower in the unique 
American tradition of their time  responsible for adding scientific thought 
to the American Revolution and much  beyond...Upon Franklin's death, 
Rittenhouse became the second president of the  Society until his own death five years 
later.

Eleven years before Ben's  death, On "All Hallow's Eve", October 31, 1779, 
Rittenhouse had witnessed a  30-second bolide accompanied by sonic booms near 
Philadelphia, where he was the  head of the University of Pennsylvania's 
Astronomy department...as the war of  American Independence was still in Gear...

Rittenhouse described the  event in a letter purportedly to Franklin:
"Leaving behind it a bright trail  of light of a fine Silver Color, which 
continued Visible about 20 minutes,  altho' but half an hour after Sunset, and 
then gradually disappeared, after  changing from a Strait line to a very crooked 
one. [Meteors are] bodies  altogether foreign to this Earth, but meeting with 
it, in its Annual Orbit, are  attracted by it, and on entering our Atmosphere 
take fire and are exploded,  something in the manner Steel filings are, on 
passing thro' the flame of a  Candle.  [It made a] glorious appearance at the 
distance of a few miles,  yet from its prodigious Magnitude it must have been 
quite terrible. [Had the]  Cataract fallen on the plain where on Philadelphia 
stands, half its inhabitants  would probably been [sic] drowned."

In the absence of the word "bolide",  a cataract most certainly is the best 
word choice available to describe the  phenomenon.  It was brighter than the 
Sun, "a half hour after  Sunset".

Now, the third President of the American Philosophical Society  which 
Franklin founded in 1743, the Sage of Monticello, none other than Thomas  Jefferson, 
perhaps the most accomplished, and sage scientific politician genius  
combination of all time wrote, with unadulterated American pride, a defense to  stuffy 
European scientific criticisms of Americans as somehow being racially  
inferior due to their environment/land's influence over them, as arguments were  
made for European supremacy in the sciences.  Jefferson, Rittenhouse and  
Franklin were all contemporaries whom would have shared ideas and not scoffed at  
each others theories and observations.

>From "Notes on Virginia" Tom wrote  in 1782, among other well presented 
arguments in this article:
"In physics we  have produced a Franklin, than whom no one of the present age 
has made more  important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, 
or more ingenious  solutions of the phenomena of nature. We have supposed Mr. 
Rittenhouse second to  no astronomer living; that in genius he must be the 
first, because he is  self-taught. As an artist he has exhibited as great a proof 
of mechanical genius  as the world has ever produced. He has not indeed made 
a world; but he has by  imitation approached nearer its Maker than any man who 
has lived from the  creation to this day."

(Rittenhouse made an awesome coated optic  telescope)...

No doubt, this description also was related to Benjamin  Silliman, the 
whippersnapper Yale Chemist and Geologist who at 28 years old  analyzed the Weston 
Connecticut fall.  Silliman (b. 1779, the year of  Rittenhouse's account) was 
the new generation of independent thinkers released  by the American Founding 
fathers, soon to eclipse the scientific activity of  their parents' generation 
as the older gents reminisced of the golden days of  the Revolution and 
enlightenment.  By 1818, Silliman went on to found a  competitive publication, the 
"American Journal of Science and Arts" (a.k.a.,  Silliman's Journal), which has 
itself eclipsed the Proceedings of the American  Philosophical Journal as the 
longest continuously published scientific journal  in America.  It is now 
call the American Journal of Science and a nice  place to publish Earth Science 
papers.

So, the man who flew the kite in  the electrical storm to discover 
electricity in lightening, his mutually  respected colleague's assessment over tea of 
meteors, and the Author of American  Independence were three cronies most 
probably at a genius level and lock stepped  in findings and beliefs as they 
discovered the word.

What would Jefferson  believe as late as 1808 during political rallies as the 
Weston meteorite  information was discussed, to make the quip unsupported 
though attributed to him  about "Sooner believing that the Yankee's lied, than 
that the rocks fell from  the sky."  It is clear to me that the usurping new 
generation of young  Yankee's on the political and scientific scene, in the 
opinion of the stately  old Virginian had nothing to do with his beliefs regarding 
meteorites, but  rather his beliefs relating to lying Yankees, who did not 
support his  presidential campaign in 1804 and were not supporting his Secretary 
of State's  in 1808, James Madison.  The 1808 election was scandalous, and a 
preview of  the American War Between the States over 50 years later.  The 
Yankees  didn't support Jefferson in 1804, and in 1807 - 1808, the incumbent 
self-decided  lame duck Jefferson campaigned for Madison under fire by the 
opposition to  Embargo Act of 1807 implemented by Jefferson, which halted trade with 
Europe and  punished New England traders and favored France over Britain.

And not to  mention the migration of the scientific establishment from 
neutral grounded  keystone Philadelphia where Jefferson had supported the seat of 
the American  Philosophical Society to New England by the New England's sons 
while the  University of Virginia Jefferson founded, lost prominence to Yale, and 
 Harvard.  The American Journal of Science and Arts founded at Yale in New  
Haven Connecticut, by the whippersnapper Silliman, within ten years emphasized  
the situation.

We know what Franklin's and Jefferson's iconic Carl Sagan  of the time 
believed long before the fall of L'Aigle (April, 1803), as  Rittenhouse was dead by 
1790.  But the fact that the insolent green behind  the ears Yankees' would 
scoop the Philosophical Society, well hell no, in  Politics they won't cause 
they're just a lying bunch!  After all, I doubled  the size of the United States 
and wrote the Declaration of Independence,  right?  Now its time to retire and 
pursue my scientific pursuits at the  country's best University - Mine in 
Virginia.  So if they get to do the  science, let's have a bunch of fun at the 
expense of those damn prosperous  Yankee Traders, they're gonna take over the 
country we built...

The real  mystery is whether Franklin gave in to Rittenhouse and relinquished 
his belief  that meteors were another form of electricity ... I'd say 98% 
YES, as Franklin  was no dummy and this was coming from Rittenhouse, also 
Jefferson's  hero...

Saludos, Doug