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Space Science

Did A Comet Trigger The Great Chicago Fire? 69

Posted by timothy from the ah-but-the-cow-ordered-the-comet-strike dept.
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."
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Did A Comet Trigger The Great Chicago Fire? More

Did A Comet Trigger The Great Chicago Fire?

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  • the flaming snowball theory? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LeninZhiv ( 464864 ) * on Saturday March 06, 2004 @02:22PM (#8486204)
    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.
    • Well, a couple things. If it's small when it hits the earth, it was probably pretty big when it hit the atmosphere. A "minor" piece of an astroid is still pretty darn big until it gets to the ground.
    • The comet split in two around Jupiter and that one of the halves hit earth while the other continued on it's other tragectory.

      The small fragments that could have started the fire probably didn't make it throuh the atmosphere alone, but rather broke off the comet just before collision. Those smaller pieces inigiting fires in Wisconsin and Michigan.

      This would explain how small pieces could make it all the way to the surface.

      According to the article, that night alone, a total space the size of Connectic

    • Re:the flaming snowball theory? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pyr0 ( 120990 ) on Saturday March 06, 2004 @03:21PM (#8486596)
      The interesting thing about objects that enter the atmosphere is that the rate at which the outer shell ablates away from friction exceeds the rate at which heat conducts through the material. If a chunk of such a comet were to reach the surface without breaking up during the process and land nearby, you could immediately find it see (and touch if you really are up for touching *really* *really* cold stuff) that the object was still frozen.

  • Don't rule out the cow! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06, 2004 @02:27PM (#8486237)
    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!
  • 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 suppose it will be pretty hard to verify though -- nothing destroys evidence like building a city over it.

      ...Except maybe burning the city down again!

    • "nothing destroys evidence like building a city over it"

      How about burning down everything in the area first, then building a city over it?:)

    • I suppose it will be pretty hard to verify though -- nothing destroys evidence like building a city over it.

      Nothing destroys flammable ice like having a fire around it.

    • I saw it about six years ago. I think the most credible bit of evidence was that the Chicago fire wasn't alone. A number of small towns, and even ships on Lake Michigan, had fires simultaneously, and evidence was found that there was a forest fire in southern Wisconsin in the same timeframe. Maybe a small air burst meteor, or a larger meteorite breaking up and falling over a larger area.

      The cow's been ruled out for decades, though. It may have lit the barn on fire, but at least one part of the city was on
    • Eight archaeologists just rolled over in their graves.

  • Read that a couple of years ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bravo_Two_Zero ( 516479 ) on Saturday March 06, 2004 @03:33PM (#8486698)
    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.

    • Re:Read that a couple of years ago (Score:5, Interesting)

      by shadowbearer ( 554144 ) on Saturday March 06, 2004 @05:19PM (#8487360) Homepage Journal
      I'd read bits and pieces of this theory over the last couple decades, but never saw any kind of coherent whole.

      It's fascinating, and quite plausible, especially when you consider how rapidly the hugely widespread fires took place. I live in an area that experiences annual forest fires, and it's just not plausible that a simple localized fire could have started the whole Chicago area conflagaration. Not even California fires spread that fast.

      (from article)

      it also would explain the cause of the fires blazing north of Chicago, which wiped out 2,000 people and burned 4 million acres of farm and prairie lands.

      and

      In all, over a 24-hour period, an area of land the size of Connecticut was burned

      His explanation makes a lot of sense to me. Hats off to Mr. Wood, this is brilliant. (danged puns! :)

      I'd love to see his orbital analysis. Anyone know if it's available on the web? A search didn't reveal anything (probably just me not knowing what to ask)

      SB
      PS- Didn't Astronomy magazine do an article on this once? Or was it S&T?

    • Re:Read that a couple of years ago (Score:4, Informative)

      by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) * on Saturday March 06, 2004 @11:31PM (#8489194) Journal
      "I don't recall where, but I'd read that a couple of years ago."

      I read it about 35 years ago. There were around 150 fires that night in various places around Wisconsin.

      I *think* it was in "Mysterious Fires and Lights" by Jacques Vallee, but I may be mistaken. It was, after all, 35 years ago.
    • The November 1990 issue of Fate magazine has an article on the comet (pp 44-52). It mentions showers of burning sand (cometary debris) and reports of fires starting in basements where heavier-than-air gasses would settle. The article also notes numerous vctims dead without visible burns, possibly from carbon monoxide or excessive levels of carbon dioxide. Additionally, the other cities are names Pestigo WI and Manitee MI.
    • I seem to recall a Discovery special not too long ago on this. In one town the only survivors were those who were down by the river, including a Reverend who convinced lots of scared people to get in the middle of the river and soak down. They still had burns from radiation but many survived to tell about it.

  • in the spirit of gary larson, (Score:3, Funny)

    by The Unabageler ( 669502 ) <joshNO@SPAM3io.com> on Saturday March 06, 2004 @03:38PM (#8486722) Homepage
    was the comet made up of cows?

  • Disney Science... (Score:5, Informative)

    by braddock ( 78796 ) on Saturday March 06, 2004 @05:36PM (#8487470)
    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 [majesticdocuments.com]. Not that that necesarily discredits the theory, but it definitly gives some pause to the source.

    Braddock Gaskill

  • Extraterrestrial Origin of Ruminants (Score:4, Funny)

    by angst_ridden_hipster ( 23104 ) on Saturday March 06, 2004 @06:15PM (#8487706) Homepage Journal
    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...

  • Comets (Score:2, Funny)

    by Samus ( 1382 )
    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)

  • other unexplained things about the Chicago fire (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CoronalPendragon ( 759878 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @02:01AM (#8489620)
    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

    • Easily explained by radiation physics (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tau Zero ( 75868 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @06:04AM (#8490083) Journal
      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
      If you have a large and hot enough fire, heat radiation will be able to raise material to its ignition temperature some distance away. (This can be observed in forest fires; trees will burst into flame when the fire has not yet reached them. I understand that houses in the path of forest fires often burn when radiant heat ignites things like drapes.) This would also explain why a building would burn in minutes: when every room facing the front of the fire is ignited more or less at once, and the subsequent flashover ignites the far side a short time later, the building is going to burn much faster than if the blaze started at a single point.
      • according to the fire marshall

        "I felt it in my bones that we were going to have a burn...

        We got the fire under control, and it would not have gone a foot farther; but the next thing I knew they came and told me that St. Paul's Church, about two squares north, was on fire"

        That doesn't sound like radiation. If so, there is no way the fire marshal could have been so close, but possibly.

        The huge stone and brick structures melted before the fierceness of the flames as a snowflake melts and disappears in

        • Even the firestorms in Germany created by incendiary bombs and the atomic bomb in Japan left charred remains.

          Yes they did... to some degree. To what degree can that be true and still be consistent with the (possibly overblown) description of the fire marshal?

          So, while there are definately, some things that can be explained by radiation, it is by no means the whole story.... Something different is going on here.

          You've just asserted a positive. You're implying that, of all the known phenomena (direc

    • This article [thebulletin.org] at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist discusses the effects of firestorms and how one could be expected to behave within a city. Granted, the author is writing about a 300-kiloton weapon being detonated over the city, but you get the drift.

    • A large fire will suck massive amounts of air into it from combustion and updrafts from the superheated air. Naturally, these winds would rush right into the teeth of the blaze

  • Sound plausible considering... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by weeboo0104 ( 644849 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:18PM (#8492305) Journal
    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?
    • 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?

      No. I thought I saw something strange, but all I can clearly remember is a bright flash and two men in black walking away.

  • Occam's Razor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Monday March 08, 2004 @02:26PM (#8501126) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • If the fires were confined to the present-day Chicago metroplex, I'd buy Occam's Razor.

      Peshtigo, Wisconsin, is about 200 miles due north of Chicago. Manistee, Michigan, is about 200 miles away AND across a giant body of water.

      Both towns experienced severe fires that night, at least if this post [slashdot.org] is accurate.

      That's some fantastic coincidence if you ask me...

      p
      • As I said before...the place was a tinderbox. It is NOT a fantastic coincidence at all. We aren't talking about strange monoliths appearing, or volcanic eruptions, or mass disappearances. This is fire. It only takes one doofus to let a spark get away from them, and fire happened to be the only way for people to cook food, work metal, boil water...fire was more common, there's doofuses everywhere, and the area was in a drought.

        Still don't believe me? Here is the final, killer argument: why does every town h

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