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Re: (meteorobs) Meteor infall & disease
On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, Thomas Ashcraft wrote:
> I discovered Arrhenius by reading Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe's
> various books on "diseases from space." They went to great lengths to try
> to prove a correspondence with meteor infall and influenza outbreaks. I do
> not believe they came near to any proof but they sure do write good books.
I remember an RAS meeting where FH & CW presented some of their work.
Few of the audience were convinced by their thesis. As theoreticians
it was clear that they didn't appreciate data errors, and
overinterpreted their IUE data. It was a rousing meeting more akin to
those in the 19th century, so was far more entertaining than normal.
These days we're far more polite and reserved.
Seeing "diseases from space" reminds me of a slide collection on
meteors and meteorites on sale at the Royal Greenwich Observatory
around the early 1980s. In its commentary, it referred to the
"Germinids". So that's why there are so many colds around December
and January. (-:
Malcolm
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