Reply #10: The Chicago fire of 1871 might have been caused by a comet not a cow ...

[spin]

DID BIELA’S COMET CAUSE THE
CHICAGO AND MIDWEST FIRES?

Robert M. Wood

Newport Beach, California

On October 8, 1871, a fire started that
burned much of Chicago, killing 300, and
destroying $200,000,000 worth of property.
Most people are unaware that within a few
minutes, major fires started in upstate
Wisconsin and Michigan, killing more than
2000 people in the farming country. Because
of the poor communications with the upstate
areas, the magnitude of the upstate horror
was not known for weeks.

Biela's Comet, with a solar orbital period
of 6 years 9 months, had been disturbed by
Jupiter on a previous passage and broke into
two large comets. It has been hypothesized
that one of them struck Earth and broke into
several smaller pieces. These pieces,
consisting of frozen comet gases would have
likely included combustibles like methane
CH4 and acetylene C2H2 that melted,
vaporized and explosively ignited, causing
impressive incendiary results upstate,
consistent with surviving witness reports.

Witness reports from Chicago included
statements that entire basements exploded
with a blue flame and that red-hot sand came
raining down. In upstate Wisconsin near
Green Bay, there were reports of “fire
balloons” about one meter in size falling
from the sky that exploded with great heat
when ignited, incinerating objects struck. If
fire balloons consisted of methane, one ton
of methane would be the energy equivalent
of 12 tons of TNT if stoichiometrically
burned. There were also reports that the fire
came directly from the sky, with a trembling
of the earth – perhaps a symptom of a shock
wave. The loss of life was the greatest of
any fire in U.S. history, and the area burned
of all trees and secondary growth
approximated the size of Connecticut.
http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMPDC04_865/PV2004_1419.pdf