William Abbott reminds us that around the first of February 41 years ago space physicist Louis A. Frank noticed that “black spots” were appearing in the new images of the Earth from the Dynamics Explorer satellite. He eventually concluded that they were produced by water vapor remaining from the disintegration of small comets into the Earth’s atmosphere. This discovery was confirmed when the same black spots appeared in different imagers aboard a subsequent satellite named Polar. The frequency of these spots would drop to almost nothing year after year, abruptly about the middle of November, and wouldn’t start to pick up until after the middle of January, in Groundhog Day fashion. Abbott noticed that the University of Iowa, where Frank spent his entire career, has shamefully deleted any mention of his discovery of small comets from his CV and obituary. So the whole story can now only be found in his posthumously published book, Cosmic Rain (Anomalist Books). (PH)
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