SkyandTelescope.com August 2014 31came to believe that the solar system itself was the prod-
uct of a dark star’s encounter with the Sun.
Bicky was a qualitative thinker in a fi eld that demand-
ed rigor, so the scientifi c establishment closed ranks
against him. He submitted 15 letters on the partial impact
theory to the leading scientifi c journal Nature — all were
rejected. Meanwhile, he was becoming engaged in a bitter
and protracted row with Canterbury College’s Board of
Governors. One of his supposed off enses was that he, as
a professor of chemistry, was spending too much time on
astronomy. By 1902 he had been summarily dismissed
from his post.
For a time he tried to make a living by operating a
theme park in a Christchurch suburb. In 1910 he left his
wife and children behind and moved back to England
to try to campaign for his partial impact theory, hoping
to gain the assistance of his most famous pupil, Ernest
Rutherford, the recent recipient of a Nobel Prize in
chemistry. Rutherford always spoke gratefully of his one-
time teacher, and made some encouraging noises about
the partial impact theory; but his endorsement had little
infl uence because he was not an astronomer.
Fortunately, Bicky had a more dedicated champion:
Giff ord. Giff ord was an independent thinker with a
penchant for unorthodox causes. For example, he was an
amateur Shakespearean who insisted to the bitter end that
Francis Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.
But Giff ord was not a crank, and Bicky’s partial impact
theory became, and would remain, Giff ord’s ruling pas-
sion. Most importantly, Giff ord was something Bicky was
not: an outstanding mathematician who could subject his
mentor’s “hunches” to rigorous mathematical analysis.
Giff ord’s serious work on developing the impact theory
began with an insight Bicky presented at a June 1915
meeting in London of the British Astronomical Asso-
ciation (B.A.A.). The origin of lunar craters was being
discussed, with the usual arguments being trotted out
that the craters must, if produced by impacts, be pre-
dominantly elongated in form. Bicky, now 73, slowly rose
to his feet and pointed out that the energy of infalling
meteorites ought to produce “a pretty fair bang.” “The
normal speed of a meteor in space,” he supposed, “...
would produce an explosive action... consequently [even]
oblique impacts would produce roughly circular volcanic
rings.” Trying to have his cake and eat it too, he argued
that the meteorite’s energy would heat the lunar crust and
cause an outpouring of lava onto the surface.The Experience of the Somme
By the time Bicky spoke to the B.A.A., the war had been
grinding on for nearly a year. A year hence, on July 1, 1916,
the massive bloodbath known as the Battle of the Somme
got underway. In an attempt to terrorize and throw their
German adversaries into disarray, the Royal Engineers set
off a huge mine at Lochnagar, south of the village of La
Boisselle. Loaded with 24 tons of ammonal, the mine was
scheduled to be ignited at 7:28 a.m., two minutes beforeTERRESTRIAL ANALOG Lochnagar Crater in northern France,
the largest crater formed in World War I, was produced on July 1,
1916 by a massive British mine explosion detonated in the Battle
of the Somme during an Allied attempt to break through German
lines. The Germans repulsed the attack. The crater is approxi-
mately 300 feet (90 meters) across and 70 feet deep.LOCHNAGAR CRATER MEMORIAL