David A J Seargent Weird Worlds Bizarre Bodies of the Solar System and Beyond Astronomers’ Universe For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6960 David A.J Seargent Weird Worlds Bizarre Bodies of the Solar System and Beyond David A.J Seargent The Entrance NSW, Australia ISSN 1614-659X ISBN 978-1-4614-7063-2 ISBN 978-1-4614-7064-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-7064-9 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013934105 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 This work is subject to copyright All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) For Meg and Elliott Preface In my previous “weird” volumes—Weird Astronomy and Weird Weather—the principal topics of interest were largely observations that appeared anomalous or that in some way did not “fit” with accepted ideas The present volume has a slightly different emphasis From the point of view of Earth, the worlds beyond our own all have aspects that seem “anomalous” or “weird” to us, not because they fail to accord with accepted ideas but simply because they harbor phenomena which lie outside the domain of our normal experience If some of the things that are regular aspects of the scenery on Mars or Mercury—not even to mention Titan or, still less, planets of other suns—were to occur on Earth, they would make the “weird” events and observations discussed in my previous volumes pale into insignificance! What if the Sun were to halt in the sky, reverse on its track for a while, and then continue as “normal” or rise in the west and set in the east? What if jets of carbon dioxide suddenly erupted from beneath the polar ice, shooting fountains of dust high into the air; or liquid methane rained from the skies; or volcanoes shot fountains of lava so high as to effectively reach the edge of space? What should we think about ice remaining solid at a temperature equivalent to that of white-hot metal or diamond dust falling through a liquid realm that is neither atmosphere nor ocean? Could we even imagine the possibility of finding a form of living organism that would explode in a ball of flame if exposed to the air? Who could conceive that a stone dropped from the top of a cliff could take a quarter hour to reach the bottom? And what more bizarre sight could there be than a moon progressing through all its phases as it crossed the sky between moonrise and moonset—especially if it also went “backward” from west to east? vii viii Preface Yet all of these things are commonplace on other worlds of which we already have some knowledge Add to this the prospects of simple life in underground oceans on moons and even asteroids, comets that practically strike the Sun as they whip around it at over a million miles per hour, planet-like bodies wandering through the cosmic night of interstellar and maybe even intergalactic space, planet-sized diamonds and similarly proportioned balls of steel and we can agree that some pretty weird things lurk in this Universe Through the pages of this book, we will look at some of them Following the pattern of the previous two volumes, the reader will find several “Projects” within these pages Most of these are simple observing exercises Some can be included in astronomy club open nights or suggested as exercises that junior club members might like to try Either way, they emphasize the fact that astronomy is first of all an observational science and one in which the amateur having only modest equipment can participate and, by participating, come to share something of the excitement of our increasing knowledge of the weird denizens of this wonderful Universe The Entrance, NSW, Australia David A.J Seargent About the Author David A J Seargent holds an M.A and a Ph.D., both in Philosophy, from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, where he formerly worked as a tutor in Philosophy for the Department of Community Programs/Workers’ Educational Association external education program He is also an avid astronomer and is known for his observations of comets, one of which he discovered in 1978 Together with his wife Meg, David lives at The Entrance, north of Sydney, on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia He is the author of four published astronomy books: Comets—Vagabonds of Space (Doubleday, 1982), The Greatest Comets in History—Broom Stars and Celestial Scimitars (Springer, 2008), Weird Astronomy—Tales of the Unusual, Bizarre, and Other Hard to Explain Observations (Springer, 2010), and Weird Weather: Tales of Astronomical and Atmospheric Anomalies (Springer, 2012) Currently, he is the author of a regular column in Australian Sky & Telescope magazine ix ... times smaller that of the next lowest in the Solar System; that of the giant planet Jupiter! Partially because of the eccentric nature of its orbit and partially because of its lack of substantial... Perth, a little over 2,000 So Mercury would just cover the USA and Australia! D.A.J Seargent, Weird Worlds: Bizarre Bodies of the Solar System and Beyond, Astronomers’ Universe, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-7064-9_1,...Astronomers’ Universe For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6960 David A.J Seargent Weird Worlds Bizarre Bodies of the Solar System and Beyond David A.J Seargent The Entrance NSW, Australia