Wacky and wonderful misconceptions about our universe /
[Book]
Geoffrey Kirby.
Cham, Switzerland :
Springer,
2018.
1 online resource (xvi, 258 pages) :
illustrations (some color)
Astronomers' universe,
1614-659X
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Intro; Dedication; Preface; Acknowledgements; Contents; About the Author; Chapter 1: Introduction; Notes and Further Reading; Chapter 2: The Sun and Its Solar System: A Sexy Musical Pool Game?; Tycho Brahe: The Demon with a Metal Nose; Kepler's "Harmony of the Spheres"; Kepler's Cannonball Math Problem; Dr. William Whiston's "Cometary Catastrophism"; Charles Fourier's Interplanetary Sex Games; Immanuel Velikovsky's Interplanetary Pool Game; Nibiru: A Modern Solar System Cataclysm Theory; Two More False Planets; A Modern Scientific Theory of the Interplanetary Pool Game.
George Ellery Hale and His Personal "Elf Service"More Martian Mysteries; Fear and Terror: The Moons of Mars; Gulliver's Travels and the Martian Moons; Are Phobos and Deimos Martian Bases?; Beware the Bees from Mars!; Notes and Further Reading; Chapter 7: Solar System Rubble: The Home of Princess Moon Owl?; The Non-existent Planet Phaeton; Aliens on Ceres?; Eat My Shorts! Bart Simpson Is on Ceres!; Naming the Asteroids; When the Solar System's Rubble Falls to Earth; The Death of the Dinosaurs; The Tunguska Explosion; The Mysterious Tunguska Cauldrons; Dodging Meteorites; Bugs from Outer Space?
Our Hollow, Cold and Inhabited SunThe Rev. Philip Francis and "The Temperate Sun"; Creatures Living on the Sun's Surface; The Miniature Sun; The Real Sun; Planetary Hide and Seek; Notes and Further Reading; Chapter 3: Our Three Wacky Inner Planets: Imaginary, Delusionary and Inhabited; Newton's Theory of Universal Gravitation; The Problem of Mercury's Orbit Around the Sun; Vulcan Is Born; Edmond Modeste Lescarbault Sees Vulcan?; Vulcan Disappears; Observations of Nonexistent Surface Markings on Planet Mercury; Pathological Science; A Moon for Mercury?; Venus, the Queen of the Planets.
The Ashen LightThe Clouds of Venus; The "Canals" of Venus; Speculation About the Surface of Venus; Aliens on Venus; Was Earth Invaded by Bugs from Venus?; A Lost Moon of Venus; Notes and Further Reading; Chapter 4: Earth: Flat, Hollow or Inside Out?; Earth Is Flat?; Earth Is Stationary?; Earth Is Expanding?; Earth Has a Ring?; Earth Was Once a Six-Faced Tetrahedron?; Earth Is Hollow; Earth Is Inside Out; Are There Two Earths?; Notes and Further Reading; Chapter 5: Our Moon: Inhabited, Small and Icy; Our Unique Moon; How Was the Moon Formed?; The Moon Illusion; What Do You See in the Moon?
What Did Those Monks Really See?Erupting Volcanoes on the Moon; Are There Aliens on the Moon?; The Great Moon Hoax of 1835; Getting the Moon Plastered; Is the Moon an Alien Spacecraft?; An Alien-Built Bridge on the Moon?; Pathological Science Strikes Again!; A Slippery Moon!; There's More Than One Moon Up There!; "It Was the Moon That Made Me Do It!"; Advertising on the Moon; Notes and Further Reading; Chapter 6: Mars: Inhabited and a Threat?; Is There Life on Mars?; Percival Lowell and His Martian Civilization; Leo Brenner: The Man Who Made Enemies.
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From unicorns on the Moon to UFOs piloted by Martian bees, this book chronicles some of the strangest ideas that have been put forward - and have actually been believed in -- about our Solar System. Drawn from tales dating from the Middle Ages to the present, this collection of stories takes readers on an imaginative and wild ride through the ages and minds of some of the wackiest, tackiest, most outlandish concepts in astronomy, cosmology and physics. Follow along as Geoff Kirby recounts each quirky idea in detail and explains how these theories fare against modern astronomical research and technologies.
Wacky and wonderful misconceptions about our universe.