The Secret Lives of Planets: Order, Chaos, and Uniqueness in the Solar System

by Paul Murdin

Overview

An insider’s guide to astronomy reveals everything you need to know about the planets, their satellites, and our place in the solar system.

We have the impression that the solar system is perfectly regular like a clock or a planetarium instrument. On a short timescale it is. But, seen in a longer perspective, the planets, and their satellites, have exciting lives, full of events.

For example, did you know that Saturn’s moon, Titan, boasts lakes which contain liquid methane surrounded by soaring hills and valleys, exactly as the earth did before life evolved on our fragile planet? Or that Mercury is the shyest planet? Or, that Mars’s biggest volcano is one hundred times the size of Earth’s, or that its biggest canyon is ten times the depth of the Grand Canyon, or that it wasn’t always red, but blue?

The culmination of a lifetime of astronomy and wonder, Paul Murdin’s enchanting new book reveals everything you ever wanted to know about the planets, their satellites, and our place in the solar system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643133362
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	666,748
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 3.10(d)

About the Author

Paul Murdin has worked as an astronomer in the United States, Australia, England, Scotland, and Spain, where he led the operation of the Anglo-Dutch Isaac Newton Group of telescopes. He has been a research scientist (studying supernovae, black holes, and neutron stars) and a science administrator for the British Government and the Royal Astronomical Society. He is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, England. He has been honored in Britain by the Queen for his services to astronomy.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Order, chaos and uniqueness in the solar system 1

Chapter 2 Mercury: bashed, bashful and eccentric 19

Chapter 3 Venus: an ugly face behind a pretty veil 53

Chapter 4 Earth: balanced equanimity 73

Chapter 5 The Moon: almost dead 97

Chapter 6 Mars: the warlike planet 113

Chapter 7 Martian meteorites: chips off the old block 135

Chapter 8 Ceres: the planet that never grew up 145

Chapter 9 Jupiter: hard hearted 159

Chapter 10 The Galilean satellites: siblings of fire, water, ice and stone 173

Chapter 11 Saturn: lord of the rings 183

Chapter 12 Titan: animation suspended 199

Chapter 13 Enceladus: warm hearted 211

Chapter 14 Uranus: bowled over 219

Chapter 15 Neptune: the misfit 237

Chapter 16 Pluto: the outsider who came in from the cold 247

The solar system in a nutshell 261

Timeline 265

Picture acknowledgements 271

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/01/2020

Astronomer Murdin (Universe: Exploring the Astronomical World) takes the reader on an awe-inspiring tour of the solar system’s most noteworthy celestial bodies, delving into their quirks, secrets, and possible futures. (One such prediction: one day life may be discovered on Mars that has originated from fragments of Earth thrown up into space by meteorite hits.) To smooth out the ride for nonscientists, Murdin makes inventive use of earthbound analogy, as when he remarks on Jupiter’s “distinct belly, like a dissolute monarch: the planet visibly bulges at the equator, and is flattened at the poles,” or describes two of Saturn’s ring moons as “shaped somewhat like ravioli, with a central, white, smooth, spherical body circumscribed by a raised equatorial ridge, corresponding to the pinched edge.” Also pleasing is the way he interweaves topics including history, mythology, and linguistics, into astronomy. He discusses how the planets’ names preserve the ancient world’s beliefs about their namesake gods— “Mercury moves quickly; Venus is the beautiful goddess of love; Mars is warlike red in colour”—and how the planets’ astrological significance have come to be reflected in words such as martial, mercurial, and venereal, which are the “fossil relics of astrology.” Murdin’s fondness for his subject is evident throughout this elegant, imaginative survey and should be contagious to all who encounter it. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

In this highly readable survey of the planets from Mercury outward, astronomer Murdin summarizes the scientific knowledge about each...A first-rate introduction to the solar system.

Booklist

2020-06-13
A smooth survey of the planets and satellites.

With nations reviving an interest in human space exploration, this expert overview by Murdin, emeritus professor of astronomy at Cambridge, is a welcome description of what’s out there. The author, who was part of a team that discovered Cygnus X-1, a galactic X-ray source thought to be the first accepted as a black hole, discusses planets (once nine, now eight), some interesting moons, and several miscellaneous bodies. The nearest four planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars—are small and rocky, while the distant four—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune—are large and gassy. Mercury resembles the moon, airless and cratered but larger and hotter. As hot as melting lead, cloud-covered Venus resembles an Earth with its greenhouse gases out of control. Barren and cold with almost no atmosphere, Mars may be barely tolerable. Hopefully, we will know in a decade or two. Massive Jupiter and Saturn are the “gas giants.” Not so massive but colder, Uranus and Neptune are “ice giants.” Even further, colder, tiny, and with a wacky orbit, Pluto has been demoted to the considerable family of dwarf planets. Earth receives the longest chapter. Many readers take comfort that it orbits in the “Goldilocks Zone,” the distance from the sun where liquid water can exist. But life also requires a large magnetic field to fend off solar radiation—Earth’s won’t last forever—as well as an atmosphere with greenhouse gases. With none, it freezes; with too much, it overheats. Earth’s huge moon stabilizes the planet’s axis and seasons. Since human life requires liquid water, the author focuses intently on that topic. Mars contains almost none, but several moons of Jupiter and one of Saturn contain oceans beneath their surfaces. Another moon of Saturn, Titan, has an atmosphere as well as rivers and oceans of methane. Astronomers, science fiction writers, and Murdin remain fascinated by methane-based life.

Satisfying popular science, just right for the budding astronomer in the household.

Kirkus Reviews