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Re: Zero gravity in Around the Moon

From: Christian Sánchez <chvsanchez~at~arnet.com.ar>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 03:39:14 -0300
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

> I hope I didn't miss other Jules Verne references...

Dear Zvi,

There is another Verne reference in "Astronomy for Entertainment", by Y. Perelman. Jules mentions a second moon in "Around the Moon", whose existence was supposed by the French astronomer Petit. Perelman says Petit was a real person and his theory was shared by a few other scientists, contradicting the British periodical "Science", which thought that Petit and his theory was an invention by Verne.

CHS

----- Mensaje original -----
De: "Zvi Har'El" <rl~at~math.technion.ac.il>
Para: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>
Enviado: Lunes 17 de Noviembre de 2003 5:11
Asunto: Re: Zero gravity in Around the Moon


> Dear Friends,
>
> I would like to add my share to this thread. Since my childhood, I have owned
> the book "Astronomy for Entertainment", by Y. Perelman, which was published by
> the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow in 1958. I bought it in Haifa,
> in a special store which sold books from the USSR, most of them very low-cost.
> I couldn't read Russian, but they also had English translations, like the book
> I am discussing here. It seems it is the last Perelman's book, because of his
> untimely death in war-bound Leningrad in 1942. I never saw Perelman's Physics
> book. My Grandfather owned Perelman's "Geometry for Entertainment" in Russian,
> but since he didn't believe I'll ever be able to read Russian, he donated it
> to a Museum, unfortunately for me...
>
> Anyway, Perelman have several references to Jules Verne in this book.
>
> First, when speaking about the implications of the angle between the Earth's
> axis and the Earth's orbital plane, he is recalling the Cannon Club in Jules
> Verne's Upside Down.
>
> Then, when discussing the International Date Line, he explains the existence
> of this line makes the story in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days,
> where Fogg mistook a Saturday to a Sunday impossible - it was possible only in
> Magellan's times, where there was no dateline agreement.
>
> Thirdly, there is a reference to "Le Pays des fourrures", where he finds "A
> fine example of faith in the might of science" in the fact that not observing
> a predicted solar eclipse implied that the ice-field was floating away from
> the shadow path.
>
> Then, there is a mention of a easy calculation of how long it took Jules
> Verne's "De la terre a la lune" to get there (and a reference to Perelman's
> book "Travels Through Space" which gives this calculation).
>
> Finally, under the heading "The Error in Jules Verne's Book" he discusses the
> imaginary Gallium comet in "Hector Servadac", which made a full revolution
> around the Sun in two years, while his aphelion (max distance from the Sun) is
> 820 million km. He proves using Kepler's third law that these numbers imply
> that the comet's perihelion (min distance from the Sun) is negative, -343
> million km. "In other words, a comet with such a brief period of revolution as
> two years couldn't travel the distance from the Sun Jules Verne gives in his
> book."
>
> I hope I didn't miss other Jules Verne references...
>
> I have not read Perelman's book for many years now, and this thread returned
> my to childhood memory lane...
>
> Best,
>
> Zvi.
>
> --
> Dr. Zvi Har'El mailto:rl~at~math.technion.ac.il Department of Mathematics
> tel:+972-54-227607 icq:179294841 Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
> fax:+972-4-8293388 http://www.math.technion.ac.il/~rl/ Haifa 32000, ISRAEL
> "If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all." -- Thumper (1942)
> Monday, 22 Heshvan 5764, 17 November 2003, 9:31AM
>
Received on Thu 03 Jun 2004 - 09:53:33 IDT

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