What property of Iapetus, the moon of Saturn, became one of the foundations of Arthur Clarke's famous novel "A Space Odyssey 2001"? Detailed answer

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What property of Iapetus, the moon of Saturn, became one of the foundations of Arthur Clarke's famous novel "A Space Odyssey 2001"? Detailed answer

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What property of Iapetus, the moon of Saturn, became one of the foundations of Arthur C. Clarke's famous novel "A Space Odyssey 2001"?

A unique feature of Iapetus, Saturn's third largest moon, is that one of its hemispheres is an order of magnitude (about 10 times) brighter than the other. This phenomenon was noticed by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712), who discovered Iapetus in 1671, and then confirmed during the Voyager 2 (1981) and Cassini (2004) spacecraft flying near Saturn.

This feature of Iapetus was used by science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke in his famous novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The hero of this novel, David Bowman, approaching Iapetus in a spaceship, saw in its equatorial region "a dazzling white oval about three hundred by six hundred kilometers in size."

The presence of this oval explained in the novel the difference in the brightness of the hemispheres of Iapetus. In the center of this white "eye" Bowman noticed a black dot, which, when approaching Iapetus, turned out to be a mysterious black monolith - the "Star Gate".

Curiously enough, 13 years later, when Voyager 2 photographed Iapetus, the image clearly showed a huge, almost circular region with a black spot in the center. The famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who participated in the processing of images from Voyager 2, sent a photograph to Arthur C. Clarke with the caption "Just think!".

Author: Kondrashov A.P.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

How do polar bears disguise themselves?

They cover their black nose with their white paw, don't they?

Nice, of course, belief, but, unfortunately, completely unfounded. And they are not left-handed. Naturalists have observed polar bears for many hundreds of hours and have seen no evidence of careful "nose-covering" or "left-footedness."

Although polar bears really like toothpaste. We regularly hear about polar bears venting their energies in Arctic tourist camps, knocking down tents, trampling equipment and gear, all for the sake of sucking on a tube of Pepsodent.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why a large concrete "prison for polar bears" was organized in the town of Churchill in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Some of the "prisoners" serve there for several months before they are released back into society: embittered, reformed, unemployed. Formerly the morgue of a military base, the prison block is officially called "Building D-20". "Bear bullpen" can accommodate up to twenty-three "guests" at the same time. Polar bears don't eat anything in the summer, so some "prisoners" don't get fed for months. They are kept in a "cell" until spring or autumn - the time of the hunting season for polar bears - so that after their release they immediately go fishing, and not wander around the peaceful Churchill.

The very first known polar bear in captivity belonged to the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II (308-246 BC). The bear was kept in the private zoo of the monarch in Alexandria. In 57 AD, the Roman poet Siculus Titus Calpurnius wrote of polar bears being set against seals in a water-filled amphitheatre. Viking hunters caught polar bear cubs in the following way: they killed the mother, skinned her, laid them out in the snow and grabbed the cubs that came to lie on her.

Scientific names can be somewhat confusing. Ursus arctos is not a polar bear, it is a brown bear. Ursus means "bear" in Latin, and arctos is the same "bear" but in Greek. It is the Arctic that is named after the bear, and not vice versa, it was the "land of the bears", where the bears lived and where the big bear in the sky, the constellation Ursa Major, pointed. And the white (aka polar) is Ursus maritimus, that is, "sea bear".

The constellation Ursa Major has been recognized as a bear by a range of peoples and cultures, including the Japanese Ainu in the east, the American Indians in the west, and ourselves in the middle. And although the polar bears are born, literally, under the Big Dipper, according to the zodiac they are all Capricorns, born in late December - early January.

The brown bear belongs to the same species as the grizzly - that is the name of the brown bears living in North America. Male and female bears in English are called boar and sow, that is, "boar" and "pig", although they have the same relation to pigs as koalas to seals. In fact, the closest relatives of bears are dogs.

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