JF Ptak Science Books Post 2783
I came upon these three papers while doing some research on the bookstore part of this blog and thought to share them here. Three papers touching different and unusual aspects of Mars.
The first belongs to Henri Jules A. Perrotin (1845-1904 and with Louis Thollon, 1829-1887), “Observation des canaux de Mars; “Lettre de M. Perrotin à M. Faye.” found in Comptes rendus1. Perrotin’s (mostly remembered I think because of his excellent use of the Cornu apparatus in establishing the best speed of light numbers until Michelson) communication establishes that the great canals (“canaux”) he observed and reported to the Academy in 1886 were still there, as expected and as hoped for and celebrated by Schiaparelli. There were also three other rather significant observational findings:
- First, a continent had disappeared. “Clearly visible two years ago, it no longer exists today” he wrote ( “Nettement visible, il y a deux ans, il n’existe plus aujourd’hui.”). A flood, “or something else” (“Cette inondation ou autre chose…”) could well be a periodic occurrence that did away with the land mass.
- Second, there is a new arrival of a canal 20-degrees in size just north of the disappeared/extinct continent (“…au nord du continent disparu…”).
- Third, there was a sort of canal that suddenly appeared on the North Pole ice cap, connecting the two seas on either side of the pole. (“…sur la tache blanche du pôle nord, d’une sorte de canal qui semble relier, en ligne droite, à travers les glaces polaires, deux mers voisines du pôle”).