Template:Did you know nominations/Mercury in fiction
- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 19:20, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
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Mercury in fiction
Actual 3:2 spin–orbit resonance of Mercury
- ... that many fictional depictions of Mercury feature the now-disproven belief that it always points the same side towards the Sun (actual 3:2 spin–orbit resonance pictured)? Source:
Mercury had been thought to keep the same face toward the Sun as the Moon does to the Earth. [...] In fact, however, Mercury rotates three times for every two orbits [...] Early stories about Mercury, when not completely fanciful, inevitably focused on the contrast between the Dayside and the Nightside
(The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, p. 513);Until the late nineteenth century it was believed to rotate on its axis every 24 hours or so, but this opinion was displaced by that of Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) and Percival Lowell, who contended that it kept the same face permanently towards the Sun. Twentieth-century sf writers thus pictured it as having an extremely hot "dayside", a cold "nightside" and a narrow "twilight zone". [...] It emerged in 1965 that the planet has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for each two orbits around the Sun: there is no permanent nightside.
(The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "Mercury")- Comment: This is my fourth or fifth DYK (depending on whether one counts Hyperspace, which I received DYK credit for although my contribution was really reviewing the article for WP:Good article status).
Improved to Good Article status by TompaDompa (talk). Self-nominated at 09:54, 3 May 2022 (UTC).
Substantial article, meeting of GA criteria implicates DYK pass. Article was nominated within 7 days of passing GA. Nominator is QPQ exempt. No pings on Earwigs for copyvio. Hook is interesting, cited, and short enough for DYK. Included image is properly licensed. Morgan695 (talk) 22:13, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
