Mesklin
| Mesklin | |
|---|---|
| Planet type | supergiant planet |
| Created by | Hal Clement |
| First appearance | Mission of Gravity (1953) |
Mesklin is a fictional supergiant planet created by Hal Clement and used in a number of his hard science fiction stories.
It is distinctive for the interaction of its strong gravity with the centrifugal force due to its fast rotation, originating, according to Clement's original calculations, a gee force gradient, starting at 3 g on the equator, and ending at 665 g on the planet's poles.
The planet first appeared in the novel Mission of Gravity, which was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction (April–July 1953). Other fictional works using the planet or its denizens include Under, Lecture Demonstration, and Star Light. The book Heavy Planet is a collection of Mesklin-related works.
Clement described the basic characteristics of Mesklin in the article "Whirligig World" in Astounding Science Fiction (June 1953). He based the world on an object then thought to exist in the 61 Cygni system, which had been detected by analysis of the motion of the two already known stars in the system. Further analysis with more extensive data led to the conclusion that the find had been erroneous.
Clement decided, since its mass was 16 times that of Jupiter, Mesklin would have an extremely large angular frequency to partly counter its gravity in order to allow humans to visit part of it. He wanted the equatorial gravity to be 3 g, so he determined the period necessary to make this occur: each Mesklin day is 17.75 minutes long given that the planet rotates approximately 20 degrees a minute.
As a result of this extremely large rate of spin, Mesklin is not even slightly spherical; it has a large equatorial bulge. Mesklin's equatorial diameter is 48,000 miles (77,250 km), while from pole-to-pole along its axis of rotation it is 19,740 miles (31,770 km). Then Clement attempted to calculate the polar gravity, finding it surprisingly difficult. He admits, "To be perfectly frank, I don't know the exact value of the polar gravity; the planet is so oblate that the usual rule of spheres... would not even be a good approximation..." "Whirligig World" reports his initial calculations of the pole gravity to be 655 g; the dust jacket of Heavy Planet reports it as 700 g. A later program created by Clement computed it as 275 g, as did a similar program written by the MIT Science Fiction Society. The MIT group also concluded that the planet would have had a sharp edge at the equator. Clement also gave Mesklin a set of rings and massive moons. The inner moon is 90,000 miles (140,000 km) from the planet's center, with a period of 2 hours 8 minutes.
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