"Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kazantsev Alexander)

Alexander KAZANTSEV

THE DESTRUCTION OF FAENA


Translated by Alex Miller



RADUGA PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW


Translation from the Russian
1974
English translation ┬йRaduga Publishers 1989




From the author

Cosmogony is no less full of riddles than the history of Earth. And where
there are riddles, there is room for fantasy. However, if it is divorced from
reality and rejects verisimilitude and authenticity, fantasy is empty, it
leaves no trace in the heart; the best it can do is to titillate the reader's
senses. But I have always wanted to achieve "authenticity in the
incredible", to write fantasy founded solely on real facts and unsolved
mysteries.
One such riddle that excited me was the ring of asteroids (minor
planets) between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter instead of the planet, as
predicted by Kepler's law, which had exploded for some unknown reason,
scattering fragments all round its orbit. How could that have happened?
If the planet had exploded from within because of certain processes, its
fragments would have flown in all directions as from a high-explosive
bomb and would have continued moving round the sun in elongated
elliptical orbits... But they are moving round in their former almost
circular planetary orbit. If the planet had perished because of a collision
with another cosmic body, their common fragments would have tended
towards a resultant, also acquiring elongated elliptical orbits; but they
have virtually stayed where they were.
The planet apparently cracked as the result of a powerful impact
received simultaneously from all directions; it then disintegrated under
the influence of the gravity of Mars and Jupiter. Its remains kept colliding
and breaking up, creating swarms of meteorites and stringing out round
the whole former orbit of the planet. But what kind of explosion was it?
The explosion of its water envelope, its oceans?
It so happened that I was able to put this question to the great
20th-century physicist. Nils Bohr when he met us Moscow writers.
"Can all a planet's oceans explode if a super powerful nuclear device is