Book Review of The Planets by Dava Sobel

An artist friend of mine bought The Planets, written by Dava Sobel, because the book jacket is so vibrant with color. What awaits the reader inside is an equally rich and fascinating trip through the idiosyncrasies of our solar system. Sobel, a former New York Times science reporter, also delves into the rich lore of Greek and Roman mythology that is inextricably woven into the many centuries of discovery and naming of the planets, their moons, craters, valleys and volcanoes.

Earth has sent many emissaries and oracles in an attempt to discover what the other planets are really like. Was the planet Venus a lush tropical paradise covered with soda as scientists proposed in the 1950’s? Over the past forty-five years, numerous rocketed ambassadors have shaped and reshaped our understanding of the solar system. Mariner 2 was the first, completing a flyby of Venus in 1962. In 1971, Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft put into orbit around a planet other than Earth. Many other visitors have followed, including Voyager 2 to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and currently the two rovers on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity.

But this isn’t just a book that drops scientific facts like names at a cocktail party. Like a good storyteller, Sobel weaves in myths of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses that share their names with the planets and their geological counterparts. The planet Mercury was named after the swift yet mischievous messenger god of Roman myths who wore wings on his sandals. Mercury completes one year in 88 Earth days. Yet, because it turns so slowly on its axis, Mercury takes four of its own years to finish one day. “Myth may have conferred the god’s name on the planet, because it mirrored his attributes, or perhaps the observed behavior of the planet gave rise to the legends of the god.” Venus is the divine Roman goddess of feminine beauty, whose qualities could allude to the coincidence that, from Earth’s perspective, Venus’ orbit around the sun takes 260 days to complete, nearly the same as the period of human gestation of 255 to 265 days.

The book’s other main theme is the countless strange phenomena of the planets. Venus rotates the opposite of Earth’s rotation, which means the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. It measures over 900^o F on the surface and has clouds of sulfuric acid. The polar caps on Mars are covered with several feet of snowy carbon dioxide flakes which fall from the sky in the winter months. In 1616, Galileo mistook the bulges on Saturn’s side as close “companions” not knowing that these were the now well renowned rings that the spacecraft Cassini flew through in 2004, capturing photos of their undulating lifelike strands. Jupiter is a gas giant much like our sun, composed mainly of helium and hydrogen and has no solid surface. Jupiter is under such great pressure, that rare hydrogen metal is found there.

Sobel succeeds in relating her passion, infatuation, and love for the planets in her beautifully written book. If anything can be said against the book, it may be that it ended too soon. I found myself in delighted wonder, contemplating myself as one Earthling among many who are part of a larger community – our solar system, its planets, and the many solar systems which lie in the Milky Way and beyond. Sobel writes in closing the chapter on Pluto, “Sometimes the stupefying view into deep space can send me burrowing like a small animal into the warm safety of Earth’s nest. But just as often I feel the Universe pull me by the heart, offering, in all its other Earths elsewhere, some larger community to belong to.”