# Talk:Mesklin

The article states:

In "Whirligig World", Clement stated that he gave "official permission to anyone who so desires to lay scenes there ..."

Did anyone ever take him up on it? Google reveals no further stories by anyone else. --Phil 09:37, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

"They were also the first attempt to set stories on a known planet outside the solar system." Are we sure about that? It seems unlikely. For example the Lensman series and The Skylark of Space predate it. DJ Clayworth 17:40, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Lensman certainly predates it, and the author ("Doc" Smith) does occasionally use the names of real stars, but none of the books in that series (I've read them) have a planet based on a planet that had actually been detected by science (mistakenly or not).  Which only makes sense; at the time of the Lensmen series, the available tools and processes weren't able to even TRY to detect planets. -- Dwheeler 03:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

A reprint of "Whirlygig World" from 2000 has a note at the end that a large planet has been confirmed in the 61 Cygni system, but unfortunatley for the Mesklinites, orbiting 61 Cygni B. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.227.200.16 (talk) 04:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I can't help but be the Negative Nancy here.  The idea that the plant would have gravity of 3g on one edge and 100s of g on the poles is simply wrong for ordinary matter.  The Earth deforms due to the spin by the mathematics of hydrostatic forces.  This means that we assume that the interior of the Earth are not load-bearing.  Obviously this is untrue to some extent because rocks are strong and do not behave as water does, but on large scales this is exactly how they behave due to the cosmically large forces in this problem.  If this plant has a mass similar to that of Jupiter... the hydrostatic assumption is valid unless we're talking about compressible physics.  Either way, any large homogenous planet will have a constant normal gravity over the entire surface.  The Earth's gravity differs from place to place due to differences in composition from place to place, and the rotation deformation has a net zero effect on the gravity.  I love sci-fi, I just wish the "sci" part could be correct. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 18:31, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Not so, though in the case of the Earth the effect is minor.
"In combination, the equatorial bulge and the effects of centrifugal force mean that sea-level gravitational acceleration increases from about 9.780 m·s−2 at the equator to about 9.832 m·s−2 at the poles, so an object will weigh about 0.5% more at the poles than at the equator." Gravity of Earth#Latitude
For any spinning body, the centrifugal force reduces the apparent surface gravity at the equator. For a liquid body, the effect is enhanced because the body deforms, increasing the distance of the surface at the equator from the body's axis. If you spin it fast enough, it will deform until the equator is at synchronous orbit. I.e. surface gravity at the equator is 0. (Of course, if you want a livable planet, you'd better stop before the top of the atmosphere reaches that point.)
—WWoods (talk) 21:15, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I wonder whether it's coincidence that this fictional planet with peculiar gravitational properties has a name so similar to that of Nevil Maskelyne, who attempted to estimate the density of the earth by measuring the gravitational deflection caused by a mountain. Does the "Whirligig World" article perchance say anything about how Clement chose the name Mesklin? Gareth McCaughan (talk) 15:32, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
... I found a not-necessarily-legal copy of the article on the web (for whose accuracy I can't vouch) and it doesn't appear to say anything about where the name comes from. Perhaps we'll never know. Gareth McCaughan (talk) 15:38, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

My first thought was that it was pun on mescaline. Hellbus (talk) 19:59, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

There's a proposal to delete this article. I think that's too far, but it could be merged into the article about "Mission of Gravity". Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dwheeler (talk • contribs) 18:07, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't particularly see anything worth merging myself, but either that or redirecting would be a suitable enough alternative. TTN (talk) 18:10, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

This article has been appropriated by a particular user. Anyone else's edits will be automatically reverted. (See history.) Any attempt to edit this article is likely to result in wasted time and effort. Senix (talk) 02:17, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Oh, come off it. You added a piece of information. I changed it to an explanatory footnote to avoid conflict with the subsequent sentence and then added sources and copyedited it a few times ([1][2][3]). That's not reverting your edit, that's building upon it. Your other edit misrepresented a source, and I reverted it while clearly spelling out that this misrepresentation of the source was the reason.More broadly speaking, if you think there are WP:OWNERSHIP issues, the venue to bring that up is WP:ANI. Otherwise, it is generally a good idea when you get reverted and disagree with the reason to take it to the talk page to discuss the substance of your edits and explain why you think they were an improvement. That's one of the ways consensus is built on Wikipedia. See also WP:STEWARDSHIP. TompaDompa (talk) 02:33, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
In lieu of a rebuttal, I would invite prospective editors to briefly examine this article's edit history, as well as the edit histories of the other articles a particular user has appropriated. If you still feel it is worth attempting to contribute to one of these articles afterwards, by all means do so. Senix (talk) 02:50, 31 May 2025 (UTC)