The universe is a mighty big place, but there is no shortage of
amazement right here in our celestial neighborhood. From Venus's searing
surface temperatures, hot enough to melt lead, to Jupiter's Great Red
Spot, a storm that has been raging for hundreds of years, to the
cryovolcanoes of the Saturnian moon Enceladus, the solar system boasts plenty of extreme locales.
That is the thrust of a new book, The 50 Most Extreme Places in Our Solar System (Harvard University Press), which serves as a kind of photo-illustrated guidebook for the planets—along with their accompanying moons and rings—that surround the sun. The book's authors, David Baker
of Austin College and Todd Ratcliff of the NASA Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, acknowledge that they use the term "places" loosely: Some of
the 50 entries are specific events, such as the asteroid impact that
killed off the dinosaurs on Earth, and some are long-term phenomena, such as plate tectonics.
To read the full, original article click on this link: 8 of the Most Extreme Places in the Solar System [Slide Show]: Scientific American
Author: John Matson
