Turmoil in the heavens
Master dregree in Physics in scattering theory. PhD in Physics in group theory (ray representation in quantum mechanics). After a master in e-learning I'm Chief Editor / Deputy Editor for EduINAF, INAF magazine about outreach and astronomy education.
This one-page comic story published on Race to the Moon #2, that is now in public domain, is referred to an old theory proposed by Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, a german astronomer:
His bold hypothesis of their origin by the disruption of a primitive large planet, although now discarded, received countenance from the finding of Juno by Harding, and of Vesta by himself, in the precise regions of Cetus and Virgo where the nodes of such supposed planetary fragments should be situated.
The hypothetical planet, instead of Polis like suggested in the comic, was named Phaeton by Yevgeny Leonidovich Krinov. Olbers' model is today substituted by the accretion model.
