History ScienceMarchesOn / Astronomy

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* In the late 1950s and 60s, one of Mars's moons, Phobos, was thought to be hollow, for esoteric scienc-y reasons (the moon was/is falling toward Mars). President Eisenhower even went on record, saying, "Its purpose would probably be to sweep up radiation in Mars's atmosphere, so that Martians could safely operate around their planet."
* The whole "life on Mars" hype got going after Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli claimed to have seen 'canali' (actually means 'channels' or 'grooves', not 'canals' as it was mistranslated as) on the surface during the opposition of 1877, a claim later backed up by other astronomers of the day. However, as better telescopes became available in the early years of the 20th century, these 'channels' proved to be optical illusions. This ''should'' have become a DiscreditedTrope as early as '''[[http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S730.htm 1907]]''', but science fiction writers ignored this until the ''Mariner'' probes destroyed the last scraps of PlausibleDeniability.

*** Also in "Literature/BetweenPlanets" by the same author; the fifth planet is the source of advanced technology that the rebels discover remnants of on Mars and use to win freedom from the tyrannical Earth.

* Most works of fiction depicting the Milky Way galaxy portray it as a regular [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_galaxy spiral galaxy]], a shape taken for granted given our understanding of it However, there has been evidence discovered of (what is currently believed to be) its true shape, which is a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_spiral_galaxy barred spiral galaxy]].

* A previously held position about Mercury recognised that the side perpetually facing the Sun would be a boiling Hell far too hot to support life. Whereas the side perpetually facing away from the sun would be as cold and frozen as the Seventh Circle of Hell. much speculation was made in both scientific and science-fiction circles about the boundary zone between light and dark being - potentially - capable of sustaining life and if so what life might be found there. Much ink was spilt concerning the Temperate Zone of Mercury. This lasted until closer observation revealed that this planet also turns on its axis. Very slowly. But no life would ever have a chance to colonise the Twilight Belt before it either froze or fried.

* Creator/RobertHeinlein indulges in a swampy jungle Venus in ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'', ''Literature/PodkayneOfMars'' and ''Literature/SpaceCadet''.

** In ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Fourth Doctor once faced off with [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E3ImageOfTheFendahl an alien menace from the Fifth Planet]]. It was explained that this race was so dangerous that the [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens Time Lords]] “time looped” the planet, making it ''never have existed''. But an alien survived.
** Similar to the asteroid belt theory, Varley's ''Titan'' suggests that Saturn's rings are the remnants of a moon that shattered because giant living space stations kept using it as a nursery.

** In Heinlein's ''Literature/SpaceCadet'' it is discovered that the intelligent natives [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroyed]] their planet through a nuclear war and created the asteroid belt. The mass problem is actually addressed by saying the belt represents less than one percent of the planet.

* ''Literature/HayyIbnYaqzan'' is a twelfth-century novel about a man who discovers truths about the world through observation and rational thought. Not all of his discoveries have held up to modern science, such as his belief that the celestial bodies orbit the Earth and are contained in spheres.

* One scene in Creator/{{Disney}}'s ''Mars and Beyond'' was about the other planets in our Solar System, and when we focus on Venus, the narrator says "There ''may'' be life on Venus...", but that film was made long before spacecraft had actually discovered the fact that Venus is actually too hot to support life.

* Creator/WilliamHopeHodgson's ''Literature/TheNightLand'' is built around the premise that the Sun would cease to shine some time in the distant future. This idea was actually accepted as scientific fact at the time the book was written-based upon the idea that the Sun got its luminosity from chemical fuel compressed by gravity, and that said source would run out in a few million years. Then came along the idea of nuclear fusion... The current prediction is that the Sun ''will'' cease to shine in the distant future, but it's ''very'' distant and the Earth will become utterly uninhabitable long before then.

* When [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51_Pegasi_b 51 Pegasi b]], the first extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star, was discovered its closeness to its star (seven times closer than Mercury's distance to the Sun) led the discoverers to suggest it was the stripped, solid, core of a brown dwarf -a body intermediate in mass between a star and a planet and unable to fuse hydrogen as a star- since at the time it was thought no planet so massive could orbit so close to a star (the rocky planet scenario was used for the Creator/HalClement's novel ''Exchange Rate''). Today, after the discovery of hundreds of similar planets, it's thought 51 Pegasi is a gas giant planet similar to Jupiter that ended orbiting so close after forming much farther away and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_migration migrating there]].

[[caption-width-right:350: Top: UsefulNotes/{{Mars}} as imagined in ''Literature/TheMartianChronicles''\\
Bottom: Mars as it actually is]]

* In Creator/ArthurCClarke's novel ''Literature/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', it's stated that samples of Moon rock and dust apparently proved that the Moon was never part of Earth. In fact, real world Moon samples provided proof that the opposite was true.
* Clarke's novel ''A Fall of Moondust'' assumed that the alternate heating and cooling of the dust on the Moon, due to the stark contrast between lunar daylight and lunar night, would eventually result in a miles-thick layer of dust so fine it acted like a liquid. The actual lunar dust that the Apollo astronauts observed was only a few inches thick, and indeed behaved more like dust. While Moon dust indeed turned out as fine as predicted, Clarke failed to consider the vacuum cementing that occurs between particles of the dust in the airless environment of the Moon. Even the slightest pressure cause the particles to fuse together into a dense and stable structure, making it to behave like any other dust. Further, the effects of weathering are diminished on the Moon due to the lack of air and water, so the particles of dust on the Moon are jagged and irregular (on Earth, any such particles would become smooth and rounded over time), allowing them to lock together far better than, say, sand on Earth (which is also why the footprints left by the astronauts are so clear).
* In an Creator/HGWells novel, ''Literature/TheFirstMenInTheMoon'', the Moon actually has air and food, and is actually ''richer in oxygen'' than Earth.
* In Heinlein's "Literature/TheManWhoSoldTheMoon", the first manned expedition to the Moon discovers [[spoiler:uranium and diamonds]]. Heinlein also made several wrong predictions regarding human exploration of the Moon. In an introduction to the short story collection featuring "The Man Who Sold The Moon", Heinlein stated he would be very surprised if men walked on the Moon before the end of the 20th Century. He must have been very pleasantly surprised on July 20th, 1969. He didn't seem to have any compunctions about writing stories involving men landing on the Moon earlier, however, as ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'' mentions that the Moon first became a colony some time in the 80s.
** Of course the former was written in 1949; the latter in 1966.

* Any number of stories, beginning with ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' and continuing into the mid-'60s,[[note]]but see "Other", below[[/note]] featuring intelligent life on Mars, were effectively scuttled when the Mariner 4 probe revealed Mars to be a barren desert. Since then, most SpeculativeFiction featuring Martians has been more tongue-in-cheek (see ''Film/MarsAttacks'') than previously. Subsequently, many stories now say the Martians simply [[https://youtu.be/8AoAJOF5GVQ spoof the probe's sensors]], just to [[{{Masquerade}} maintain the façade]].
** In some stories (also beginning with ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds''), Mars' inhospitable conditions are used as the ''reason'' why Martians are invading. Their world is used up, so they want a fresh one.

** The first time it was asked, regular contestant Alan Davies answers (resigned, knowing such an easy question can only be a setup) "One" and gets flashing lights, klaxons, and Creator/StephenFry with "Sorry, that is incorrect. The correct answer, of course, is ''2''": Luna and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne Cruithne]] (an asteroid that has a peculiar orbit around the Sun that sometimes interacts with Earth's gravity). Note that no scientist has ever considered Cruithne to be a moon, since it is not permanently locked in orbit around the Earth; the show was deliberately using an extremely loose definition of "moon" to mess with the contestants.

** The first time it was asked, regular contestant Alan Davies answers (resigned, knowing such an easy question can only be a setup) "One" and gets flashing lights, klaxons, and Creator/StephenFry with "Sorry, that is incorrect. The correct answer, of course, is ''2''": Luna and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne Cruithne]] (an asteroid that had been temporarily captured by Earth's gravity at the time[[note]]It's a ''little'' more complicated than that, and "temporarily ... at the time" includes "all of human history and the reasonably foreseeable future"; see the link to The Other Wiki for more details[[/note]]). Note that no scientist has ever considered Cruithne to be a moon, since it is not permanently locked in orbit around the Earth; the show was deliberately using an extremely loose definition of "moon" to mess with the contestants.

* ''Literature/Aeon14'': M.D. Cooper tries to use the most current astronomy and astrophysics information available, but sometimes this happens. Some stars near Earth that the series visits have since been discovered to have planetary systems (they appear to be far more common than previously thought) that sometimes don't match what earlier books said--notably [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1061 LHS 1565]], which features prominently in the second book, ''A Path in the Darkness'', and is said to have no planets at all (Cooper [[https://www.facebook.com/groups/aeon14fans/permalink/2464502813784967/?comment_id=2464633540438561 commented]] that he worked really hard to pick a star not likely to have any). The setting does have a built-in handwave, however, as many star systems have been extensively {{terraform}}ed, the technology for which is advanced enough to rearrange planets, break them up, or form entirely new ones by mashing rocks together.

* Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka's 1984 novel ''Literature/Warday}} has a satellite discover five planets orbiting Barnard's Star in 1985, with one of them possibly being Earth-like. As of 2023, there are no confirmed exoplanets in the system, with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star_b Barnard's Star b]] being disproven in 2021–2022, and if any do exist, they are bound to be much smaller than the Earth.

* Creator/CarlSagan's ''Literature/{{Contact}}'' has being in space extend the lives of mammals and leave them with fewer diseases, so near the turn of the millenium there's a whole industry of wealthy older people trying to prolong their lives by living on glamorous, specially built space stations. Since then it's proven that living in space results in massive degradation of a lot of the human body, plus bacteria becomes more virulent, ''and'' living in space is miserable.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov often based plots on then-current scientific information that was later proven incorrect. He typically noted cases of this in later printings (sometimes with a snarky comment that the scientists should have gotten it right to begin with).
** ''Literature/TheCompleteAdventuresOfLuckyStarr'': Dr Asimov wrote these stories to [[JuvenileFiction teach kids]] what the solar system is like. Twenty years after first publishing them, many aspects were proven inaccurate, so Dr Asimov included a preface to each story which gave the currently correct information. Some of which is wrong ''again'' by now.
** ''Literature/TheStarsLikeDust'': The climactic scenes take place on a type of planet (breathable atmosphere and Earthlike gravity, but no organic life or liquid water) which later science determined was extremely unlikely to exist in the real world. Again, later editions of the book contained an afterword by Dr Asimov, apologizing to the reader for the error and stating he hadn't been able to find a way to correct it without rewriting the entire climax.
** ''Literature/TheCurrentsOfSpace'': The plot is based around a theory that [[EarthShatteringKaboom stars go nova]] as a result of runaway nuclear fusion catalyzed by clouds of carbon atoms. Like many of his other stories, when this was proved incorrect Dr Asimov included an afterword explaining the error, as well as the science behind the new scientifically accepted theory, but pointed out that he could not change the story without re-writing the entire plot.
* Creator/WilliamHopeHodgson's ''Literature/TheNightLand'' is built around the premise that the Sun would cease to shine some time in the distant future. This idea was actually accepted as scientific fact at the time the book was written-based upon the idea that the Sun got its luminosity from chemical fuel compressed by gravity, and that said source would run out in a few million years. Then came along the idea of nuclear fusion... The current prediction is that the Sun ''will'' cease to shine in the distant future, but it's ''very'' distant and the Earth will become utterly uninhabitable long before then.
** Later authors writing in the same universe have rectified this by suggesting that the EldritchAbomination[=s=] had something to do with the Sun going out.
* Some Creator/LarryNiven stories include mention of the Moon's gravity "skimming off" some of the Earth's atmosphere, without which it would be as inhabitable as Venus. This was later discredited, and is noted in his collections.
* Heinlein figured out how to get something to navigate within the solar system back in the 1950s in his juvenile novel ''Literature/TheRollingStones1952'', by lining up the locations of known stars and mirrors to form a type of parallax to get your location, which is now used for satellites and probes for positioning. Since the novel was printed in serialized chapter format within the Boy Scouts of America's Boy's Life magazine, it was intended as an interesting intellectual exercise (land navigation being a skill that was heavily stressed with the Boy Scouts). He also mentioned that the health benefits of zero-g (itself a mistaken term, now replaced with microgravity) were well known. These days, long term exposure to microgravity is well known to be bad for one's long term health, and not just because of bone and muscle atrophy, but also because of the detrimental effects it has on the human immune system.
* Creator/CordwainerSmith's "Literature/ScannersLiveInVain" uses the fanciful premise that unscreened radiations present in space would leave space travelers in unbearable pain, such that only condemned criminals whose sensory nerves had been cut could function there. [[https://www.nasa.gov/analogs/nsrl/why-space-radiation-matters While radiation in space is a real threat]], it's not immediately painful and there are other ways of protecting against it (indeed, cutting sensory nerves would actually be worse than useless, since it would interfere with people's senses without protecting them against radiation).
* In ''Search the Sky'', by Creator/FrederikPohl, Azor's sun has "an unpleasant bluish cast to it", and is therefore a low-end A star. Therefore Azor, as a Goldilocks planet, has to have a much longer year than Earth's. Yet Ms. Cavallo speaks of another FTL traveler who arrived "seventy-five years ago", and who died about the time Ross and Helena arrived. Even on the gerontocratic world of Gemser, people do not live that long.
* In Melisa Michael's ''Skyrider'', the protagonist lives in the Belt and is constantly dodging rocks, requiring excellent flying to get through rocks and hiding from the patrol in a dense patch of rocks. Unfortunately the asteroid Belt is just not dense enough. Even in the densest part, if you were standing on one rock you wouldn't be able to see a single other rock.
%% * ''Literature/{{Solaris}}'' uses science and technology that was cutting-edge when the book was written, but which has since become either incredibly outdated or has been outright contradicted. %% how is that about astronomy?
* ''Literature/Aeon14'': M.D. Cooper tries to use the most current astronomy and astrophysics information available, but sometimes this happens. Some stars near Earth that the series visits have since been discovered to have planetary systems (they appear to be far more common than previously thought) that sometimes don't match what earlier books said--notably [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1061 LHS 1565]], which features prominently in the second book, ''A Path in the Darkness'', and is said to have no planets at all (Cooper [[https://www.facebook.com/groups/aeon14fans/permalink/2464502813784967/?comment_id=2464633540438561 commented]] that he worked really hard to pick a star not likely to have any). The setting does have a built-in handwave, however, as many star systems have been extensively {{terraform}}ed, the technology for which is advanced enough to rearrange planets, break them up, or form entirely new ones by mashing rocks together.

* Creator/StephenBaxter's ''Literature/XeeleeSequence'' climax was somewhat hit hard when studies of the Great Attractor showed not only it's both less massive than was thought and has an even more massive cluster behind it whose gravity is pulling our galaxy towards there but also that [[spoiler: no looped cosmic strings have been found to date there]]. On a related note, cosmic strings [[spoiler: -- what the Xeelee use as building blocks]] are unlikely to exist, having had at best a very limited role in forming the structure of the Universe and instead it having growth from quantum fluctuations left from either cosmic inflation or the Big Bang itself.

* Most works of fiction depicting the Milky Way galaxy portray it as a regular [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_galaxy spiral galaxy]], a shape taken for granted given our understanding of it, however, there has been evidence discovered of (what is currently believed to be) its true shape. ''Franchise/MassEffect'' is an example that portrays our galaxy as a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_spiral_galaxy barred spiral galaxy]]. The franchise also managed to avert this by making the player unable to visit the Solar System's nearby stars (like Alpha Centauri or Sirius), giving the {{handwave}} that "Mass Relays allow to colonize more suitable systems that are much farther", since it's very likely that in the next few years we will discover whether those stars have planets or not. But there's a straight play with the space between galaxies, known as "Dark Space", which is depicted as a lightless void where nothing can survive [[spoiler:except for the cosmically powerful Reapers]]; in the years since the last game came out, astronomers have discovered a significant number of "rogue stars" floating around in intergalactic space, some of which may even have habitable planets.
* ''VideoGame/Halo3'' got the shape of the Milky Way right, when showing a view of the galaxy cluster in the sky of the Ark.

* As noted above works that feature nearby stars are hit particularly hard as while they are found to have planets more than often said planetary systems are quite different to what authors imagined. Only time will tell what will end happening to media depictions of said planets done with current state-of-the-art knowledge.

* Vacuum cementing occurs naturally on the Moon: fine dust particles from lunar impacts are converted to rock over time since they lack a layer of adsorbed gas. Creator/LarryNiven cunningly extrapolated from this discovery to Mars, which does have an atmosphere. In ''Literature/{{Protector}}'' (and other ''Literature/KnownSpace'' stories) Mars is covered in a deep layer of dust so fine it acts as a liquid, since vacuum cementing can't occur. Since this story was written, Mars landers and rovers have conspicuously failed to disappear with a "gloop".

* Wiki/TheOtherWiki [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fiction puts]] "Old Mercury" and "New Mercury" in separate sections on their "Mercury in fiction" page. The dividing line is 1965, when astronomers showed using radar observations that Mercury was not [[TidallyLockedPlanet tidally locked to the Sun]] as previously believed, but actually rotates 3 times per 2 local years (for a sidereal day of 58.7 Earth days, and a solar day of about 176 Earth days).