English

On the Title of Moriarty's 'Dynamics of an Asteroid'

Popular Physics 2014-08-06 v2

Abstract

We propose an explanation of the title of Prof. James Moriarty's treatise_Dynamics of an Asteroid_, a scientific work mentioned by Sherlock Holmes in_The Valley of Fear_ and prominently featured in Guy Ritchie's 2011 film_Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows_. Our views on the subject differ from those expressed in Isaac Asimov's "The Ultimate Crime".

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1302.5855,
  title  = {On the Title of Moriarty's 'Dynamics of an Asteroid'},
  author = {Alejandro Jenkins},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.5855},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

3 pages, 1 figure, two-column format. v2: added a discussion (suggested to me by Marshall Eubanks) of the possible connection to Poincar\'e's work on chaos. Other improvements to the text and references