WEBVTT - The Moons of Uranus, Part 3 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:08.840 These are the forgeries of jealousy. And never since the 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:12.920 middle summer's spring met we on a hill in dale forest, 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:17.000 or mead by paved fountain, or by rushing brook, or 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:19.920 in the beached margin of the sea, to dance our 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.919 ringlets to the whistling wind. But with thy brawls thou 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:28.280 hast disturbed our sport. Therefore the winds piping to us 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.880 in vain as in revenge, have sucked up from the sea. 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:36.839 Contagious fogs, which falling in the land, have every pelting 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:41.040 river made so proud that they have overborne their continents. 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:45.640 The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vein. The 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:49.760 plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn hath rotted, 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:53.479 ere his youth attained a beard. The fold stands empty 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:57.040 in the drowned field, and crows are fatted with the 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:01.560 murray and flock. The nine men's morris filled up with mud, 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:04.640 and the quaint mazes in the wanton green, for lack 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:09.760 of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want their winter here. 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.880 No night is now with him or Carol blessed. Therefore 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:18.000 the moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:23.040 washes all the air that rheumatic diseases do abound. And 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:27.679 thorough this distemperature, we see the seasons alter hoary headed 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:31.400 frosts far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.920 and on old highams than an icy crown, an odorous 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:40.280 chaplet of sweet summer buds is as in mockery set 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:45.840 the spring, the summer, the childing autumn, angry winter change 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.640 their wonted liveries, and the mazed world, by their increase, 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:53.720 now knows not which is which. And this same progeny 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:58.160 of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension. We 0:01:58.240 --> 0:01:59.880 are their parents and original. 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.440 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:18.840 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.680 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.760 I can't believe nine Men's Morris is filled up with mud. 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:26.000 It used to be a cool place. 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.640 Yeah, I know. So we're back with our third and 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.520 final part in the series on the moons of the 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:37.040 planet Uranus, and I started today with a reading from 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.279 It's Actually It's a speech given by the character Titania, 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:45.400 the Queen of the Fairies, in William Shakespeare's play A 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.440 Midsummer Night's Dream. Now I've read that half just because 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:50.280 I loved that speech and I thought it was really cool, 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.240 but it also seemed to kind of resonant with our 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:57.000 subject matter today. So the speech in the play is 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:02.360 delivered by Titania to Oberon of the fairies, describing how 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:06.240 the jealous feuding between the two of them has had 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.840 malicious effects on the weather and the very environment of 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.200 nature in the human world, because you know, when fairies fight, 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.360 it's not just bad vibes. The bad vibes apparently become 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:20.680 quite physical, and they take the form of floods, drought, 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.639 frostbitten winters, famine, disease, etc. And this struck me as 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.400 interesting in this case because of the ways that hundreds 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:33.200 of years ago, the behavior of planets and moons and 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.720 other objects up in the heavens was thought to affect 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.920 the weather, and not just affect the weather, but to 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.240 produce the bad air that brings plague. So both of 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.280 the things kind of mentioned in this speech bad weather 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.720 and disease. And we've talked about numerous specific examples of 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.480 that in previous episodes, but one being that during the 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:57.800 Second Plague pandemic. In thirteen forty eight, a convocation of 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:01.400 scholars from the medical faculty at the University of Paris 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.600 was assembled by King Philip the sixth of France to 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.960 determine the cause of the plague, and they concluded it 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:12.360 was because of the thirteen forty five conjunction of Mars, 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.000 Jupiter and Saturn in the House of Aquarius, which had 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:19.480 caused evil vapors to rise up from the earth and 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.279 breathe death into the cities of humankind. So the idea 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:26.760 of this direct causal connection between what the planets are doing, 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.159 what things in the sky are doing, and then weather 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.800 on Earth and then disease. And this struck me because 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:38.840 in Shakespeare the behavior of Oberon and Titania is thought 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:41.080 to change the weather and bring disease. But this was 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:46.680 before those characters were also the names of actual heavenly 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:50.960 bodies moons of the planet Uranus. In fact, that would 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.919 have been before the official discovery of Uranus as a 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:58.039 planet at all. But Titania and Oberon are now both 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.919 major moons of Uranus. Those two were discovered by William 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.240 Herschel in seventeen eighty seven, the same guy who discovered 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:09.479 Urinus as a planet, though curiously I was just reading 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:13.400 about this. William Herschel also at the same time reported 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:18.800 discovering several other moons that were never confirmed by later astronomers. 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.400 So nobody ever found moons matching the orbits of these 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:27.000 other couple moons he described. Herschel Apparently, I don't know 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:30.520 he wrote something down wrong or something he claimed, you know, 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.039 he claimed to have found some non existent moons in 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.120 addition to these real ones. But anyway, I wonder if 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:41.680 if the Uranian moons Oberon and Titania had been known 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:45.279 about in Shakespeare's day, they might also, I wonder, have 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.960 been blamed for making the green corn rot and filling 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.320 the Nine Men's moriss up with mud and spreading the 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:53.279 rheumatic diseases and all that stuff. 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:58.320 Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Despite all of the shakespeare references 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:02.680 in the naming of the Iranian moons, I don't believe 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:07.960 Shakespeare ever references the god Uranus or Urinas in his works. 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.000 Could be a lot wrong about that. I'm not a 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:15.240 Shakespeare scholar. I'm just combining memory of Shakespeare with some 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.919 searches on some digital databases of his work. All the 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.640 other gods featured in our planetary lineup are referenced numerous 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.320 times in his plays, but never never Uranos, and the 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:29.560 same seems to be true of Alexander Pope, which I 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:33.279 guess this ultimately just speaks to the limited or non 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:39.360 existent role Uranas had in literature of the times of 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:40.919 these writers. 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.000 Right, I guess he's just wasn't one of the flashiest gods, 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:46.279 you know. Yeah, yeah, But actually I was just thinking, 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:48.159 to come back on what I said a minute ago, 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.720 you know, wondering if the moons of another planet would 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:55.799 have been used in astrological explanations for weather patterns and disease. 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:59.279 Now that I think about it, I can't think of 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.520 a case where, then, at least that I'm familiar with, 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:06.240 where the moons of other planets were used to explain 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:10.400 that that. Maybe that's because, like those, moons of other 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.280 planets had only been known about since the time of Galileo. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:17.080 But as far as I can recall, it's always invoking 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:19.960 the outer planets themselves and not their moons, of course, 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.320 apart from our own moon, which, according again to Titania, 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:25.200 is the governess of floods. 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:28.080 Yeah, I love that the governess of floods. 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:32.120 You know, before I had ever seen or read Midsommer 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:36.120 Night's Dream and knew Oberon and Titania as characters here 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.440 before I even knew them as the names of moons 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.360 of Uranus that I recall, I actually knew them from 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.120 a different place. I knew them as part of a 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.080 spooky chant in a song my dad used to listen 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:51.880 to when I was younger, the line you have to 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:56.280 imagine this with several voices and a strange dissonant harmony 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:03.120 saying Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda, Titanya, Neptune, Titan stars 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.640 can Frighten, which is of course from the nineteen sixty 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:11.160 seven psychedelic space rock anthem Astronomy Domine by Pink Floyd. 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:13.960 I think this song was written by syd Barrett, a 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:17.040 song that I think I have to admit is still 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.800 sort of always looping in the back of my head 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.400 when I think about space, when I picture the empty 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:28.200 landscapes of other planets and moons. It manages to capture 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:32.840 a feeling of space that is simultaneously very unsettling but 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:37.679 also so inviting, And it really helped me be excited 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.120 about space before I knew much about it, like seeing 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:44.600 it as this realm of mysteries that were thrilling to unveil. 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.200 So I'm not saying the effect would be the same 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.880 with all kids, but for me personally, this weird song 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.480 by Pink Floyd was a wonderful early science education tool. 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.840 Not because it contains any actual information or educational content 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.199 it doesn't, but because it really made me want to 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:02.880 know more about what's out there. 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:05.960 So you're saying Astronomy Domine was kind of your Star Wars? 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:07.880 Is that what Star Wars was for you? I mean, 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:10.400 I love Star Wars too, I you know, wore out 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:11.200 the videotape. 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:13.600 Yeah. I mean when I think back on just earliest 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.600 idea things that got me excited about space, I think 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:21.080 they were mostly you know, space stories, Like I remember 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.120 really liking the black Hole from Disney, and I had 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.640 like a storybook and cassette of the black Hole. Even though, 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.040 of course, as we've mentioned on the show before and 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:31.920 maybe we'll get into again in the future, you know, 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.199 the black Hole contains very little that you can take 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.400 to the bank regarding actual information about about this about 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:40.440 space and the nature of black holes. 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.479 Well, I guess this is part of the song's psychedelic qualities. 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:48.280 But yeah, Astronomy domine. I always felt it was. It 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.600 was scary in the best possible way. It was scary 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:53.560 in the way that it's like, you know, you want 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:55.920 to know what's behind the door, but you're you're frightened 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:57.960 to open it in a way that makes you just 0:09:58.080 --> 0:09:59.559 you have to look even more. 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.599 Hm hm, No, I know, having been hurt, listened to 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:04.840 part of this song here, and I'm not super familiar 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.360 with Pink Floyd. You know, I know the big ones, 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.120 of course, but I haven't I've never done a deep 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.360 dive into their discography. Yeah, I see what you're saying 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:13.480 about this, this track. 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.000 This is early Pink Floyd. Most of the Pink Floyd 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:18.760 stuff people know is from a later period of the 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:20.959 band where they sound totally different. They're more the kind 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:22.840 of you know, I don't know what you call it, 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:25.680 progressive classic rock. This is from their early couple of 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:30.520 albums that were more weird British psychedelic rock. Okay, all right, 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.360 But anyway, in the line of lyrics from from the 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.880 song you Hear you hear three names, it's oberon Miranda 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.880 in Titanya. So I think we're still taking the moons 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:44.920 somewhat in order. Right. Last in the previous episode, we 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.240 talked about the the inner moons of Uranus, and now 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:50.679 we're going to be talking about the major moons. 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.520 That's right, and we'll begin with with Miranda here. Miranda's 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:58.720 name for Prospero's daughter in the Tempest. She's also the 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.240 subject of a pretty famous waterhouse painting. I included this 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.320 for you, Joe. I don't know, maybe I'm alone in this, 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.320 but I just remember seeing this one a lot. I 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.160 feel like this one. There were a lot of posters 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.400 of this on dorm rooms or something. 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:14.000 I don't know. If I did see it, it didn't really 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:15.079 make an impression, but I. 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:17.839 Like it has sort of Gothic sensibility to it. I 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.199 don't think I've ever seen the actual painting. I'm not 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:22.559 sure where it is at any rate. It was discovered 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:26.240 by Gerald P. Kiper on February sixteenth, nineteen forty eight, 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.200 at the McDonald Observatory in Texas. It was the last 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:34.320 moon of the planet to be discovered prior to Voyager two, 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.600 the smallest and closest to the planet of the pre 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:42.920 Voyager two discovered moons of Uranus. Now, the composition here, 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.600 like all the larger moons, it's thought to consist mostly 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.080 of a roughly equal mix of water, ice and silicate rock. 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:53.720 The significance it is, I've seen numerous descriptions referring to 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:57.319 it as a Frankenstein moon, which of course instantly sounds 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:03.160 pretty jazzy Frankenstein moon of seemingly mismatched landscapes and featuring 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:07.120 Titanic canyons thought to be twelve times as deep as 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:10.120 the Grand Canyon of Earth. In some cases, its surface 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.960 also bears the mark of coroni, which are sound delicious 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:16.720 what they're found to be. They're found on the surface 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.480 of Venus as well. These like oval shaped geological markings 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:27.040 caused by upwellings of subsurface warm material. So Miranda is 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.880 known to or as thought to have frozen water ice 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.040 on its surface, and the corona here may have caused 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:39.680 warm ice rising to cause tectonic faults in the rock here. 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:44.280 So you mentioned it has this peculiar, fascinating outer appearance. 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:46.360 I add a couple of I added a couple of 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:48.680 photos here to the outlines, so we could rub the 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.200 fur a bit to look at the different textures on 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:56.000 Miranda across much of the known surface, it does look 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.720 a lot like our moon, Like you can see sort 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.520 of swaths of landscape of rocks and soil, you know, 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.480 the very familiar looking dotted with that kind of fractal 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:09.840 vanishing pattern of craters. But then across some stretches of 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.840 the Moon's surface, it looks like a bear about the 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.880 size of the Sun, just like dug its claws in 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:20.120 and used it as a scratching post. Something absolutely tore 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.000 up the crust of this planet. 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.000 Now, you know, part of this is I'm primed by 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.960 being described as the Frankenstein Moon, but also looking at 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.440 these images of it, it makes me think of this 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:33.600 moon as a mad ball, which I don't think. I'm well, 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:36.360 they were apparently still around. I think they started in 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:38.800 the mid eighties and they were a toy when I 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.560 was a kid. But they're like these bouncy balls that 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:47.920 have these like textured monster heads, like ones of cyclops, 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:49.880 ones like a meducer or something. 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.480 And I just looked it up. Yeah, okay, I think 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:54.160 I've seen these. 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.319 Yeah, So it's kind of like if you're familiar with these, 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:59.480 and I think they're still around. They have a website, 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.480 so I think you can probably buy him somewhere. Maybe 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:04.600 they're not the hot thing with kids these days, But 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.360 at any rate, I look at this moon and I 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:08.360 think of mad balls. 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.240 So I'm looking at an arrangement of six mad balls, 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:14.079 and five of them are some kind of monster I 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.320 don't know, like a like a one eyed, one horned, 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.400 purple people eater of some sort. And then but one 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:23.720 of them is just a baseball with an angry face. 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:25.800 It's just a baseball. Why do they got to put 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.400 a baseball in there? Even got the little seams with 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:31.000 the red thread, and I don't know, just. 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.480 An angry baseball. I monster baseball. 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:35.600 I see what you're talking about, though. Yet, yes, it 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.000 is kind of like a mad ball. It has very 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.680 the different mismatched parts. It looks like it could be 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:46.240 you know, illustrated scarring or something. I don't know. It's 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:51.960 just like a hugely variable, strange surface. So there I 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:54.160 mentioned the parts. Some just look kind of like any 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.720 moon you might imagine. Some look like the parts where 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.440 the bear dug its claws in. Other parts look to 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.000 me like you've ever seen the you know, those little 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:06.640 zin gardens people have where they are like soft patterns 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:11.000 of parallel lines and raked into the sand. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.120 there are parts of the surface that look like that. 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:16.320 Here you see these little kind of I'm not implying 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:18.640 that they were left there by an actual being, but yeah, 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.320 it looks like just kind of parallel lines gently raked 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:25.520 into the surface, but of course with massive proportions. And 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.760 there are some places that show jagged ruptures and protrusions 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.960 off of the Moon's surface that are really just scraping space, 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:36.560 Like you can really see like a kind of a 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.880 point coming off of there. Rob you mentioned that some 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.640 of the canyons on Miranda are thought to be twelve 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.440 times as deep as the Grand Canyon on Earth. I 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.760 wanted to zoom in on one particular feature that I 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:55.600 found very interesting. Let's go to the Verona rupus. Verona 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:58.760 is I believe here a reference to Romeo and Juliet, 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.680 because again the Shakespeare name of Urines's moons, and so 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:07.280 Romeo and Juliet is set in the Italian city of Verona. Meanwhile, 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:11.479 Verona rupus Rupus is a word used in planetary geology 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:16.480 to refer to extraterrestrial escarpments or cliffs. It's the Latin 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.160 word for cliff, so Raba included a photo for you 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.880 to look at of Verona rupas zoomed in. This is 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.480 an image that was featured by NASA and Michigan Tech's 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:32.560 Astronomy Picture of the Day site, and this photograph was 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.600 taken by No Surprise Voyager two, as all these close 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.800 up photos of Uranes's moons are. But what's really interesting 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:42.680 here is that you can see in the picture this 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:47.200 massive feature is not a gently sloping mountain side, but 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:51.560 a steep sheer cliff. And what you can't tell from 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:56.000 the picture is the scale of this massive landscape feature. 0:16:56.160 --> 0:17:00.600 According to the APOD write up, the drop from Verona 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:05.439 Rupus is thought to be about twenty kilometers deep. Now 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:09.080 I've seen other estimates somewhere. I don't know exactly who's 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.080 the final authority on estimating the heights of features like 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:16.160 this from photos, but twenty kilometers is the estimate given here. 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.359 And for a point of comparison, they say that this 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.119 is in this case ten times the depth of the 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:25.800 Grand Canyon. For another one, I just looked up the 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:29.240 height of Mount Everest. That's about eight point eight kilometers 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.960 in height, so imagine a drop off more than double 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:35.720 the peak to ground height of Everest. But it's not 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.040 a slope, it's a cliff. It's a vertical cliff. 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:41.440 Wow, that's incredible. 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.639 I'm imagining the cull devoid kind of thought patterns that 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:47.840 looking at a cliff of that size. Man, if you're 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:51.800 somebody with like kriminophobia, you know, you get afraid of 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:56.639 sharp drop offs. I don't know, you can't even process it. 0:17:56.720 --> 0:18:00.199 But another thing they point out is that, so you 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.800 imagine a future astronaut is somehow on the surface of 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:09.240 Miranda and maybe they are suddenly they're cursed by Oberon 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.160 and Titania, you know, the fairy magic falls upon them, 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.000 and they are made to jump the cliff. This source 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.159 estimates that it would take them about twelve minutes to 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.040 fall to the bottom, though the length of that fall 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:25.400 is somewhat stretched out because Miranda has relatively very low 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.840 gravity compared to Earth. But despite the lower gravity, the 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.600 fall would probably still probably would still hurt you. 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:37.440 I mean, I guess in the future, extreme base jumpers 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.040 might venture there in their robot avatar bodies and take 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:44.199 a leap off, and in that case, I guess you 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:46.399 survive the fall because you're just back in your actual 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:49.880 body at the end of it. Yeah, always safety precautions though, 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:52.639 just a heap of robots to the bottom though, just 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:56.919 smashed down to a thin sheet. 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:02.040 So what causes this chaotic patch landscape? There are a 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:06.640 couple of hypotheses. One appears to be the idea of collisions. 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:11.520 Basically that Miranda was actually somewhat smashed to pieces by 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:15.000 collision with a large object. But these pieces did not 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:17.800 you know, fly off into deep space. They were still 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:22.359 caught in orbit around Uranus, and they were ultimately attracted 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.680 to each other by gravity and reformed into a moon 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.360 once again. But then you'd have the different pieces sort 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.080 of fitting together weirdly, explaining the patchy surface. 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:35.600 Yeah, so a Miranda is a mess, but potentially she's 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:36.920 a work in progress. 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.320 Yes, And if that were indeed the case, that sort 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.400 of reminds me of the whole thing about like why 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:45.800 planetary defense concepts, you know, like protecting Earth from comets 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:49.880 and asteroids don't tend to focus on trying to blow 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.200 up incoming asteroids. So you got an asteroid that's coming 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.480 toward Earth, you don't want to like, you know, nuke 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:57.840 its core and smash it to a million pieces, like 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:01.200 in you know, movies like Armageddon or something thing, Because 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.400 fragmenting it into pieces, it potentially would just still hit 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:07.399 earth anyway, like the pieces would hit Earth, or it 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:11.399 might be gravitationally attracted to itself reform and still hit Earth. 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.680 So instead the better plan is to deflect its path. 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.400 You want to blow it off course, not blow it up. 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.000 Yeah, nudget, nudget a little bit. Make sure it just 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:25.040 gradually goes off course far enough ahead of the entering 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:26.560 any kind of danger zone. 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.439 But another possible explanation for the weird mismatched surface of 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:35.520 Miranda is a not a collision and a reforming together, 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:39.919 but instead is like that Miranda is struck by like 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:45.040 large rocky objects or meteorites of some kind. These impacts 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:49.880 partially melt the ice that is underneath the surface of Miranda, 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.880 and then that melting from the heat of the impact 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:56.720 causes water to rise to the surface, icy water to 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.000 come up to the surface, and then it refreezes somewhat chaos, 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:03.919 giving rise to these strange patterns of different types of 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:04.760 surface texture. 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.080 Well, however, it comes together. Definitely worth pulling up an 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:10.280 image of this so you'll see what we're talking about here. 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:14.000 Because it's uh visually, it's I think one of, if 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:26.240 not the most notable of the Uranian moons. All right, 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:28.520 let's move on to the next one. The next one 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.960 is Arial and this one, this one pulls double duty 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:37.160 because it is a spirit who serves Prospero in the tempest, 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:43.320 but it is also a sylph or a sylphid from 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:48.440 Alexander Pope's the Rape of the Lock. This is like 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.840 like an invisible air elemental being that is brought up 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:53.439 in the works of Paracelsus. 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:55.000 Oh that's interesting. 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:57.879 Yeah, So anyway, double duty this one. This one's in 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.800 both camps of Pope and Shakespeare. Discovered by English astronomer 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:05.480 William Lassel in eighteen fifty one. The composition, you know, 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:08.760 same as Miranda and other larger moons, but carbon dioxide 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:13.160 has also been detected. And the significance here it's tidally 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.080 locked like our moon, youngest surface of the moons of 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:20.280 Uranus and the most recent geologically active, So. 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:22.520 Like Earth and its moon, if you were able to 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:25.600 stand on the surface of Uranus and look up at Ariel, 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:27.359 I mean you can't stand on the surface of Uranus, 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:28.920 but if you were to look up at Ariel, you 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:31.040 would always see the same side of it facing the 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:35.040 planet right. So, to invoke another Pink Floyd reference there, 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:37.800 there would not actually be a permanent dark side of 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:39.919 the Moon on aerial, but there would be an always 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:43.400 facing away side of the Moon, the far side, all right. 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:46.760 Moving on to the next one, Umbriel, also discovered by 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:50.480 William Lassel in eighteen fifty one. This one is named 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:53.639 after an evil spirit in Alexander Pope's poem Rape of 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:57.760 the Lock. Significance here it has a mysterious ring on 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:00.640 its surface, revealed by Voyager two, which might be due 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:04.320 to frost deposits from an impact crater. It's ancient and dark, 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:07.360 as the shadowy name suggests. Just a couple of quick 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:12.320 quotes here from the poem by Pope. First, Umbriel a dusky, 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:16.680 melancholy sprite as ever sullied the fair face of light. 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:22.120 And then later on there's another nice little snippet here, 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:27.639 but Umbriel hateful gnome forbears not so he breaks the vial, 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:31.120