Speaker 1: These are the forgeries of jealousy. And never since the
Speaker 1: middle summer's spring met we on a hill in dale forest,
Speaker 1: or mead by paved fountain, or by rushing brook, or
Speaker 1: in the beached margin of the sea, to dance our
Speaker 1: ringlets to the whistling wind. But with thy brawls thou
Speaker 1: hast disturbed our sport. Therefore the winds piping to us
Speaker 1: in vain as in revenge, have sucked up from the sea.
Speaker 1: Contagious fogs, which falling in the land, have every pelting
Speaker 1: river made so proud that they have overborne their continents.
Speaker 1: The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vein. The
Speaker 1: plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn hath rotted,
Speaker 1: ere his youth attained a beard. The fold stands empty
Speaker 1: in the drowned field, and crows are fatted with the
Speaker 1: murray and flock. The nine men's morris filled up with mud,
Speaker 1: and the quaint mazes in the wanton green, for lack
Speaker 1: of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want their winter here.
Speaker 1: No night is now with him or Carol blessed. Therefore
Speaker 1: the moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger
Speaker 1: washes all the air that rheumatic diseases do abound. And
Speaker 1: thorough this distemperature, we see the seasons alter hoary headed
Speaker 1: frosts far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
Speaker 1: and on old highams than an icy crown, an odorous
Speaker 1: chaplet of sweet summer buds is as in mockery set
Speaker 1: the spring, the summer, the childing autumn, angry winter change
Speaker 1: their wonted liveries, and the mazed world, by their increase,
Speaker 1: now knows not which is which. And this same progeny
Speaker 1: of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension. We
Speaker 1: are their parents and original.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: I can't believe nine Men's Morris is filled up with mud.
Speaker 3: It used to be a cool place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. So we're back with our third and
Speaker 1: final part in the series on the moons of the
Speaker 1: planet Uranus, and I started today with a reading from
Speaker 1: It's Actually It's a speech given by the character Titania,
Speaker 1: the Queen of the Fairies, in William Shakespeare's play A
Speaker 1: Midsummer Night's Dream. Now I've read that half just because
Speaker 1: I loved that speech and I thought it was really cool,
Speaker 1: but it also seemed to kind of resonant with our
Speaker 1: subject matter today. So the speech in the play is
Speaker 1: delivered by Titania to Oberon of the fairies, describing how
Speaker 1: the jealous feuding between the two of them has had
Speaker 1: malicious effects on the weather and the very environment of
Speaker 1: nature in the human world, because you know, when fairies fight,
Speaker 1: it's not just bad vibes. The bad vibes apparently become
Speaker 1: quite physical, and they take the form of floods, drought,
Speaker 1: frostbitten winters, famine, disease, etc. And this struck me as
Speaker 1: interesting in this case because of the ways that hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago, the behavior of planets and moons and
Speaker 1: other objects up in the heavens was thought to affect
Speaker 1: the weather, and not just affect the weather, but to
Speaker 1: produce the bad air that brings plague. So both of
Speaker 1: the things kind of mentioned in this speech bad weather
Speaker 1: and disease. And we've talked about numerous specific examples of
Speaker 1: that in previous episodes, but one being that during the
Speaker 1: Second Plague pandemic. In thirteen forty eight, a convocation of
Speaker 1: scholars from the medical faculty at the University of Paris
Speaker 1: was assembled by King Philip the sixth of France to
Speaker 1: determine the cause of the plague, and they concluded it
Speaker 1: was because of the thirteen forty five conjunction of Mars,
Speaker 1: Jupiter and Saturn in the House of Aquarius, which had
Speaker 1: caused evil vapors to rise up from the earth and
Speaker 1: breathe death into the cities of humankind. So the idea
Speaker 1: of this direct causal connection between what the planets are doing,
Speaker 1: what things in the sky are doing, and then weather
Speaker 1: on Earth and then disease. And this struck me because
Speaker 1: in Shakespeare the behavior of Oberon and Titania is thought
Speaker 1: to change the weather and bring disease. But this was
Speaker 1: before those characters were also the names of actual heavenly
Speaker 1: bodies moons of the planet Uranus. In fact, that would
Speaker 1: have been before the official discovery of Uranus as a
Speaker 1: planet at all. But Titania and Oberon are now both
Speaker 1: major moons of Uranus. Those two were discovered by William
Speaker 1: Herschel in seventeen eighty seven, the same guy who discovered
Speaker 1: Urinus as a planet, though curiously I was just reading
Speaker 1: about this. William Herschel also at the same time reported
Speaker 1: discovering several other moons that were never confirmed by later astronomers.
Speaker 1: So nobody ever found moons matching the orbits of these
Speaker 1: other couple moons he described. Herschel Apparently, I don't know
Speaker 1: he wrote something down wrong or something he claimed, you know,
Speaker 1: he claimed to have found some non existent moons in
Speaker 1: addition to these real ones. But anyway, I wonder if
Speaker 1: if the Uranian moons Oberon and Titania had been known
Speaker 1: about in Shakespeare's day, they might also, I wonder, have
Speaker 1: been blamed for making the green corn rot and filling
Speaker 1: the Nine Men's moriss up with mud and spreading the
Speaker 1: rheumatic diseases and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Despite all of the shakespeare references
Speaker 3: in the naming of the Iranian moons, I don't believe
Speaker 3: Shakespeare ever references the god Uranus or Urinas in his works.
Speaker 3: Could be a lot wrong about that. I'm not a
Speaker 3: Shakespeare scholar. I'm just combining memory of Shakespeare with some
Speaker 3: searches on some digital databases of his work. All the
Speaker 3: other gods featured in our planetary lineup are referenced numerous
Speaker 3: times in his plays, but never never Uranos, and the
Speaker 3: same seems to be true of Alexander Pope, which I
Speaker 3: guess this ultimately just speaks to the limited or non
Speaker 3: existent role Uranas had in literature of the times of
Speaker 3: these writers.
Speaker 1: Right, I guess he's just wasn't one of the flashiest gods,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, But actually I was just thinking,
Speaker 1: to come back on what I said a minute ago,
Speaker 1: you know, wondering if the moons of another planet would
Speaker 1: have been used in astrological explanations for weather patterns and disease.
Speaker 1: Now that I think about it, I can't think of
Speaker 1: a case where, then, at least that I'm familiar with,
Speaker 1: where the moons of other planets were used to explain
Speaker 1: that that. Maybe that's because, like those, moons of other
Speaker 1: planets had only been known about since the time of Galileo.
Speaker 1: But as far as I can recall, it's always invoking
Speaker 1: the outer planets themselves and not their moons, of course,
Speaker 1: apart from our own moon, which, according again to Titania,
Speaker 1: is the governess of floods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that the governess of floods.
Speaker 1: You know, before I had ever seen or read Midsommer
Speaker 1: Night's Dream and knew Oberon and Titania as characters here
Speaker 1: before I even knew them as the names of moons
Speaker 1: of Uranus that I recall, I actually knew them from
Speaker 1: a different place. I knew them as part of a
Speaker 1: spooky chant in a song my dad used to listen
Speaker 1: to when I was younger, the line you have to
Speaker 1: imagine this with several voices and a strange dissonant harmony
Speaker 1: saying Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda, Titanya, Neptune, Titan stars
Speaker 1: can Frighten, which is of course from the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven psychedelic space rock anthem Astronomy Domine by Pink Floyd.
Speaker 1: I think this song was written by syd Barrett, a
Speaker 1: song that I think I have to admit is still
Speaker 1: sort of always looping in the back of my head
Speaker 1: when I think about space, when I picture the empty
Speaker 1: landscapes of other planets and moons. It manages to capture
Speaker 1: a feeling of space that is simultaneously very unsettling but
Speaker 1: also so inviting, And it really helped me be excited
Speaker 1: about space before I knew much about it, like seeing
Speaker 1: it as this realm of mysteries that were thrilling to unveil.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying the effect would be the same
Speaker 1: with all kids, but for me personally, this weird song
Speaker 1: by Pink Floyd was a wonderful early science education tool.
Speaker 1: Not because it contains any actual information or educational content
Speaker 1: it doesn't, but because it really made me want to
Speaker 1: know more about what's out there.
Speaker 3: So you're saying Astronomy Domine was kind of your Star Wars?
Speaker 1: Is that what Star Wars was for you? I mean,
Speaker 1: I love Star Wars too, I you know, wore out
Speaker 1: the videotape.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean when I think back on just earliest
Speaker 3: idea things that got me excited about space, I think
Speaker 3: they were mostly you know, space stories, Like I remember
Speaker 3: really liking the black Hole from Disney, and I had
Speaker 3: like a storybook and cassette of the black Hole. Even though,
Speaker 3: of course, as we've mentioned on the show before and
Speaker 3: maybe we'll get into again in the future, you know,
Speaker 3: the black Hole contains very little that you can take
Speaker 3: to the bank regarding actual information about about this about
Speaker 3: space and the nature of black holes.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess this is part of the song's psychedelic qualities.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Astronomy domine. I always felt it was. It
Speaker 1: was scary in the best possible way. It was scary
Speaker 1: in the way that it's like, you know, you want
Speaker 1: to know what's behind the door, but you're you're frightened
Speaker 1: to open it in a way that makes you just
Speaker 1: you have to look even more.
Speaker 3: Hm hm, No, I know, having been hurt, listened to
Speaker 3: part of this song here, and I'm not super familiar
Speaker 3: with Pink Floyd. You know, I know the big ones,
Speaker 3: of course, but I haven't I've never done a deep
Speaker 3: dive into their discography. Yeah, I see what you're saying
Speaker 3: about this, this track.
Speaker 1: This is early Pink Floyd. Most of the Pink Floyd
Speaker 1: stuff people know is from a later period of the
Speaker 1: band where they sound totally different. They're more the kind
Speaker 1: of you know, I don't know what you call it,
Speaker 1: progressive classic rock. This is from their early couple of
Speaker 1: albums that were more weird British psychedelic rock. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the line of lyrics from from the
Speaker 1: song you Hear you hear three names, it's oberon Miranda
Speaker 1: in Titanya. So I think we're still taking the moons
Speaker 1: somewhat in order. Right. Last in the previous episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about the the inner moons of Uranus, and now
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about the major moons.
Speaker 3: That's right, and we'll begin with with Miranda here. Miranda's
Speaker 3: name for Prospero's daughter in the Tempest. She's also the
Speaker 3: subject of a pretty famous waterhouse painting. I included this
Speaker 3: for you, Joe. I don't know, maybe I'm alone in this,
Speaker 3: but I just remember seeing this one a lot. I
Speaker 3: feel like this one. There were a lot of posters
Speaker 3: of this on dorm rooms or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. If I did see it, it didn't really
Speaker 1: make an impression, but I.
Speaker 3: Like it has sort of Gothic sensibility to it. I
Speaker 3: don't think I've ever seen the actual painting. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure where it is at any rate. It was discovered
Speaker 3: by Gerald P. Kiper on February sixteenth, nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: at the McDonald Observatory in Texas. It was the last
Speaker 3: moon of the planet to be discovered prior to Voyager two,
Speaker 3: the smallest and closest to the planet of the pre
Speaker 3: Voyager two discovered moons of Uranus. Now, the composition here,
Speaker 3: like all the larger moons, it's thought to consist mostly
Speaker 3: of a roughly equal mix of water, ice and silicate rock.
Speaker 3: The significance it is, I've seen numerous descriptions referring to
Speaker 3: it as a Frankenstein moon, which of course instantly sounds
Speaker 3: pretty jazzy Frankenstein moon of seemingly mismatched landscapes and featuring
Speaker 3: Titanic canyons thought to be twelve times as deep as
Speaker 3: the Grand Canyon of Earth. In some cases, its surface
Speaker 3: also bears the mark of coroni, which are sound delicious
Speaker 3: what they're found to be. They're found on the surface
Speaker 3: of Venus as well. These like oval shaped geological markings
Speaker 3: caused by upwellings of subsurface warm material. So Miranda is
Speaker 3: known to or as thought to have frozen water ice
Speaker 3: on its surface, and the corona here may have caused
Speaker 3: warm ice rising to cause tectonic faults in the rock here.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned it has this peculiar, fascinating outer appearance.
Speaker 1: I add a couple of I added a couple of
Speaker 1: photos here to the outlines, so we could rub the
Speaker 1: fur a bit to look at the different textures on
Speaker 1: Miranda across much of the known surface, it does look
Speaker 1: a lot like our moon, Like you can see sort
Speaker 1: of swaths of landscape of rocks and soil, you know,
Speaker 1: the very familiar looking dotted with that kind of fractal
Speaker 1: vanishing pattern of craters. But then across some stretches of
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface, it looks like a bear about the
Speaker 1: size of the Sun, just like dug its claws in
Speaker 1: and used it as a scratching post. Something absolutely tore
Speaker 1: up the crust of this planet.
Speaker 3: Now, you know, part of this is I'm primed by
Speaker 3: being described as the Frankenstein Moon, but also looking at
Speaker 3: these images of it, it makes me think of this
Speaker 3: moon as a mad ball, which I don't think. I'm well,
Speaker 3: they were apparently still around. I think they started in
Speaker 3: the mid eighties and they were a toy when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. But they're like these bouncy balls that
Speaker 3: have these like textured monster heads, like ones of cyclops,
Speaker 3: ones like a meducer or something.
Speaker 1: And I just looked it up. Yeah, okay, I think
Speaker 1: I've seen these.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's kind of like if you're familiar with these,
Speaker 3: and I think they're still around. They have a website,
Speaker 3: so I think you can probably buy him somewhere. Maybe
Speaker 3: they're not the hot thing with kids these days, But
Speaker 3: at any rate, I look at this moon and I
Speaker 3: think of mad balls.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at an arrangement of six mad balls,
Speaker 1: and five of them are some kind of monster I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a like a one eyed, one horned,
Speaker 1: purple people eater of some sort. And then but one
Speaker 1: of them is just a baseball with an angry face.
Speaker 1: It's just a baseball. Why do they got to put
Speaker 1: a baseball in there? Even got the little seams with
Speaker 1: the red thread, and I don't know, just.
Speaker 3: An angry baseball. I monster baseball.
Speaker 1: I see what you're talking about, though. Yet, yes, it
Speaker 1: is kind of like a mad ball. It has very
Speaker 1: the different mismatched parts. It looks like it could be
Speaker 1: you know, illustrated scarring or something. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: just like a hugely variable, strange surface. So there I
Speaker 1: mentioned the parts. Some just look kind of like any
Speaker 1: moon you might imagine. Some look like the parts where
Speaker 1: the bear dug its claws in. Other parts look to
Speaker 1: me like you've ever seen the you know, those little
Speaker 1: zin gardens people have where they are like soft patterns
Speaker 1: of parallel lines and raked into the sand. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are parts of the surface that look like that.
Speaker 1: Here you see these little kind of I'm not implying
Speaker 1: that they were left there by an actual being, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like just kind of parallel lines gently raked
Speaker 1: into the surface, but of course with massive proportions. And
Speaker 1: there are some places that show jagged ruptures and protrusions
Speaker 1: off of the Moon's surface that are really just scraping space,
Speaker 1: Like you can really see like a kind of a
Speaker 1: point coming off of there. Rob you mentioned that some
Speaker 1: of the canyons on Miranda are thought to be twelve
Speaker 1: times as deep as the Grand Canyon on Earth. I
Speaker 1: wanted to zoom in on one particular feature that I
Speaker 1: found very interesting. Let's go to the Verona rupus. Verona
Speaker 1: is I believe here a reference to Romeo and Juliet,
Speaker 1: because again the Shakespeare name of Urines's moons, and so
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet is set in the Italian city of Verona. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Verona rupus Rupus is a word used in planetary geology
Speaker 1: to refer to extraterrestrial escarpments or cliffs. It's the Latin
Speaker 1: word for cliff, so Raba included a photo for you
Speaker 1: to look at of Verona rupas zoomed in. This is
Speaker 1: an image that was featured by NASA and Michigan Tech's
Speaker 1: Astronomy Picture of the Day site, and this photograph was
Speaker 1: taken by No Surprise Voyager two, as all these close
Speaker 1: up photos of Uranes's moons are. But what's really interesting
Speaker 1: here is that you can see in the picture this
Speaker 1: massive feature is not a gently sloping mountain side, but
Speaker 1: a steep sheer cliff. And what you can't tell from
Speaker 1: the picture is the scale of this massive landscape feature.
Speaker 1: According to the APOD write up, the drop from Verona
Speaker 1: Rupus is thought to be about twenty kilometers deep. Now
Speaker 1: I've seen other estimates somewhere. I don't know exactly who's
Speaker 1: the final authority on estimating the heights of features like
Speaker 1: this from photos, but twenty kilometers is the estimate given here.
Speaker 1: And for a point of comparison, they say that this
Speaker 1: is in this case ten times the depth of the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon. For another one, I just looked up the
Speaker 1: height of Mount Everest. That's about eight point eight kilometers
Speaker 1: in height, so imagine a drop off more than double
Speaker 1: the peak to ground height of Everest. But it's not
Speaker 1: a slope, it's a cliff. It's a vertical cliff.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: I'm imagining the cull devoid kind of thought patterns that
Speaker 1: looking at a cliff of that size. Man, if you're
Speaker 1: somebody with like kriminophobia, you know, you get afraid of
Speaker 1: sharp drop offs. I don't know, you can't even process it.
Speaker 1: But another thing they point out is that, so you
Speaker 1: imagine a future astronaut is somehow on the surface of
Speaker 1: Miranda and maybe they are suddenly they're cursed by Oberon
Speaker 1: and Titania, you know, the fairy magic falls upon them,
Speaker 1: and they are made to jump the cliff. This source
Speaker 1: estimates that it would take them about twelve minutes to
Speaker 1: fall to the bottom, though the length of that fall
Speaker 1: is somewhat stretched out because Miranda has relatively very low
Speaker 1: gravity compared to Earth. But despite the lower gravity, the
Speaker 1: fall would probably still probably would still hurt you.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess in the future, extreme base jumpers
Speaker 3: might venture there in their robot avatar bodies and take
Speaker 3: a leap off, and in that case, I guess you
Speaker 3: survive the fall because you're just back in your actual
Speaker 3: body at the end of it. Yeah, always safety precautions though,
Speaker 3: just a heap of robots to the bottom though, just
Speaker 3: smashed down to a thin sheet.
Speaker 1: So what causes this chaotic patch landscape? There are a
Speaker 1: couple of hypotheses. One appears to be the idea of collisions.
Speaker 1: Basically that Miranda was actually somewhat smashed to pieces by
Speaker 1: collision with a large object. But these pieces did not
Speaker 1: you know, fly off into deep space. They were still
Speaker 1: caught in orbit around Uranus, and they were ultimately attracted
Speaker 1: to each other by gravity and reformed into a moon
Speaker 1: once again. But then you'd have the different pieces sort
Speaker 1: of fitting together weirdly, explaining the patchy surface.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a Miranda is a mess, but potentially she's
Speaker 3: a work in progress.
Speaker 1: Yes, And if that were indeed the case, that sort
Speaker 1: of reminds me of the whole thing about like why
Speaker 1: planetary defense concepts, you know, like protecting Earth from comets
Speaker 1: and asteroids don't tend to focus on trying to blow
Speaker 1: up incoming asteroids. So you got an asteroid that's coming
Speaker 1: toward Earth, you don't want to like, you know, nuke
Speaker 1: its core and smash it to a million pieces, like
Speaker 1: in you know, movies like Armageddon or something thing, Because
Speaker 1: fragmenting it into pieces, it potentially would just still hit
Speaker 1: earth anyway, like the pieces would hit Earth, or it
Speaker 1: might be gravitationally attracted to itself reform and still hit Earth.
Speaker 1: So instead the better plan is to deflect its path.
Speaker 1: You want to blow it off course, not blow it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nudget, nudget a little bit. Make sure it just
Speaker 3: gradually goes off course far enough ahead of the entering
Speaker 3: any kind of danger zone.
Speaker 1: But another possible explanation for the weird mismatched surface of
Speaker 1: Miranda is a not a collision and a reforming together,
Speaker 1: but instead is like that Miranda is struck by like
Speaker 1: large rocky objects or meteorites of some kind. These impacts
Speaker 1: partially melt the ice that is underneath the surface of Miranda,
Speaker 1: and then that melting from the heat of the impact
Speaker 1: causes water to rise to the surface, icy water to
Speaker 1: come up to the surface, and then it refreezes somewhat chaos,
Speaker 1: giving rise to these strange patterns of different types of
Speaker 1: surface texture.
Speaker 3: Well, however, it comes together. Definitely worth pulling up an
Speaker 3: image of this so you'll see what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3: Because it's uh visually, it's I think one of, if
Speaker 3: not the most notable of the Uranian moons. All right,
Speaker 3: let's move on to the next one. The next one
Speaker 3: is Arial and this one, this one pulls double duty
Speaker 3: because it is a spirit who serves Prospero in the tempest,
Speaker 3: but it is also a sylph or a sylphid from
Speaker 3: Alexander Pope's the Rape of the Lock. This is like
Speaker 3: like an invisible air elemental being that is brought up
Speaker 3: in the works of Paracelsus.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anyway, double duty this one. This one's in
Speaker 3: both camps of Pope and Shakespeare. Discovered by English astronomer
Speaker 3: William Lassel in eighteen fifty one. The composition, you know,
Speaker 3: same as Miranda and other larger moons, but carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: has also been detected. And the significance here it's tidally
Speaker 3: locked like our moon, youngest surface of the moons of
Speaker 3: Uranus and the most recent geologically active, So.
Speaker 1: Like Earth and its moon, if you were able to
Speaker 1: stand on the surface of Uranus and look up at Ariel,
Speaker 1: I mean you can't stand on the surface of Uranus,
Speaker 1: but if you were to look up at Ariel, you
Speaker 1: would always see the same side of it facing the
Speaker 1: planet right. So, to invoke another Pink Floyd reference there,
Speaker 1: there would not actually be a permanent dark side of
Speaker 1: the Moon on aerial, but there would be an always
Speaker 1: facing away side of the Moon, the far side, all right.
Speaker 3: Moving on to the next one, Umbriel, also discovered by
Speaker 3: William Lassel in eighteen fifty one. This one is named
Speaker 3: after an evil spirit in Alexander Pope's poem Rape of
Speaker 3: the Lock. Significance here it has a mysterious ring on
Speaker 3: its surface, revealed by Voyager two, which might be due
Speaker 3: to frost deposits from an impact crater. It's ancient and dark,
Speaker 3: as the shadowy name suggests. Just a couple of quick
Speaker 3: quotes here from the poem by Pope. First, Umbriel a dusky,
Speaker 3: melancholy sprite as ever sullied the fair face of light.
Speaker 3: And then later on there's another nice little snippet here,
Speaker 3: but Umbriel hateful gnome forbears not so he breaks the vial,
Speaker 3: whence the sorrows flow? Hateful? No I like it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know the name is fitting because so it mentions.
Speaker 1: He's the enemy of light basically, and that's also true
Speaker 1: if you look up about Umbriel the moon. Because Umbriel
Speaker 1: is the darkest of all of Uranus's major moons, it
Speaker 1: reflects very little light. You mentioned that bright ring a
Speaker 1: minute ago, the kind of mysterious bright ring in a crater.
Speaker 1: I added a photo of this for you to look
Speaker 1: at here. I think it's interesting. So the contrast with
Speaker 1: the glowing white ring is quite profound. That I guess
Speaker 1: that seems especially true because Umbriel is the darkest of
Speaker 1: the major moons. And unfortunately the images we have from
Speaker 1: Voyager two do not capture the ring looking down, so
Speaker 1: you're not looking at it head on. Instead, we see
Speaker 1: we can just barely tell it's a ring, but we
Speaker 1: can see it at sort of the edge of the
Speaker 1: hemisphere that Voyager two was able to photograph, so it's
Speaker 1: right there on the cusp of the planet like a
Speaker 1: little halo. The Moon as a whole is about twelve
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers in diameter, and the white ring here is
Speaker 1: about one hundred and forty kilometers itself, so more than
Speaker 1: ten percent of the width of the Moon. And scientists
Speaker 1: are not sure what caused the ring to appear. But
Speaker 1: Rob you mentioned the frost deposits. In the last part
Speaker 1: of the series, I referenced an article by the planetary
Speaker 1: scientist Amy Simon, and she explains a little further in
Speaker 1: that article that it might be like a layer of
Speaker 1: ice on a crater floor that is lying exposed to
Speaker 1: the sunlight. For some reason, something knocked the what might
Speaker 1: have otherwise been covering it off, so it's exposed and
Speaker 1: reflecting much more light than the surface around it. But
Speaker 1: this tickled something in my memory, and I realized it
Speaker 1: was reminding me of when we discussed the bright white
Speaker 1: spot in the center of a crater on another object
Speaker 1: in the Solar System, on the dwarf planet Series. So
Speaker 1: Series is not a planet on its own, it is
Speaker 1: the largest object in the asteroid belt, the biggest asteroid
Speaker 1: known as a dwarf planet. And on the surface of
Speaker 1: Series there are actually a number of different bright spots
Speaker 1: known as facue and there's one I've got you here
Speaker 1: to look at, rob So it's in the middle of
Speaker 1: a crater. The crater is called the Okat Crater, and
Speaker 1: the bright spot, this is the most famous of the
Speaker 1: bright tipots, is known as the Cerealia facula. So it's
Speaker 1: right there in the middle of the crater almost like
Speaker 1: a I don't know what to call it. It's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a bull's eye. It's a bright
Speaker 1: dot in the middle of this depression in the surface
Speaker 1: of CeREES And these bright spots are thought to be caused,
Speaker 1: in this case on series by the presence of ice
Speaker 1: or salts rising to the surface from below. So there
Speaker 1: might be there's like sort of a mantle or a
Speaker 1: subsurface layer of briny solution kind of water with salts
Speaker 1: in it, and maybe some kind of impact caused that
Speaker 1: that stuff to well up, so the water the salts
Speaker 1: came up, and then the ice that's there or the
Speaker 1: salts that are left once the water is gone, leave
Speaker 1: this area of higher reflectivity than the surrounding surface. So
Speaker 1: it forms this little you know, bull's eye in the
Speaker 1: middle of the crater.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah. Now, now as for just the ring on umbrel,
Speaker 3: it's also and it also makes me think of like an
Speaker 3: intentional bald spot at the top of the head, like
Speaker 3: a monk's conture, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I can see that it's just sitting
Speaker 1: right up there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But we spoke earlier of the Fairy Royalty Titanya and Oberon.
Speaker 1: Should we set them a bickering Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Next up is Titania, the queen of the fairies in
Speaker 3: A Midsummer Night's Dream is the namesake discovered by William
Speaker 3: Herschel this moon in seventeen eighty seven. It's the largest
Speaker 3: moon of Uranus, with a diameter of roughly one thousand
Speaker 3: miles or sixteen one hundred kilometers. Voyager two images revealed
Speaker 3: that it was at some point geologically active. Reflective material,
Speaker 3: possibly frost, adheres to sun facing valley walls. And then
Speaker 3: we have Oberon. Oberon is named for the king of
Speaker 3: the Fairies and midsummer Night's Dream, also discovered by William
Speaker 3: Herschel in seventeen eighty seven. It's the second largest moon
Speaker 3: of Uranus. It's heavily cratered and has at least one
Speaker 3: large mountain. This large mountain towers I believes six kilometers
Speaker 3: and is named but is sometimes called the Limb Mountain.
Speaker 3: The outmost of the major moons is over On. Many
Speaker 3: of its craters have an unidentified dark material in them.
Speaker 1: That was something else mentioned in that Amy Simon article
Speaker 1: that a lot of the moons of Uranus have substances
Speaker 1: on their surface which cause darkening, and it's not known
Speaker 1: exactly what that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, another interesting note about some of these moons
Speaker 3: we just discussed here is the potential the possible potential
Speaker 3: for life on the major moons of Urinus. Life on
Speaker 3: Uranus itself seems extremely unlikely based on everything I've been
Speaker 3: looking at life as we know it anyway, because is
Speaker 3: always the caveat. For instance, just one case of this,
Speaker 3: the long standing risk of contaminating Uranus or Neptune with
Speaker 3: terrestrial microbes seems to be essentially nil. Based on scientific
Speaker 3: opinions NASA and so forth. It is, by most estimates,
Speaker 3: likely a dead world. Now, I did run across a
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight paper by ing Bolshkarov in Bioastronomy titled
Speaker 3: in the bio Astronomy Next Steps My bad there it's
Speaker 3: titled is Urinus the most promising planet for SETI? This
Speaker 3: paper seems to mostly focus on the presence of water
Speaker 3: drops and electrical discharges in the planet's atmosphere as a
Speaker 3: possible precursor to life. Still, most sources seem to say no,
Speaker 3: Uranus is a no go for life as we know it.
Speaker 3: You know, there are other places that we can look
Speaker 3: to in our Solar system that are far better candidates
Speaker 3: for exploration. But any right, the idea of it being
Speaker 3: a dead world. We can't say the same for the moons.
Speaker 3: We can't say the same for all of the Uranian moons.
Speaker 1: I like how the title of the paper though, is
Speaker 1: not just like is it worth looking at Urinus for SETI,
Speaker 1: it's saying is it the most promising planet? That seems
Speaker 1: like the answer is no, No, it's not.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, you know, we often have to think back
Speaker 3: to you know, the reality of putting missions together for
Speaker 3: these various various moons and planets. It's like you've got
Speaker 3: to really build up the hype, you know, you've got
Speaker 3: to you got to make the case why is this
Speaker 3: worth all of this money, this time, this investment. And
Speaker 3: you know, there's a strong case to be made for
Speaker 3: any destination in our Solar system to you know, to
Speaker 3: broaden our understanding of the world surrounding our star. But
Speaker 3: you know, you got to make that case. You got
Speaker 3: to believe, and maybe maybe you got to You got
Speaker 3: to push a little hard.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and even if you're looking at places that
Speaker 1: are not themselves at least as far as we can
Speaker 1: tell very good candidates for discovering life, they can still
Speaker 1: usually teach you a lot about the dynamics and life
Speaker 1: history of planets in general, which is something that we
Speaker 1: do need to always understand better if we want to
Speaker 1: know where best to look for life. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the most recent paper that I was running
Speaker 3: across about Uranian moons in life. This comes from a
Speaker 3: December twenty twenty two paper in the Journal of Geophysical
Speaker 3: Research by Castillo Roguez at All. They point out that Titania, Oberon, Aerial,
Speaker 3: and Umbrial may have salty oceans beneath their frozen surfaces,
Speaker 3: opening up the possibility for life as we know it.
Speaker 3: They base their findings on three factors. First, fall observational
Speaker 3: constraints about each moon's internal and geological evolution. Secondly, the
Speaker 3: current level of tidal heating, and third thermal models. They write, quote,
Speaker 3: we predict that if the Moon's preserved liquid until present,
Speaker 3: it is likely in the form of residual oceans less
Speaker 3: than thirty kilometers thick on Aerial, Umbrial and less than
Speaker 3: fifty kilometers in Titania and Oberon. Now, they stress that
Speaker 3: liquid preservation depends on a number of factors, and ultimately
Speaker 3: we just can't know for certain until we look closer. Miranda, however,
Speaker 3: they say, is unlikely to boast any water unless there
Speaker 3: was some manner of tidal heating there quote a few
Speaker 3: tens of millions of years ago. They also point out
Speaker 3: that thermal metamorphism could create a late second generation ocean
Speaker 3: in Titania and Oberon. In either case, It's also possible
Speaker 3: that liquid on these moons, if present, is preserved by
Speaker 3: anti freeze in the form of something like ammonia and chlorides.
Speaker 3: The downside to this possibility, they stress, is that the
Speaker 3: electrical conductiveness may be close to zero in such waters
Speaker 3: if they're there, making it impossible for future probes to
Speaker 3: detect them via magnetic field generation. Also, we'd be talking
Speaker 3: about temperatures close to the lower limit for metabolic activity
Speaker 3: and terrestrial microbe reproduction based on life as we know it,
Speaker 3: so the author's stress that it might not really be
Speaker 3: a high priority liquid environment for astrobiologists. It's no Enceladus
Speaker 3: that seems to remain the most interesting lunar ocean for astrobiologists,
Speaker 3: but we can't rule out life on the Uranian moons
Speaker 3: more research, more inquiry is required.
Speaker 1: Always Enceladus now considered a better candidate than Europa. I
Speaker 1: would have assumed Europa was still on top. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't really know.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't want to get into the beef between
Speaker 3: Enceladus and Europa, but okay, either of these, it's my understanding,
Speaker 3: would would ultimately be better placed if you had to
Speaker 3: place hard bets on it, which essentially you are if
Speaker 3: you're deciding to, you know, potentially launch any kind of
Speaker 3: like a mission, fly by probe, et cetera. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that seemed to be the basic take home from the
Speaker 3: paper is that, like, there's a possibility it's not, but
Speaker 3: it's not. Maybe the they're not the best odds of
Speaker 3: the moons in our solar system.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, But wouldn't that be a good surprise. You
Speaker 1: look at all of the higher tier candidates, Europa and Enceladus, whatever,
Speaker 1: and nothing's there but way out in the ice giants,
Speaker 1: those moons are cranking with life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's always in the last place you look, right.
Speaker 1: All right, Miranda, Umbriel, Titanya, and Oberon. Those are the
Speaker 1: four major moons. But that doesn't exhaust the list, right,
Speaker 1: we've got a bunch of so called irregular moons and
Speaker 1: other stuff going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we're gonna venture into the outskirts here, Like
Speaker 3: we're leaving Las Vegas proper and we're down into the
Speaker 3: area surround in Vegas. We're getting into the irregular moons
Speaker 3: of Uranus. According to NASA, the composition of the moons
Speaker 3: outside the orbit of Oberon remains largely unknown, but they
Speaker 3: are likely captured asteroids. These are all positioned far beyond
Speaker 3: the orbit of Oberon, and there are nine known irregular
Speaker 3: moons of Uranus. All right, we're gonna start with Francisco.
Speaker 3: This is named after a shipwrecked nobleman in the Tempest,
Speaker 3: discovered in two thousand and one by Cavalleras at All
Speaker 3: at Chile Sero Tololo Inter American Observatory. It has a
Speaker 3: retrograde orbit. It is the innermost of the irregular moons,
Speaker 3: but it orbits at about four point three million kilometers
Speaker 3: from the planet itself.
Speaker 1: I do not recall what the character Francisco and the
Speaker 1: Tempest does, but you know who I do recall is Caliban.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the sort of a monstrous character from the Tempest
Speaker 3: who was also the inspiration for the character Calibos in
Speaker 3: the movie Clash of the Titans, which we discussed in
Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: A little bit of crossing of the streams there. I
Speaker 1: got your Shakespeare in my Greek mythology.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this one was discovered by Gladman at All
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety seven at the Palomar Observatory in California.
Speaker 3: Significance here it has a retrogade orbit that is also
Speaker 3: inclined and eccentric, thought to be the second largest irregular moon.
Speaker 3: It is also far out and likely an independent body
Speaker 3: captured by the planet's gravity. All right, Up next we
Speaker 3: have Stefano. This is named after King Alonzo's butler in
Speaker 3: The Tempest. It's been a while since I've actually seen
Speaker 3: The Tempest or certainly read it, so I don't remember
Speaker 3: the significance of King Alzo's butler.
Speaker 1: I also have no memory of what's going on with
Speaker 1: the butler. Yeah.
Speaker 3: At any rate, he gets a mon named after him.
Speaker 3: Discovered in nineteen ninety nine by Gladman at All at
Speaker 3: the Canada, France Hawaii Telescope at the Monachia Observatory on
Speaker 3: the island of Hawaii. They discovered Stefano, Prospero, and Setebas
Speaker 3: at the same time. Significance here basically just retrograde orbit
Speaker 3: similar in composition to Caliban, is.
Speaker 1: Likely, all right.
Speaker 3: Next we have Trinculo, named after the jester from The Tempest.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This one discovered by Holman at All in two
Speaker 3: thousand and one at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Canada
Speaker 3: using the Sero Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. This one
Speaker 3: has a retrograde orbit, all right, all right. The next
Speaker 3: one is Psychoax. This is named after the which mother
Speaker 3: of Caliban in The Tempest. This is an off screen
Speaker 3: character though that dies before the play, so it's just
Speaker 3: like a name drop. Discovered by Gladman at All in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven at the Palomar Observatory in California, discovered
Speaker 3: at the same time as Caliban, thus the naming the
Speaker 3: main significance here. It's the largest of the irregular moons
Speaker 3: and it also has a retrograde orbit. Now it's hard
Speaker 3: to beat that name. That's a cool name, so the
Speaker 3: next one doesn't even try. The next one is Margaret.
Speaker 3: This is named after a character from much Ado about
Speaker 3: nothing discovered by Scott S. Shepherd and David C. Juleet
Speaker 3: In with the Subaru eight point two millimeter reflector at
Speaker 3: the Monarchy Observatory in two thousand and three. The significance
Speaker 3: here we have a pro grade orbit for once.
Speaker 1: Oh is this the first one of the irregulars?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, they're all retrograde thus far. Okay, now the
Speaker 3: next one, this one has as a pretty We've mentioned
Speaker 3: him already. But finally we have a moon named after Prospero,
Speaker 3: the sorcerer from the Tempest.
Speaker 1: I know this isn't true, but I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: myself that it's actually named after Prospero, the Vincent Price
Speaker 1: character in the Mask of the Red Death.
Speaker 3: Ah. Now here's an interesting little side bit. You know
Speaker 3: we discussed or this. I believe this was Christian and
Speaker 3: I that did much older episode about the Elizabethan poly
Speaker 3: math and occultist John D. There's this this theory that
Speaker 3: the historic individual of John D may have been partial
Speaker 3: inspiration for Shakespeare's Prospero, and he also seems to have
Speaker 3: influenced John D that seems to have influenced our ideas
Speaker 3: concerning Merlin as well, and ultimately, like the Fantasy Wizard
Speaker 3: character as a whole.
Speaker 1: That seems true to me, though it doesn't exactly match,
Speaker 1: because the Fantasy Wizard character does not get obsessed with
Speaker 1: trying to talk to angels.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah. Dee's full story has a lot of
Speaker 3: strange turns in it, and you know, he gets caught
Speaker 3: up in some in a few messes. Interestingly, his occult
Speaker 3: interests include the angel Uriel, the supposed to be the
Speaker 3: angel of Wisdom, who's said in some cases to have
Speaker 3: worn Noah of the flood and revealed astrological secrets of
Speaker 3: the stars and planets. To Enoch, Uriel is synonymous with Aeriel,
Speaker 3: which we already discussed as a major Uranian moon. Interesting now, Prospero,
Speaker 3: the Uranian moon setting all that aside, is just discovered
Speaker 3: by Gladman at All in nineteen ninety nine at the
Speaker 3: Canada France Hawaii Telescope at Monarchy Observatory Nowland of Hawaii.
Speaker 3: They and again they also discovered Stefano, Prospero, and Setebos
Speaker 3: at the same time. It has a retrograde orbit. Orbital
Speaker 3: details suggests it shares common origin with Serrax and Setibas,
Speaker 3: but its gray colorations suggest otherwise. So it's from what
Speaker 3: I was looking at it sounds like there's still some
Speaker 3: you know, some unknowns about.
Speaker 1: It for sure.
Speaker 3: Now I personally found it kind of amusing, you know,
Speaker 3: looking back again at the Shakespeare, it's amusing to see
Speaker 3: that Prospero in the Tempest mentions moons and the god Neptune,
Speaker 3: but of course not Uranus, obviously not the planet, but
Speaker 3: also not the god. But there is this wonderful little
Speaker 3: bit here that I wanted to read. Prospero says, ye
Speaker 3: elves of hills brooks, standing lakes and groves, and ye
Speaker 3: that on the sands with printless foot, do chase the
Speaker 3: ebbing Neptune, and do fly him when he comes back.
Speaker 3: You dimmy puppets, that by moonshine, do the green sour
Speaker 3: ringlets make where all the u not bites. And you
Speaker 3: whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice to
Speaker 3: hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid week masters, though
Speaker 3: ye be I have bedimmed.
Speaker 1: Speak for yourself. I don't make midnight mushrooms. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm struck. How often if you look at a passage
Speaker 1: from Shakespeare that is a reference to a I don't know,
Speaker 1: a fairy or magical creature or someone doing sorcery. The
Speaker 1: language employed could easily pass for lyrics to space Rock
Speaker 1: of later centuries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, the next one is setibas we have
Speaker 3: to already. The Shakespearean connection is that Cigarax and Caliban
Speaker 3: are said to worship said it Boss in the Tempest.
Speaker 3: But the name was prior to this, it seems, the
Speaker 3: name of an actual Patagonian god. I was reading up
Speaker 3: on this a little bit. Shakespeare apparently took the name
Speaker 3: from Richard Eden's sixteenth century accounts of Magellan's experiences with
Speaker 3: Patagonian natives, which, of course we always have to take
Speaker 3: an enormous grain of salt in such accounts, you know,
Speaker 3: concerning some of the finer details of people's beliefs and practices.
Speaker 3: But this according to a work I was looking at
Speaker 3: by Charles Frey titled The Tempest in the New World,
Speaker 3: getting into these various connections between Shakespeare's The Tempest and
Speaker 3: information that was coming out of exploration of the New
Speaker 3: World of the Americas. In Eden's work, he writes of
Speaker 3: natives who quote cried upon the great devil Boss to
Speaker 3: help them again, you know, the grain of salt, to
Speaker 3: say the least, concerning some of these accounts of other
Speaker 3: peoples and cultures and their practices. Also, poet Robert Browning
Speaker 3: would later write a poem inspired by the Tempest Caliban
Speaker 3: upon Setibas. Also of note, the giant Antarctic octopus is
Speaker 3: classified as megalodone Setiboss, which I thought was interesting. But anyway,
Speaker 3: Setibas the moon discovered by Gladman at All in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine. Again this was the Canada, France Hawaii Telescope,
Speaker 3: and again they discovered the Stefano, Prospero and Setibas at
Speaker 3: the same time, retrograde orbit one of the farthest moons
Speaker 3: more than eleven million miles or seventeen million kilometers out.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that about does it for our trip
Speaker 1: to Uranus and exploration of the moons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's been fun. Most of these I really
Speaker 3: wasn't that familiar with. And again this is unlike the
Speaker 3: Jupiter and Saturn. We actually could take time to go
Speaker 3: through them blow by blow, even if there's not much
Speaker 3: to know about them currently, you know, given our current
Speaker 3: knowledge of the Uranian satellite system. But still pretty fun
Speaker 3: to explore I also enjoyed looking into some of the namesakes,
Speaker 3: because yeah, there's some Shakespeare plays. I'm more up on
Speaker 3: some of these. Even like Midsummer Night's Dream, I feel
Speaker 3: like I like intentionally didn't learn much about it in school,
Speaker 3: like I thought I was. I thought I was too
Speaker 3: cool and dark for Midsummer Night's Dream. I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, give me, I gotta have Macbeth. I can't
Speaker 3: an my time for Midsummer Night's Stream. So you know,
Speaker 3: I ultimately cheated myself out of out of some goodness there.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm still reeling from the way you discouraged Margaret,
Speaker 1: and I won't have you speak that way about the
Speaker 1: irregular moon Margaret. In fact, who are you to say
Speaker 1: Margaret is irregular? I demand satisfaction.
Speaker 3: We'll see about upgrading her, see if we can make
Speaker 3: her a regular moon. Yeah, all right, Well, we're going
Speaker 3: to go and close this episode out here. Let us
Speaker 3: know what you think. If you have thoughts about you know,
Speaker 3: there's any of the the actual planetary lunar stuff that
Speaker 3: we've discussed in these episodes, or if you lean the
Speaker 3: other way and you have stuff you want to add
Speaker 3: about the mythological or literary inspirations for the various namings
Speaker 3: of the Uranian moons. So yeah, right in about that,
Speaker 3: we'd love to hear from you and if you want
Speaker 3: us to keep going. If you were like, yes, let's
Speaker 3: get to Neptune and talk about the moons of Neptune,
Speaker 3: let's do it sooner rather than later, let us know.
Speaker 3: Or if you are like, well, I want to go
Speaker 3: to Neptune, but I think you should wait a year
Speaker 3: or two like you've been doing between lunar episodes, then
Speaker 3: that's fair too. Either way, let us know. Just a
Speaker 3: reminder that core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 3: publishing the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on
Speaker 3: Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yeah, they are primarily a science podcast,
Speaker 3: and that's where you'll find those core science episodes. On
Speaker 3: Mondays we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 3: short form artifact or monster fact episode, and on Fridays
Speaker 3: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 3: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello. You can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com.
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