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Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, help me out with some research for an

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Speaker 1: upcoming episode.

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Speaker 4: All right, as long as you don't put me in

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Speaker 4: that collider of yours.

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Speaker 1: Not this time, but you know in general, no promises,

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Speaker 1: so just make sure you always read the waiver very carefully.

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Speaker 4: All right, I'll wear a helmet. So what are we researching?

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Speaker 1: Well, I'm trying to understand.

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Speaker 4: Rings, all right, and how can I help?

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Speaker 1: Well, you got engaged and married recently, didn't you.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, during the pandemic. I had a zoom wedding. It

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Speaker 4: was it was really fun.

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Speaker 1: And did you get a real ring or a digital

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Speaker 1: zoom ring?

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Speaker 4: I got a real ring, not just an NFT pointing

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Speaker 4: to a ring. Yes, I have a real ring.

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Speaker 1: And tell us a little bit about it. Is it

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Speaker 1: made out of icy particles or mostly dust and rocks?

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Speaker 4: It was actually grown in a lap lab grown diamonds,

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Speaker 4: which is pretty neat to me.

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Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if podcaster and planetary rings have anything

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Speaker 1: in common.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder the same thing.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 4: Actually, my husband later told me that he had the

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Speaker 4: choice to get like a ring made out of a meteorite,

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Speaker 4: so sometimes they do converge.

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Speaker 1: Well, it'd be awesome a little bit of space on

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Speaker 1: your finger.

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Speaker 4: Well, we will have to invite Saturn on the podcast

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Speaker 4: to ask how it got its rings and when it's

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Speaker 4: fiance proposed to it.

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Speaker 1: Saturn's got the best bling in the Solar system. Hi,

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a physicist at UC Irvine and I

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Speaker 1: do research at the Large Hadron Collider.

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Speaker 4: I am Katie Golden. I host Creature Feature, a biology podcast,

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Speaker 4: So I'm not exactly a physicist, but I have used

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Speaker 4: a hula hoop before, so I feel fairly confident I

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Speaker 4: can talk about Saturn's rings today.

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Speaker 1: Oh. I think that makes you an engineer, doesn't it.

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Speaker 4: That's right, Just get me some tape and a few

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Speaker 4: paper clips, and boom, I'm an engineer.

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Speaker 1: Well, I actually don't wear a whole lot of rings.

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Speaker 1: I just have this one wedding ring, which my wife

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Speaker 1: and I picked up two days before our wedding on

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Speaker 1: the streets of Berkeley for about five bucks. And I

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Speaker 1: think at the time we were like, oh, this will

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Speaker 1: work temporarily, And here we are twenty years later, I'm

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Speaker 1: still wearing the same silver ring.

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Speaker 4: Oh that's so sweet. I love that story.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a nice memory. It helps me understand where

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Speaker 1: I came from. And you know, in the same way,

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Speaker 1: we can look up at the night sky and study

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Speaker 1: the planets and use their rings to try to get

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Speaker 1: an idea of like where they came from, what is

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Speaker 1: the history of this planet? How did it get that ring?

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Speaker 1: Who gave it to it, and you know, what is

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Speaker 1: that wedding going to look like?

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Speaker 4: So you're saying because my ring was made in a lab,

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Speaker 4: that I too was made in a lab.

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Speaker 1: Maybe your love was grown in a lab, you know,

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Speaker 1: which doesn't make it any less authentic. I'm a big

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Speaker 1: fan of labs and research.

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Speaker 4: It's very romantic.

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Speaker 5: Test two Romance and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explain the universe in which we try

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Speaker 1: to grow your understanding of the nature of this universe

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Speaker 1: that we find ourselves in. We cast our minds out

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Speaker 1: into the deepest darkness of space and try to ring

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Speaker 1: out understanding of everything that's out there in the universe,

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Speaker 1: and we zoom on into the tiniest little things between

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Speaker 1: our toes and under our fingernails, because we want to

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Speaker 1: understand the fundamental nature of the universe, the nature of

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Speaker 1: space and time itself, and matter and energy and all

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Speaker 1: those tiny little bits which, in their tuing and froing

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Speaker 1: come together to make the universe that we know and love.

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Speaker 1: My friend and co host Jorge can't be with us today,

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Speaker 1: he is on vacation, but we are very pleased to

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Speaker 1: have the be ringed, be Jeweled, be blinged Katie to

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Speaker 1: join us today.

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Speaker 4: Well, thank you for ringing me up for this episode. Uh, yes,

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Speaker 4: I'm very excited. I love science, but that doesn't mean

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Speaker 4: I can't appreciate some good old fashioned cosmic jewelry.

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Speaker 1: Well, one thing I love about jewelry is that it

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Speaker 1: really does tell a story. You know, you talk to

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Speaker 1: somebody and you see them with ear rings or with

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Speaker 1: a necklace, you know that that has a history. You know,

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Speaker 1: maybe somebody bought for them, or they got it for

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Speaker 1: some big event, or maybe they inherited it from their family,

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Speaker 1: and it tells an even deeper story about where they

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Speaker 1: came from and their family history. So it's like everybody

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Speaker 1: who's wearing jewelry is walking around telling little stories about themselves.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that. Or it bears an ancient curse?

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Speaker 1: Are we going to take a deep dark turn on

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Speaker 1: this podcast?

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Speaker 4: I don't know. It's Saturn cursed? Is that what we're

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Speaker 4: going to discover?

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Speaker 1: Maybe Aliens visited the Solar system and had a war

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Speaker 1: with the occupy living under the ocean of Insulatis, and

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Speaker 1: the rings are just the left over remnants of that

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Speaker 1: intercellar conflict.

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Speaker 4: That's very spooky, and I would love that story for

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Speaker 4: a ring that I had, that it was made by

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Speaker 4: some kind of intergalactic war. I think it is one

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Speaker 4: of the things about the Solar System that really adds

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Speaker 4: a bit of magic to it, adds a bit of

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Speaker 4: artistry to it, because of course I think all the

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Speaker 4: planets are lovely, but they're all orbs. You know, they're

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Speaker 4: all these roughly of course, not exact precise spheres, but

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Speaker 4: you know, roughly spherical. But then you have these rings.

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Speaker 4: And it always when I see Saturn that gives me

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Speaker 4: a feeling of awe about the mystery and artistry of

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Speaker 4: space that I don't necessarily get with other planets.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely because it's so easy to grab onto, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's so visible out there. And it must have been

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Speaker 1: an amazing moment in sixteen ten when Galileo looked through

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Speaker 1: his telescope and saw the rings of Saturn, and how

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Speaker 1: shock look to discover that planets can have these incredible discs.

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Speaker 1: You know, these things are like ten times the size

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Speaker 1: of Saturn. We'll talk later about how Saturn might have

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Speaker 1: rings that go out like two hundred times the size

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Speaker 1: of its radius. It's an incredible thing. Like I have

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Speaker 1: this little tiny ring on my finger. Imagine if I

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Speaker 1: was wearing a ring that was like two hundred times

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Speaker 1: the size of me. You know, some might say that's

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Speaker 1: a little overstated.

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Speaker 4: It would be a statement piece for sure.

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Speaker 6: You know.

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Speaker 4: I was actually just in the Galileo Museum in Florence,

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Speaker 4: And when you think of Galileo with his telescope, he's

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Speaker 4: often just picted with this small, you know, telescope he

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Speaker 4: can hold in his hands. But you look at the

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Speaker 4: actual telescopes he used to observe Saturn and they were huge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't the inventor of the telescope, but he

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Speaker 1: was the first one to really perfect it and then

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Speaker 1: to turn it up on the skies, and so he

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Speaker 1: got like the biggest first scoop of all of these discoveries.

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Speaker 1: You know, he saw the moons of Jubiter, he saw

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Speaker 1: the rings of Saturn, he saw mountains on the Moon.

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Speaker 1: What a moment to like really look out into the universe.

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Speaker 1: And I think that one of the most interesting things

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Speaker 1: for me about it is that they do reveal the

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Speaker 1: history of the Solar system. You know, we look out

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Speaker 1: unto the night sky and we want to understand not

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Speaker 1: just what's out there, but why it's out there and

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Speaker 1: why it looks the way that it does. So anything

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Speaker 1: that's weird or strange or unusual that's not just like

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Speaker 1: a ball floating in the sky, Let's us ask the question,

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Speaker 1: how did that get there? How long can that live?

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Speaker 1: What does that tell us about the history of the

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Speaker 1: Solar System? Have those rings just been there for the

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Speaker 1: last million years? Have they been there since the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the Solar System? Why does Saturn have rings and

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Speaker 1: not other planets? Or do they right? There's just so

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Speaker 1: many immediate questions that you can ask when you see

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Speaker 1: these rings, and then those questions open the door to

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Speaker 1: try to understand the formation of the Solar System. The

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Speaker 1: other aspect, which is super fascinating for me, is just

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Speaker 1: thinking about what physics can do. You know, you throw

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff out into space and it

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Speaker 1: forms stars and it forms planets, but not just that, right,

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Speaker 1: it can also do these other incredible things. And it's

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Speaker 1: all these fascinating little rings, these little bits of bling

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Speaker 1: that really show us what gravity is capable of and

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Speaker 1: the interplay between gravity and all the other forces. So,

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Speaker 1: as we'll see on today's episode, these rings will teach

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Speaker 1: us a lot about the nature of the Solar System

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Speaker 1: and the universe that we live in, and so on

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Speaker 1: today's episode, we'll be tackling exactly that question. How do

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Speaker 1: planets get rings?

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Speaker 4: Okay, I'm going to stop you right there, because I

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Speaker 4: think I have the answer. It is aliens, giant aliens

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Speaker 4: doing ring toss with our planets.

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Speaker 1: Or maybe it's hula hoops from a leftover enormous alien

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Speaker 1: birthday party. We're basically their garbage bin. But it's an

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Speaker 1: interesting question not just why are there rings, but how

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Speaker 1: do planets get rings? Where do they come from? Why

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Speaker 1: do some planets have rings and others don't. Why do

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Speaker 1: some planets have more moons and fewer rings. What is

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Speaker 1: the connection between rings and moons? Can moons have rings?

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Speaker 1: Can rings exist on planets in other Solar systems? Is

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Speaker 1: our Solar system weird for having this incredible planet with

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Speaker 1: these huge rings? Or are we weird for not having

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Speaker 1: rings around every single planet? These are the kinds of

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Speaker 1: questions we can now ask about our Solar System because

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Speaker 1: we have looked out through our telescopes into even other

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Speaker 1: Solar systems around other stars to try to get an

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Speaker 1: answer to the question of is our solar system strange

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Speaker 1: or is our solar system totally vanilla and typical.

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Speaker 4: I find that an interesting way to describe. If our

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Speaker 4: solar system is similar to other solar systems, we're just

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Speaker 4: boring and vanilla.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's a deep question, right, like are we typical?

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Speaker 1: Are we boring? If alien scientists are studying the whole galaxy,

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Speaker 1: would they find us an interesting case study or would

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Speaker 1: they be like, oh, yeah, another one, just like all

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Speaker 1: the other sixty five million systems that I've already studied. Right,

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Speaker 1: we'd like to think that we are special in some sense.

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Speaker 1: We'd like to imagine that we are at the center

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Speaker 1: of the universe. We are unusual, we are sparkling, we

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Speaker 1: are exceptional. On the other hand, I'd like to believe

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Speaker 1: that we are vanilla, that we are boring, because that

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Speaker 1: means it's probably more of us, right, That means it's

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Speaker 1: probably life everywhere. One of my favorite things about this

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Speaker 1: kind of question is our solar system typical or not?

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Speaker 1: Is that the answer is fascinating either way. Either we're

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Speaker 1: incredibly unusual and then we get to ask why, or

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Speaker 1: we're not, in which case we got lots of neighbors.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so you would favor us being basic solar system

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Speaker 4: with our ug boots and our Saturn's rings. That is

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Speaker 4: kind of an interesting personality quick personality tests like would

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Speaker 4: you prefer our solar system to be unique and special

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Speaker 4: in us to be the only planet with life or

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Speaker 4: would you prefer us to be run of the mill

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Speaker 4: lots of solar systems like ours out there and not

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Speaker 4: feel so alone? I agree with you. I hope we're

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Speaker 4: basic so that we've got some friends out there.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, we can't answer that question directly today because our

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Speaker 1: telescopes are not powerful enough to look through the atmospheres

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Speaker 1: of exo planets. But we can look in our own

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Speaker 1: backyard and try to understand how our solar system formed

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Speaker 1: and if there's anything in it that we cannot explain.

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Speaker 1: And it's an incredible piece of science to look around

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Speaker 1: you and understand how it came together, to build a

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Speaker 1: model for the processes that could have formed such incredible structures,

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Speaker 1: and to think about how long they might have taken.

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Speaker 1: You know, we've done something similar here on Earth by

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Speaker 1: looking under our feet and asking questions like do we

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Speaker 1: understand how the Earth formed and how the mountains have formed,

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Speaker 1: and all the ridges that we see in the layers

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Speaker 1: of rock, and those things are clues, the clues that

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Speaker 1: led us to understand something really shocking, that the Earth

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Speaker 1: is billions of years old, not thousands of years old. Right.

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Speaker 1: We have the evidence all around us to reveal the

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Speaker 1: story of the formation of the Solar System, but not

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Speaker 1: just here on Earth, out there in space. And one

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Speaker 1: of the funnest bits is to look at the rings

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Speaker 1: around those planets. So that's what we're focusing on today.

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Speaker 1: And I was curious whether people understood rings, whether rings

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Speaker 1: were still a big source of mystery, or if people

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Speaker 1: thought they pretty much understood where they came from. So

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Speaker 1: I went out there to our cadre of Internet volunteers

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Speaker 1: who answer my random questions without a chance to prepare,

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Speaker 1: which gives us a sense for what people know, what

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Speaker 1: they think about, and what they want to hear about.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to participate for future episodes, please don't

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Speaker 1: be shy, just write to me two questions at Danielandjorge

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Speaker 1: dot com. Before you hear these answers, think to yourself,

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Speaker 1: do you have a good idea of where rings come

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Speaker 1: from on planets? Here's what our listeners had to say.

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Speaker 7: And I'm pretty sure that I learned about this that

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Speaker 7: like it's asteroids colliding near the planet itself and the

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Speaker 7: remnants of those asteroids going into orbit and creating a.

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Speaker 1: Sort of disk.

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Speaker 8: I think the two classical ways are by planets capturing

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Speaker 8: space debris that's just floating through the Solar System, or

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Speaker 8: by recapturing debris caused by an impact. But I've also

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Speaker 8: heard of a moon orbiting Saturn. I believe that has

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Speaker 8: a geyser, and when the geyser spits out water, it

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Speaker 8: forms into ice crystals, and then that joins the rings

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Speaker 8: of Saturn. So maybe that's another option.

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Speaker 9: Well, the rings are kind of like small satellites, I

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Speaker 9: would say, like small moons, Like we have the most

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Speaker 9: really tiny moons that get around the planet. Each planet

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Speaker 9: has its own way of doing the rings.

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Speaker 8: Well.

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Speaker 10: I wanted to say that planets can get rings if

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Speaker 10: they collide with big rocky bodies, but I don't know

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Speaker 10: how that would work with like gas giants and how

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Speaker 10: they got their rings. So I'm going to guess that

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Speaker 10: it's just stuff that is left over from when the

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Speaker 10: planet was formed, and it was just stuff that was

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Speaker 10: so far away when it was being formed that it

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Speaker 10: didn't become part of the planet, but it was still

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Speaker 10: close enough to be influenced by the gravity of it.

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Speaker 1: I'm almost certain it's got to do with the accretion

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Speaker 1: process of when a planet's formed and the attraction of

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Speaker 1: stuff towards the planet. Apart from that, I'm not really

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Speaker 1: sure actually, because I.

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Speaker 11: Think planets form when, like a hippie metal gets caught

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Speaker 11: in orbit around a star. So I think something similar

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Speaker 11: happens around the planet. Debris and maybe rocks or particles

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Speaker 11: of ice or something gather around a planet in much

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Speaker 11: the same way that planets gather around stars.

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Speaker 4: Those all seem like really intelligent answers, But I still

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Speaker 4: kind of like my giant alien ring task theory.

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Speaker 1: We'll put it on the list as the dark horse

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Speaker 1: theory that might storm out at the end if we

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Speaker 1: can't explain it with any of the other theories.

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Speaker 4: So it seems like there are so many options for

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Speaker 4: what these rings could be made of. How on Earth

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Speaker 4: are we, or I should say, how in our Solar

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Speaker 4: system are we going to be able to figure out

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Speaker 4: what exactly they're made of? If there are so many

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Speaker 4: different theories, so many different options for what they could

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Speaker 4: be made of.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. I listen to these answers,

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Speaker 1: and it seems to me like they form in roughly

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Speaker 1: two categories. There are some folks that say that it's

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Speaker 1: basically debris from other stuff that broke up, like maybe

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Speaker 1: you had comets or moons that smashed new each other

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Speaker 1: and basically just made a big mess, you know. But

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Speaker 1: then you have to wonder, like, why don't those things

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Speaker 1: gather together to make a new moon or to make

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Speaker 1: a new comet or something. And the other category is like,

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Speaker 1: maybe it's just left over from when the planet was formed,

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Speaker 1: the same stuff that formed the planet, but some of

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Speaker 1: it didn't get into the planet. So it seems like

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Speaker 1: those there's two different categories of ideas. And you ask

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Speaker 1: a great question, how could we possibly ever figure this out?

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Speaker 1: How could we know what the history is of the

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Speaker 1: Solar System? And the answer is that, of course we

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Speaker 1: can't just like watch a video of its formation, though

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Speaker 1: we'd love to, but we can just look around us

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Speaker 1: for clues. We can try to build up models for

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Speaker 1: how rings might form, and then compare the details of

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Speaker 1: those models to what we see. So the short answer

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Speaker 1: is we need more money and more data to measure

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Speaker 1: these rings, to look closely at them, to see what

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Speaker 1: they are made out of, how much mass they have,

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Speaker 1: what their distribution is. And the more detail we can

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Speaker 1: get about what they look like and what they're made

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Speaker 1: out of, the better we can compare them to predictions

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Speaker 1: from our theories about how they were formed.

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Speaker 4: I mean, it sounds like a worthy use of funding. However,

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Speaker 4: might I suggest an NFT of a farting panda instead?

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Speaker 1: I'll put that on the proposal list and see where

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Speaker 1: it goes.

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Speaker 4: So when we're talking about rings, like what is it

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Speaker 4: because you know my wedding ring is this solid band

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Speaker 4: that sits around my finger. A hula hoop is this

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Speaker 4: very thin taurus that you kind of use the motion

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Speaker 4: of your hips to keep moving around with its momentum.

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Speaker 4: So what are the rings that are around Saturn? Are

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Speaker 4: they spinning around like a hula hoop? Are they just

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Speaker 4: kind of sitting on it like my wedding ring.

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Speaker 1: It's a great question. And when it comes to astronomy,

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Speaker 1: you always have to start with a definition which immediately

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Speaker 1: puts you into a swamp because nothing falls nicely into

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Speaker 1: clean categories out there in space. You know, what's a planet,

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Speaker 1: what's a minor planet, what's a centaur. A lot of

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Speaker 1: these definitions come from history because we didn't really understand

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Speaker 1: what was going on, and we just sort of named

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Speaker 1: things randomly, and then we were sort of stuck with

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Speaker 1: different categories and so often it could be a bit

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Speaker 1: of a mess.

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Speaker 4: Well, we're lucky in biology because species is super simple

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Speaker 4: and never has that problem.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. Nature doesn't confine itself to our categories. What's out

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Speaker 1: there in the universe is not things that fall into

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Speaker 1: crisply defined different boxes. It's a whole spectrum of stuff, right,

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Speaker 1: And so we just to put these arbitrary definitions out

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Speaker 1: there so that we can talk to each other about it.

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Speaker 1: So one of the most common definitions of a ring

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Speaker 1: is a disc or ring composed of solid materials such

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Speaker 1: as dust or moonlits.

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Speaker 4: All moonlits. That sounds really cute. What's a moonlit?

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Speaker 1: A moonlit is like a little moon, you know, like

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Speaker 1: a little.

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Speaker 4: Moonito, the little baby moon.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, a little minor moon. Immediately understand, these rings

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Speaker 1: are not actually a solid object. It's not like a

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Speaker 1: hulu hoop, right, or the rings around Saturn are not

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Speaker 1: huge circles. They're actually a bunch of tiny little particles,

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Speaker 1: a bunch of chunks that are moving in the same orbit.

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Speaker 1: And so from far away it looks like a ring.

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Speaker 1: Of course, it looks like a single hula hoop, for example,

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Speaker 1: or a wedding ring. But if you zoomed in closely,

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Speaker 1: you'd see it's actually a bunch of individual pieces that

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Speaker 1: are not touching each other.

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Speaker 4: So cartoons have lied to me. I cannot drive a

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Speaker 4: race car or a skateboard around the rings of Saturn.

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Speaker 1: That's right. You can't do Mario Kart on the rings

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Speaker 1: of Saturn and you would fall right through.

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Speaker 4: It's very disappointing. Cartoons play it real fast and loose

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Speaker 4: with physics I'm discovering.

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Speaker 1: And so basically a ring is just like a disc

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Speaker 1: of material in a single orbit, moving all around. And

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Speaker 1: that makes it a little bit unusual because orbits are

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Speaker 1: usually for one object, you know, like the Moon, orbits

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Speaker 1: the Earth, and there's nothing else in the Moon's orbit.

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Speaker 1: It's not that there's something else on the other side,

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Speaker 1: or the Earth is orbiting the Sun and there's nothing

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Speaker 1: else in Earth's orbit, right, it clears its own path.

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Speaker 4: So it's a bunch of individual things sharing a single orbit,

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Speaker 4: kind of like a lazy river at a water park.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, sort of like a lazy river. And once you

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Speaker 1: define it that way, you can ask questions like, well,

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Speaker 1: what counts as a ring? You know, does it have

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Speaker 1: to be natural? For example, like Earth has a bunch

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Speaker 1: of stuff out there in space, things we have launched

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Speaker 1: out there, a bunch of satellites in the same orbit,

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Speaker 1: you know, zooming all around. Does that count as a ring?

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Speaker 1: Have we built our own ring system around the Earth

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Speaker 1: because all of the junk that we put out there

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Speaker 1: in space. Nobody talks about Earth's rings, but technically, you know,

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Speaker 1: it seems like that might qualify. There's no like minimum

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Speaker 1: mass requirement for the rings as far as I can.

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Speaker 4: Tell, So we're one step closer to Halo am I right,

436
00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:58,760
Speaker 4: high vibes everyone who plays computer games.

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00:21:59,480 --> 00:22:02,439
Speaker 1: Another diarmen for rings usually is that they are pretty flat.

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Speaker 8: Right.

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Speaker 1: If you have just like a swarm of spherical swarm

440
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:07,840
Speaker 1: of objects, then your planet is just surrounded by junk.

441
00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:10,520
Speaker 1: A ring is typically something which is flattened, right, It's

442
00:22:10,560 --> 00:22:13,400
Speaker 1: more like a disc. And this already shows off what's

443
00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:17,040
Speaker 1: going on with gravity. Gravity is pulled the planet together

444
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:20,080
Speaker 1: and it's spinning, and it's also pulled the ring together.

445
00:22:20,280 --> 00:22:22,760
Speaker 1: And the reason that rings form in discs is the

446
00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:25,800
Speaker 1: same reason that the Solar system is a disc. Right,

447
00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:28,240
Speaker 1: That most of the stuff is spinning in the same direction,

448
00:22:28,359 --> 00:22:31,560
Speaker 1: along the same plane, and that's because of conservation of

449
00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:36,320
Speaker 1: angular momentum. Stuff that's spinning keeps spinning, and if gravity

450
00:22:36,359 --> 00:22:39,280
Speaker 1: pulls it together, it keeps spinning. It's harder for gravity

451
00:22:39,320 --> 00:22:42,720
Speaker 1: to pull it together towards the spin axis than along

452
00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:45,320
Speaker 1: the spin axis the same way. For example, that like

453
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,040
Speaker 1: Earth resists falling into the Sun because of its speed

454
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:51,800
Speaker 1: because of its angular momentum, right, but the Earth didn't

455
00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:55,480
Speaker 1: resist falling into the Sun's plane. So gravity is free

456
00:22:55,520 --> 00:22:58,600
Speaker 1: to compress things down into a flat disc. But angular

457
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: momentum keeps things spinning and keep things from falling in.

458
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:04,239
Speaker 1: That's what gives rings these sort of flat structure. So

459
00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:07,080
Speaker 1: that's another typical thing we expect of rings, that they're

460
00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:10,800
Speaker 1: not spherical distributions of stuff, they're like these flat disks.

461
00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:13,399
Speaker 4: Is that sort of like if you pile a bunch

462
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:16,480
Speaker 4: of peas on a plate and then spin the plate,

463
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 4: all the p's are going to scatter outwards and get everywhere,

464
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:22,200
Speaker 4: but in sort of a flat circle.

465
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:24,960
Speaker 1: I've never done that experiment, but yes, in my mind

466
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:27,840
Speaker 1: that that's exactly what we don't do that.

467
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:31,280
Speaker 4: We call it peas spinning in this household.

468
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: But in our Solar system, of course, there's gravity, and

469
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,080
Speaker 1: gravity would hold those peas in right, so those peas

470
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:38,800
Speaker 1: would end up in like a circular orbit exactly instead

471
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:41,399
Speaker 1: of like a bunch of different orbits. And so that's

472
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 1: why the planets are all roughly in the same plane,

473
00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:47,400
Speaker 1: because they have the same spin from the original blob

474
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,199
Speaker 1: of gas and dust that formed our Solar system. And

475
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:53,119
Speaker 1: so that's already a clue that tells you something about

476
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 1: the origins of these rings, because if we're if rings

477
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:59,120
Speaker 1: were formed with the planet, then you would expect them

478
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 1: to have roughly the same alignment, the same spin as

479
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 1: the planet. And if they were not, then they don't

480
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have that same spin that came in

481
00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: from like a comet that smashed into the planet or

482
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:11,119
Speaker 1: broke up a moon. It might give you a different

483
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:13,879
Speaker 1: kind of distribution. So already that's a clue that tells

484
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 1: you something about where rings might have come from.

485
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:20,280
Speaker 4: Oh, that's really interesting. So when you have a debris

486
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 4: from a planet's formation, everything's spinning at the same rate,

487
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 4: sort of going with the same flow. But then if

488
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 4: you have something smashed into a planet, release all this

489
00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 4: debris and it starts orbiting the planet, it doesn't need

490
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:40,640
Speaker 4: to spin at the same rate as the planet spins,

491
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,040
Speaker 4: just like our moon. Our moon doesn't spin at the

492
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:46,120
Speaker 4: same rate as Earth. Right, that's right, No, it does not, right,

493
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:49,399
Speaker 4: So that would suggest that the Moon was not necessarily

494
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 4: formed when the Earth was formed.

495
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And we think that the moon is the

496
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:57,359
Speaker 1: result of a huge collision, that something came and smashed

497
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: into the Earth and released an enormous amount of debris

498
00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:04,439
Speaker 1: which then coalesced into a moon. Right, So that after

499
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 1: that collision, Earth may have had a very large cloud

500
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 1: of debris which then probably coalesced into a ring system,

501
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 1: which then further gathered into a moon. So our moon

502
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:17,440
Speaker 1: may have once been a ring.

503
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:21,120
Speaker 4: So do we know with the rings of Saturn if

504
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:23,399
Speaker 4: they are moving at the same rate of Saturn or

505
00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:24,160
Speaker 4: at a different rate.

506
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:27,360
Speaker 1: The rings of Saturn are especially complicated because there are

507
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: so many rings, and some of them are moving with

508
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: Saturn and some of them may actually be rotating the

509
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:36,320
Speaker 1: other direction. It's really tricky and complicated, and we'll dig

510
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:38,679
Speaker 1: into it in a moment when we talk about how

511
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:42,159
Speaker 1: the rings of planets are formed, the various theories and

512
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:46,160
Speaker 1: the pieces of evidence for and against. First, let's take

513
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 1: a quick.

514
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:50,959
Speaker 4: Break, all right, I'm gonna try to imagine those rings

515
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 4: moving in different directions without getting seasick during the break.

516
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:02,600
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566
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568
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569
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570
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571
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572
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573
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574
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580
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582
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583
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Speaker 4: All right, we are back. I got a little dizzy

584
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 4: trying to think about Saturn's rings, some moving in one direction,

585
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:47,000
Speaker 4: others moving in another. It's pretty trippy, But yeah, I

586
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 4: still have a lot of questions about these rings we're

587
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 4: talking about like how maybe they're formed, whether they're formed

588
00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 4: when the planet forms out of basically the same stuff

589
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 4: that the planet is formed out of, or if it

590
00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 4: is made out of kind of some outside stuff, stuff

591
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 4: that wasn't around when the planet was formed, like by

592
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 4: a collision, Like how maybe our moon was formed. Do

593
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 4: we know like what stuff is inside of these rings?

594
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 4: And how do we know what is inside a ring

595
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 4: without actually going up there and taking a scoop of it.

596
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. One thing we can do

597
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: is we can look at it through a telescope and

598
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:27,920
Speaker 1: see what kind of light it reflects. Is it opaque,

599
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: is it transparent? Is it transparent to different kinds of light?

600
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 1: Each planet reflects sunlight, but it also emits particles, and

601
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:37,080
Speaker 1: so we can see whether the rings create shadows in

602
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,880
Speaker 1: some sort of the wind of Jupiter or the wind

603
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: of Saturn. And we have also sent probes out there,

604
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 1: and these probes will talk about them in a minute,

605
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: have made some really startling discoveries by getting very close

606
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 1: up to these rings. But first I want to talk

607
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: about sort of the general question, like talk a minute

608
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: ago about the Earth's moon and how it used to

609
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: be a ring. And you know, in my mind, one

610
00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:59,400
Speaker 1: of the first questions is like, why do sometimes things

611
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: formed again into a moon and sometimes they don't and

612
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: they stay as rings, or is there like a process

613
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: there where every ring eventually turns into a moon. It's

614
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: really fascinating question. And it turns out to be totally

615
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: dominated by the gravity of the planet and how far

616
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: you are away from that planet.

617
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 4: So Saturn's rings could conceivably have turned into moons if

618
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:23,920
Speaker 4: they had been in a different situation.

619
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: Conceivably, Yeah, and it actually it turns out that Saturn's

620
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 1: rings have little moonlits inside them that move around and

621
00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: shepherd them and keep them apart. So it's really fun.

622
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: But the crucial thing that determines whether something is a

623
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 1: moon or a ring, whether it gets torn up into

624
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: little bits, or whether it gets clumped together by gravity,

625
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 1: is the gravity of the host planet. You know, you

626
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: have a bunch of stuff out in the middle of space,

627
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:48,640
Speaker 1: gravity will eventually gather it together. Gravity is very, very weak,

628
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 1: it's the weakest force we know, but it's also very

629
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: patient and eventually it will pull things together to make

630
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 1: a clump. So you might expect that all rings would

631
00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: be transient that they would be eventually just gathered together

632
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: into a moon. But that's not necessarily the case because

633
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: of the gravity of the planet. This gravity does more

634
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: than just pull the moon into orbit or keep the

635
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,760
Speaker 1: rings in orbit. You can also pull them apart. And

636
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: this is a concept we've talked about on the podcast

637
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: before called tidal forces. The idea is, you have a

638
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 1: very strong source of gravity like Jupiter or a black hole,

639
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 1: or the Sun or even the Earth, and it's pulling

640
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 1: on you, right, but the strength of its force on

641
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: you depends on how close you are to that object.

642
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: So if your feet are closer to the Sun than

643
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: your head, then the Sun is pulling on your feet

644
00:32:34,760 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 1: harder than it's pulling on your head, and effectively, it

645
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 1: means it's trying to pull your head off of your body.

646
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 4: Oh that's lovely.

647
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: Nobody ever said the Sun was a nice guy, right, Oh.

648
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,240
Speaker 4: I know it. I know that right now in July.

649
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: And that's happening right now. If you stand on the

650
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth, then the Earth is literally trying

651
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,280
Speaker 1: to pull your head off of your body. Now we've

652
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 1: evolved with strong enough next or is this this and

653
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: the tidal forces here are that.

654
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 4: Strong, Yeah, take that Earth.

655
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: But if you're in a situation where the gravitational forces

656
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: get strong very quickly, so the force on your feet

657
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: is much stronger than the force on your head, you

658
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: can be torn apart. And if you're near a black

659
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 1: hole for example, where this is very dramatic, this is

660
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: what we call spaghettification. You can get pulled apart into

661
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 1: tiny little pieces.

662
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:24,800
Speaker 4: The most delicious way to describe a horrific death exactly.

663
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: And we've seen this happen when comet Shoemaker Levee came

664
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 1: into the Solar System in the nineties. It was headed

665
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:32,959
Speaker 1: for an impact with Jupiter, but before it hit Jupiter,

666
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: it made a near miss and Jupiter pulled it apart

667
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:39,400
Speaker 1: into twenty six pieces. So you had this common coming

668
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 1: into the Solar System which got shredded by Jupiter's gravity.

669
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 1: Then it went around the Sun and it hit Jupiter

670
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: twenty six different times, which is pretty awesome for everybody

671
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: to look at these huge fireballs the size of the Earth.

672
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: But for our sakes today, this is just a demonstration

673
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: of tidal forces. So a planet doesn't just pull stuff

674
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,080
Speaker 1: in and keep it in orbit. It can also so

675
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: tear it apart if you are close.

676
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 4: Enough I see so because gravity gets weaker the further

677
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:09,640
Speaker 4: away you are from something, but stronger the closer you

678
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 4: are to something. If part of you is far enough

679
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,440
Speaker 4: away that it's pretty weak and it's not pulling on you,

680
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 4: but the other part of you is closer and it's

681
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 4: tugging on you more strongly, that part of you is

682
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:23,399
Speaker 4: going to get kind of ripped off of the other

683
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:25,719
Speaker 4: part of you. Is that what's happening to these poor

684
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:27,400
Speaker 4: baby little moonlits.

685
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:30,759
Speaker 1: That's what's happening to those rings. So if you're a

686
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 1: big blob of material and you're too close to a planet,

687
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 1: you cannot form a moon because the planet will just

688
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:39,879
Speaker 1: keep tearing you apart. If you're far enough away, then

689
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:42,279
Speaker 1: you can form a moon. So there's a limit there.

690
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: It's called the Roche limit Rocche after a scientist who

691
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 1: came up with this idea. If you are closer than

692
00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:51,800
Speaker 1: the Roche limit, then you cannot form a gravitationally bound

693
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 1: object because the gravity of the planet is stronger than

694
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: your inherent gravity to hold yourself together. If you're out

695
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:00,160
Speaker 1: past it, then the tidal forces are so weak that

696
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 1: you can clump the ring together into a moon, so

697
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 1: past the roach limit you get moons. Closer in than

698
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 1: the roach limit you get rings.

699
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 4: So Saturn's rings are too close to Saturn itself to

700
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 4: form the moon, whereas our moon, which maybe started as

701
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 4: a ring, was far enough away that it could do

702
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:25,840
Speaker 4: its own thing without Earth overbearing and deciding its fate

703
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:26,239
Speaker 4: for it.

704
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:28,759
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and it depends a little bit on

705
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 1: like what you're made out of. The roach limit itself

706
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,560
Speaker 1: is technically just assuming you're hell together gravitationally, but things

707
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 1: can also be held together in different ways. You know,

708
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:39,160
Speaker 1: if you have a blob of diamond, for example, as

709
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: opposed to a loose bag of golf balls, then the

710
00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: diamond is going to be able to hold itself together

711
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 1: closer to a planet than your bag of golf balls.

712
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:49,880
Speaker 4: I wish my wedding ring was a bag of golf balls. Now,

713
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 4: that would be fun.

714
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 1: I hope your husband listens to this podcast to hear

715
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: you complaining about his.

716
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 4: Gift to you, this beautiful gift of love. I wish

717
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:01,200
Speaker 4: it was a bag of golf falls.

718
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 1: Well in the case of our system, for example, you know,

719
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 1: the moon holds itself together, but if it was closer

720
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: to the Earth, the Earth would shred it. Our moon

721
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 1: is about three hundred and eighty five thousand kilometers away,

722
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 1: and the Roch limit for the Earth and an object

723
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: the size of the moon is about ten thousand kilometers,

724
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:21,840
Speaker 1: So the Moon would have to be much much closer

725
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: to the Earth in order for the Earth to pull

726
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 1: it apart and make it into a ring system. And

727
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: so that's why the moon is a moon. In a

728
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:31,839
Speaker 1: similar way, you know, the Sun has a tidal force

729
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 1: on the Earth. It's pulling on the part of the

730
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,600
Speaker 1: Earth that's closer to it stronger than it's pulling on

731
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:38,279
Speaker 1: part of the Earth that's further from it. So the

732
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:40,840
Speaker 1: Sun is trying to rip the Earth apart, but the

733
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: Earth is too far away, it's too strong. It has

734
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 1: structural integrity that keeps the Sun from destroying us or

735
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifty million kilometers from the Sun.

736
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: If we were just less than a million kilometers, then

737
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:54,920
Speaker 1: the Earth would get pulled apart, it would get torn

738
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:57,000
Speaker 1: into a ring system around the Sun.

739
00:36:57,200 --> 00:37:00,799
Speaker 4: Seems like planetary bodies are like complicated for You've got

740
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 4: to set strong boundaries or else you're going to get destroyed.

741
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 1: Exactly, so you just you got to know where you are.

742
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 1: You know, you've got to have the conversation sometimes to

743
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:10,399
Speaker 1: figure this out.

744
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 4: Listen, son, we love you. You provide us with energy

745
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 4: that gives us food. But you know, if we're too

746
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:18,359
Speaker 4: close to you, we all die. So you know how

747
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:18,680
Speaker 4: it is.

748
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: And so this is the basic physics of it. Right,

749
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: you get too close, you turn into a ring. You

750
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: stay far away, you can be a moon. But that

751
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:27,919
Speaker 1: doesn't answer the question of like where these things come from,

752
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:32,000
Speaker 1: because there's still two basic ideas there. One is that

753
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 1: some of the stuff is from the original formation of

754
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 1: the Solar System. You know, you have this huge cloud

755
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,319
Speaker 1: of gas and dust. A lot of it formed the Sun.

756
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 1: Some of it clumps together to form planets. You can

757
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:45,319
Speaker 1: imagine that some of the stuff is close enough to

758
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: the planet that it gets trapped by the planet's gravity,

759
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 1: but not so close that it actually gets sucked in.

760
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,280
Speaker 1: It has like too much angular momentum to actually fall

761
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:55,839
Speaker 1: to the Earth, you know, the same way, like the

762
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,719
Speaker 1: Earth right now has particles that are trapped by its

763
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:02,000
Speaker 1: gravity and also particles that are not. The Earth's atmosphere

764
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: is boiling away into space, so you can imagine that

765
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 1: at the edge of the planetary formation, there might have

766
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: been particles there that didn't quite get captured by the gravity,

767
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: but they're too close to clump together into their own moon.

768
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: So that's one theory of how these rings get formed.

769
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: They're like the fastest moving bits of the planet didn't

770
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 1: quite get captured, but they're not fast enough moving to

771
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: be like out on a further orbit, far enough away

772
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: where they could make their own moon.

773
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:31,399
Speaker 4: So the other theory has to do with something that

774
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 4: wasn't there during the origin of the Solar System coming

775
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 4: in and creating some debris around Saturn or whatever planet

776
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:42,080
Speaker 4: decides to make a ring.

777
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:44,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the first theory that they are made with

778
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:47,479
Speaker 1: the planet that suggests that the rings are old, right,

779
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 1: that they're as old as a Solar system, like four

780
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: and a half billion years old. The other theories, you say,

781
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:54,399
Speaker 1: is that rings could be fairly new. Maybe they're sort

782
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,920
Speaker 1: of transient. Maybe they come from a cataclysmic event, like

783
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:00,840
Speaker 1: something comes in and smashes into a moon or breaks

784
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:04,240
Speaker 1: up a moon, and that moon gets shredded into pieces,

785
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:07,840
Speaker 1: and maybe it'll eventually get gathered back together into a

786
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:11,400
Speaker 1: new moon. Right, So these rings might be short lived

787
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 1: events in that scenario, like a comet or an asteroid

788
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 1: or something else. It might have created this huge mess,

789
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:20,000
Speaker 1: but the Solar System will eventually clean itself up.

790
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 4: But if it's in that sweet spot where it's still

791
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 4: getting shredded by the planet's gravitational force, but it's not

792
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 4: so close that it doesn't get sucked into the planet,

793
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 4: it's going to stay a ring.

794
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: Right It could, right, It depends a lot on the details.

795
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:36,920
Speaker 1: Like you could have a moon that was past the

796
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 1: roch limit, but then an impact creates a huge amount

797
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:41,840
Speaker 1: of debris, some of which falls into the sort of

798
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: the ring zone, or some of it could fall into

799
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:45,560
Speaker 1: the planet, or some of it could stay out in

800
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: the sort of moon area and form a new moon.

801
00:39:48,600 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 1: So you're right that you could also form rings, which

802
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 1: then can be fairly stable. If you have a collision

803
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 1: which creates a lot of mess, and some of that

804
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: mess is stable in the sort of ring zone, then

805
00:39:58,120 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: you could have a long living ring.

806
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 4: That's how I like to describe myself, a stable mess.

807
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:06,800
Speaker 4: So that seems really difficult to kind of parse out

808
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 4: those theories, I guess without taking a closer look, because

809
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:15,759
Speaker 4: stuff that comes crashing into Saturn, and stuff that was

810
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:19,840
Speaker 4: originally there when Saturn was formed may from a distance

811
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 4: look pretty similar unless we keep investigating right exactly.

812
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:27,720
Speaker 1: And so to understand where a specific ring comes from,

813
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:29,799
Speaker 1: we need to look at that ring in detail, and

814
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:31,320
Speaker 1: we need to think about is it made out of

815
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: the same stuff as the planet or something weird and new.

816
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: Does it look like it's aged a lot, and does

817
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: it look like it's a fairly fresh result of a

818
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: collision or does it look like really weathered from lots

819
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: of Solar System radiation and collisions. We can also understand

820
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: the distribution of the rings, like where the mass is

821
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: in the ring, and build models to see like is

822
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:53,200
Speaker 1: it stable, could it hold itself together? Could have developed

823
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:56,280
Speaker 1: into this over time? So for each ring, the crucial

824
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: thing is to get as much information as possible and

825
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 1: then to build these models to try to explain what

826
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 1: we see, and that'll help us discriminate between various scenarios.

827
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:06,759
Speaker 1: And a key thing to understand is that it might

828
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: not be one answer for every ring. It might be

829
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: there are some rings that are ancient and other rings

830
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 1: that are very fresh.

831
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:16,319
Speaker 4: What is the difference between what we can tell with

832
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 4: like a telescope here on Earth versus something we send

833
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 4: out to get a closer look.

834
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:24,800
Speaker 1: There's no fundamental difference, right. We can do the same

835
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: things here as we can do getting close. But of

836
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: course the closer you get, the better your data. You

837
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: can resolve these things better just because you're closer up,

838
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 1: so you don't need like as big a lens. You

839
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: can also bring instruments closer up, you know, things like

840
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 1: spectrometers to measure these things. There's one thing that you

841
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: can do by sending a satellite that you can't do

842
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:45,800
Speaker 1: from Earth, which is to try to measure the mass

843
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:48,319
Speaker 1: of the rings. We'll talk about it when we get

844
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: into Saturn. When we send Cassini out to Saturn, it

845
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:54,839
Speaker 1: actually dove in between the rings and the planets and

846
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:59,440
Speaker 1: measure the effect of the rings gravity on Cassini itself

847
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,839
Speaker 1: as to measure the mass of the rings. And that's

848
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:04,919
Speaker 1: just not something you can do from Earth. That's something

849
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:09,399
Speaker 1: that requires perturbing it gravitationally, throwing something out there which

850
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 1: is going to actually interact with the mass of the

851
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: ring itself to see how much stuff there is in there.

852
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 4: Is it dangerous for the satellite to be in the rings? Like,

853
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:19,880
Speaker 4: is it gonna get hit by a bunch of little

854
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 4: little space bbes.

855
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 1: It can be dangerous, but it dove in between in

856
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:27,400
Speaker 1: one of the gaps to avoid collisions. Yeah, and you know,

857
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: these things seem smooth, they seem like, oh, it's a

858
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 1: continuous blob, but actually there's lots of gaps in between them.

859
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:36,320
Speaker 1: So you could fly through the rings and survive, though

860
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 1: you know, it'd be a little bit harrowing.

861
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 4: I see, well, brave little satellite, But we don't have

862
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 4: any satellites that have like a little extendable ice cream

863
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:48,760
Speaker 4: scoop that scoops up some of the stuff in the rings.

864
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 4: So how do we know what they're made of? And

865
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 4: do we know what they're made of?

866
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:54,839
Speaker 1: So we can so we know a little bit about

867
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,040
Speaker 1: what they're made out of based on our models, you

868
00:42:57,080 --> 00:42:59,799
Speaker 1: know what's in the Solar system, and also based on

869
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: our studies of what light reflects off of them. That's

870
00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 1: really our best way to understand what's in them. Mostly

871
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,280
Speaker 1: we think that the rings are made out of ice

872
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 1: and dust, and that's also you know what the planets

873
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:12,840
Speaker 1: are made out of. The Planets when they were forming,

874
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:15,400
Speaker 1: were made out of the basic ingredients of the Solar system,

875
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 1: which was dust and ice and gas. Now most of

876
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: the gas got slurped up by the Sun or by

877
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: the gas giants themselves, and so you left over with

878
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:27,799
Speaker 1: ice and dust. Now, in the inner Solar system, a

879
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 1: lot of that ice is vaporized, But in the outer

880
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 1: Solar system, past what we call the frost line, it

881
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: was cold enough for that ice to stay solid, and

882
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: so it helped form some of these ice giants, and

883
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:40,360
Speaker 1: so the rings are made out of that same stuff,

884
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: mostly ice and dust. Beyond the frost line, there's a

885
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: lot of ice in them. Saturn's rings, for example, are

886
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: mostly icy particles, and closerin you expect more rock and

887
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 1: dust in rings.

888
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 4: So when we're talking about ice, you know, I think

889
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:55,160
Speaker 4: of I mean especially today because it's so hot, but

890
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 4: I think of a big chunk of ice that I

891
00:43:57,560 --> 00:43:59,920
Speaker 4: would put in my drink, like in my glass. But

892
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:03,720
Speaker 4: is that what this ice is? Are they big chunks?

893
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 4: Is it sort of like ice crystals and a bunch

894
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:09,319
Speaker 4: of them? What form does this ice take?

895
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:12,280
Speaker 1: So when we're talking about ice, we do mean water ice.

896
00:44:12,320 --> 00:44:14,439
Speaker 1: This is like h two oh. But there's also other

897
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: kinds of ice, you know, ammonia, ice, and other kinds

898
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:19,759
Speaker 1: of things. So when chemists say ice, they mean a

899
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: wide range of stuff, not just the stuff you put

900
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: in your summer cocktails. But it does include you know,

901
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 1: drinkable water ice, like if you are building a colony

902
00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:32,359
Speaker 1: around Saturn and you need water, Like the rings are

903
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,800
Speaker 1: a great source of water the humans could actually drink,

904
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: and it comes in chunks.

905
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:37,279
Speaker 13: You know.

906
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:39,400
Speaker 1: Some of these things are as small as a centimeter,

907
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 1: like cute little ice cubes that would fit in your glass.

908
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: And some of them are like are as big as

909
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 1: ten meters, so you know, like really pretty big chunks.

910
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: You'd have to be a giant to enjoy that in

911
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:50,320
Speaker 1: your limonade.

912
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:54,040
Speaker 4: So I could, in theory, ride that satellite, hold out

913
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 4: a glass lemonade and get some ice in there. As

914
00:44:56,600 --> 00:44:59,760
Speaker 4: long as I don't get pulverized by a giant ice chunk,

915
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,680
Speaker 4: that's great news. What's the dust made out of?

916
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 1: So the dust is just you know, silicates, it's like rock,

917
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 1: the same kind of stuff that the Earth is made

918
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:10,400
Speaker 1: out of, Like it's just basically dirt, you know, huge

919
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:12,880
Speaker 1: chunks of rock and dirt, and some of these things

920
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:16,319
Speaker 1: have organic compounds in them. You know, we wonder about

921
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 1: like the formation of life. One really interesting area of

922
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 1: research is like where do organic molecules come from the

923
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: basic building blocks of life? Are they only found on

924
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 1: Earth or are they found all over the universe. So

925
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:29,879
Speaker 1: looking at the rings helps us understand that kind of thing.

926
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: We also study asteroids and comets, and what we find

927
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: is that there are organic compounds all over the Solar System.

928
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: These basic building blocks are not rare, they're everywhere.

929
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 4: So you've got ice, which is, you know, the solid

930
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 4: form of water, and you've got organic compounds. Is there

931
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 4: a reason why we wouldn't expect there to be life

932
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 4: on Saturn? Is it because the ice would be solid?

933
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 4: Or is it because Saturn's surface is not hospitable to

934
00:45:57,600 --> 00:45:58,760
Speaker 4: the formation of life.

935
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's life on that. And of

936
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:02,719
Speaker 1: course if there is life on Saturday, it would have

937
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:05,880
Speaker 1: to be quite different from life on Earth, because the

938
00:46:06,040 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: environment on Saturn is very different. Right. Saturn is a

939
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 1: gas giant and so it's very high pressure. There's a

940
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: lot of radiation on Saturn, so it'd have to be

941
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:18,200
Speaker 1: quite different. But one of the moons of Saturn, Insulatus,

942
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 1: which we've talked about, has an icy shell, and underneath

943
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: is a liquid ocean, and that liquid ocean is partially

944
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 1: kept liquid by those tidal forces. Saturn is squeezing that moon,

945
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:33,240
Speaker 1: which keeps it from freezing. It's imparting energy to it,

946
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: sort of like by massaging it with its gravity. So

947
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:40,520
Speaker 1: in the water under the surface of Ensuladus might be

948
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 1: some life. We just don't know. But the rings are

949
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:46,839
Speaker 1: mostly frozen. They're mostly just big chunks of ice. And

950
00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 1: you know, there's a fascinating sort of geometrical structure here

951
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,720
Speaker 1: because they are very, very wide. You know, these things

952
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 1: are like seventy to one hundred thousand kilometers wide. We're

953
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 1: talking about Saturn's rings, but in terms of thickness, they're

954
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: like twenty meters thick. So there are tens of thousands

955
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: of kilometers wide and only tens of meters thick. If

956
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: you had a sheet of paper of this thickness, they

957
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:13,239
Speaker 1: would have to be like a kilometer wide sheet of

958
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,280
Speaker 1: paper to have the same proportions as Saturn's rings.

959
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 4: That's an idea for your science project to elementary schoolers,

960
00:47:20,920 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 4: a model of Saturn's.

961
00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 1: Rings, And you know, you can see Saturn's rings from Earth,

962
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:28,359
Speaker 1: which is incredible without a really powerful telescope. But there's

963
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:30,880
Speaker 1: a lot more rings to Saturn than you can just see.

964
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: There's three really bright rings which astronomers have cleverly named A, B,

965
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:38,360
Speaker 1: and C of course, but there are other rings that

966
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:40,920
Speaker 1: go out even further out to the g ring and

967
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: the E ring, and these go out like past three

968
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:47,839
Speaker 1: to nine times the radius of Saturn itself, So like

969
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:51,319
Speaker 1: the volume of Saturn is dominated by these rings. It's

970
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:54,080
Speaker 1: like the biggest thing in the Saturn system.

971
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 4: That's really interesting. So how many rings are there total, Dinal, Well.

972
00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: There are rings out to gring and eerings right, and

973
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: so there are like dozens of these rings. And it

974
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:05,799
Speaker 1: depends a little bit on how you count, because each

975
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:08,880
Speaker 1: of the rings can be subdivided into like sub rings.

976
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 1: And some of these rings that have there are these

977
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:15,320
Speaker 1: gaps between them which are maintained by these little shepherd moons.

978
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: So you have these little moonlits which are strong enough

979
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: to survive inside the roch limit. Remember the roch limit

980
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:22,920
Speaker 1: not a hard and fast rule. Depending on what you're

981
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 1: made out of. So if you're a small enough moon

982
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:27,799
Speaker 1: you made out a really tough stuff, then you could

983
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:30,560
Speaker 1: survive in the ring system, and you sort of perturb

984
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,160
Speaker 1: the rings. You can keep the rings from like mixing

985
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 1: with each other. So a lot of these gaps are

986
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 1: because there's a moon. They are a little moonlit that's

987
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:39,399
Speaker 1: keeping them apart.

988
00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:43,280
Speaker 4: A little hall monitor moon that's adorable exactly.

989
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:45,600
Speaker 1: And it keeps them having these like really crisply sharply

990
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:46,440
Speaker 1: defined edges.

991
00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:49,160
Speaker 4: It seems like there is a bunch of mass in

992
00:48:49,239 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 4: these rings. How do we know that, like Saturn's gravity

993
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:57,719
Speaker 4: is strong enough to keep them in that sort of

994
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 4: sweet spot of staying rings and not drifting out or

995
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:02,800
Speaker 4: forming moons.

996
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: So we didn't know until pretty recently how much mass

997
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:07,320
Speaker 1: there was. You knew we could see it, but we

998
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: didn't really know like how much stuff is There is

999
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: an equivalent to a moon, is it like thousand times?

1000
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:14,239
Speaker 1: The Moon's much less than a moon of Saturn. And

1001
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:16,120
Speaker 1: so it was when Cassini went up there and it

1002
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:19,280
Speaker 1: passed between these rings that it gave us a measurement

1003
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: for how much mass there is. And what we discovered

1004
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: was that the rings had sort of surprisingly low mass.

1005
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:27,359
Speaker 1: We expected them to have some more mass, to be

1006
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 1: like war substantial, but they're really sort of like light

1007
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 1: and fluffy. The other thing that's really interesting from Cassini

1008
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: is that we got these very close up pictures of

1009
00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 1: what these rings were made out of, and scientists were

1010
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:40,239
Speaker 1: surprised to see that the components of the rings were

1011
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:42,800
Speaker 1: still sort of sharp, you know, they have like crisp

1012
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:46,120
Speaker 1: edges to them. They're really quite reflective compared to what

1013
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 1: we expected if these rings were ancient, if they'd been

1014
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: there for a long long time, you would expect them

1015
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,839
Speaker 1: to bump into each other, things eventually get rounded. All

1016
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:57,440
Speaker 1: the radiation from Saturn would have weathered them a little bit.

1017
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: That gives people the impression that maybe these are quite new. Right.

1018
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 1: If you add up all the mass of these rings,

1019
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:06,760
Speaker 1: it's just about the mass of a typical moon of Saturn,

1020
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:10,320
Speaker 1: which is very suggestive. It says maybe this was once

1021
00:50:10,400 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 1: a moon of Saturn. Maybe one of the moons of

1022
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:15,799
Speaker 1: Saturn got smashed up in a collision, they bounced into

1023
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 1: each other, or something came into the Solar system and

1024
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: destroyed a moon of Saturn and created this big mess

1025
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: which then fell into the Roach limit and became the

1026
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 1: rings of Saturn. It's a theory we just don't know,

1027
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:28,280
Speaker 1: but it's one.

1028
00:50:28,160 --> 00:50:32,120
Speaker 4: Speculation So if when you're saying these are relatively new,

1029
00:50:32,280 --> 00:50:34,680
Speaker 4: what do you mean by that? Because I've learned that

1030
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 4: when you say new in terms of the Solar System

1031
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:40,720
Speaker 4: or the universe, it means very old.

1032
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:44,839
Speaker 1: Exactly. It means new on a universe dimescale. So we're

1033
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:48,360
Speaker 1: talking like maybe in the last one hundred million years,

1034
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 1: whereas the Solar System is four and a half billion

1035
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: years old. If you're forty five, for example, saying you

1036
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,000
Speaker 1: got a ring in the last year or so makes

1037
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 1: it feel.

1038
00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:00,759
Speaker 4: Sort of new, right, Yeah, I mean my ring feels

1039
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:04,120
Speaker 4: still pretty new even though it's about a year old.

1040
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:09,279
Speaker 4: But yeah, so that is really interesting. Do you think

1041
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 4: these rings around Saturn are permanent?

1042
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:13,839
Speaker 1: Well, we don't know how long they are going to last.

1043
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:16,600
Speaker 1: If they're fairly new, it suggests that they might not.

1044
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:19,680
Speaker 1: They might be like falling into Saturn. Satur might be

1045
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:22,600
Speaker 1: losing its moons as its gravity pulls these little bits

1046
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:25,600
Speaker 1: into it. Or they could also be quite stable. Right,

1047
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:27,760
Speaker 1: even if they are new, they could still be stable

1048
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: if they ended up in the right spot, if they're

1049
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:32,040
Speaker 1: within the roche limit. So in order to understand that

1050
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:34,319
Speaker 1: whether Saturn is going to keep its rings, we need

1051
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: to understand some of the processes going on there, like

1052
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 1: is Saturn gathering these things up? Are things falling into

1053
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,320
Speaker 1: Saturn or not. We also need to understand, like whether

1054
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: there are new sources for these rings. That same moon

1055
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:49,360
Speaker 1: we talked about insult Us also has geysers on it,

1056
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: so like cracks in those oceans shoot water out into

1057
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: space constantly, and this is new material for rings, as

1058
00:51:56,680 --> 00:52:00,080
Speaker 1: those newly formed crystals in space get sucked in by

1059
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:03,359
Speaker 1: Saturn's gravity. So there's a really far out ring called

1060
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:07,440
Speaker 1: the e ring, which probably is being constantly replenished by

1061
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:09,760
Speaker 1: geysers from one of Saturn's moons.

1062
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 4: Well that's interesting. So you've got like a sprinkler system

1063
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:17,920
Speaker 4: that is keeping these rings alive. Well, I hope Saturn

1064
00:52:18,040 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 4: has a sense of commitment so keep saturring for our

1065
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 4: benefit because it is so pretty to look at. But

1066
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:28,839
Speaker 4: I'm also curious why Saturn is so unique in its

1067
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:32,160
Speaker 4: rings in the Solar System, or whether it is unique.

1068
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:36,200
Speaker 4: But first, I need to take a break and I'm

1069
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:39,000
Speaker 4: gonna do a little hula hooping so I can feel

1070
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 4: more like I am Saturn, so I can visualize what

1071
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:44,760
Speaker 4: it's like to be Saturn.

1072
00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:50,880
Speaker 1: When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth,

1073
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt. You're probably

1074
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:58,200
Speaker 1: not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite,

1075
00:52:58,239 --> 00:53:00,880
Speaker 1: but the people in the dairy industry are. US Dairy

1076
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 1: has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse

1077
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 1: gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working

1078
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:10,200
Speaker 1: hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste,

1079
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:14,439
Speaker 1: conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water,

1080
00:53:14,520 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four

1081
00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:21,120
Speaker 1: times the same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes

1082
00:53:21,160 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US Dairy

1083
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:27,719
Speaker 1: tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn

1084
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 1: the methane from maneuver into renewable energy that can power farms, towns,

1085
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:33,799
Speaker 1: and electric cars. So the next time you grab a

1086
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:35,840
Speaker 1: slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know

1087
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:38,600
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Speaker 4: And we're back after an exhausting five minutes of me

1119
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 4: hula hooping. Remind me never to do that again. But

1120
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 4: I was asking before the break, is Saddurn unique in

1121
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:25,160
Speaker 4: the Solar System in terms of its rings? And why

1122
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:28,360
Speaker 4: is it unique? Because it seems like it at least

1123
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,560
Speaker 4: has the most spectacular rings in the Solar System.

1124
00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:34,239
Speaker 1: It definitely has the most spectacular rings and the most

1125
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:37,720
Speaker 1: obvious from Earth. But it turns out it's actually not unique,

1126
00:55:37,719 --> 00:55:40,400
Speaker 1: and that there are rings all over the Solar System,

1127
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:42,439
Speaker 1: and there are rings that might be right in our

1128
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 1: backyard and in our future. When you look up at Mars,

1129
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:48,799
Speaker 1: which is one of our neighboring planets, you don't see

1130
00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:51,480
Speaker 1: rings on it. But that might be different in about

1131
00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: thirty to fifty million years, because Mars is in the

1132
00:55:55,080 --> 00:55:58,799
Speaker 1: process of pulling apart its moons and shredding them so

1133
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:00,960
Speaker 1: they eventually might turn into rings.

1134
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:03,800
Speaker 4: So physicists out there, I want to give you some advice.

1135
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,279
Speaker 4: If you are in a relationship and you tell your

1136
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 4: partner I see a ring in our future, just be

1137
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:14,399
Speaker 4: forewarned that they may not know you're talking about Mars.

1138
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 1: And that you've got to wait quite a while. You know,

1139
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:21,840
Speaker 1: we're talking about tens of millions of years, and Mars

1140
00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:24,680
Speaker 1: is a really fascinating case because it might sort of

1141
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:28,480
Speaker 1: upend this clear, crisp difference between rings and moons a

1142
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: little bit. I read a recent paper that suggests that

1143
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:34,440
Speaker 1: it might be in the middle of a ring moon cycle.

1144
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:37,320
Speaker 1: Then it might be forming moons which then gets shredded

1145
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:40,360
Speaker 1: into rings, which then get formed back into moons. So

1146
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: it could be like sloshing back and forth between ringed

1147
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 1: and mooned and ringed and mooned.

1148
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:47,759
Speaker 4: That's interesting. I do know some people like that. But

1149
00:56:48,840 --> 00:56:52,160
Speaker 4: so how does it If it keeps shifting back and forth,

1150
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:55,880
Speaker 4: that must mean that this roch limit is not always stable.

1151
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:57,239
Speaker 4: What makes it unstable?

1152
00:56:57,400 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 1: Well, it depends again on how strong this thing is,

1153
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 1: the structural integrity of the object, and exactly where it

1154
00:57:04,160 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: is the idea here is you have a giant impact,

1155
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:09,800
Speaker 1: and this giant impact doesn't just create a big spray

1156
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 1: of debris which can form into rings and moons, but

1157
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:15,520
Speaker 1: it can also actually change the gravitational field of the

1158
00:57:15,560 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: planet itself, so like exactly where the roach limit is

1159
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:21,720
Speaker 1: can change. So you can have, for example, the formation

1160
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 1: of a moon, which can last for a little while,

1161
00:57:24,520 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 1: but then as the planet itself settles back down. You know,

1162
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:30,200
Speaker 1: if part of this debris then falls back onto the planet,

1163
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:33,000
Speaker 1: it can change where the roach limit is. So the

1164
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:35,600
Speaker 1: moon forms when the roach limits in one place, but

1165
00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:37,760
Speaker 1: then as the stuff settles in and some of it

1166
00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:40,920
Speaker 1: falls onto the planet, the roach limit shifts, and so

1167
00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:43,360
Speaker 1: the moons can then be torn apart. Some of that

1168
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:45,480
Speaker 1: stuff might fall down to the planet, some of it

1169
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:47,760
Speaker 1: might form a ring, some of it might like form

1170
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:50,680
Speaker 1: like a half moon, which it gets pushed out even further.

1171
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:54,800
Speaker 4: So we're talking about Mars's potential future here and potential

1172
00:57:54,960 --> 00:57:57,560
Speaker 4: pass But you also mentioned that there are a lot

1173
00:57:57,560 --> 00:58:01,280
Speaker 4: of rings in the Solar System currently, right, There.

1174
00:58:01,160 --> 00:58:03,120
Speaker 1: Are a lot of rings in the Solar System exactly,

1175
00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:05,960
Speaker 1: So Jupiter, for example, also has rings. These are interesting

1176
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 1: because they're one of the first ones discovered by a satellite. Like,

1177
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:13,240
Speaker 1: it's very hard to see Jupiter's rings from Earth even

1178
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:16,400
Speaker 1: with a very very powerful telescope, and so these were

1179
00:58:16,480 --> 00:58:19,440
Speaker 1: discovered in seventy nine by Voyager one. And the reason

1180
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:21,040
Speaker 1: that they're hard to see is that they're very faint

1181
00:58:21,320 --> 00:58:24,560
Speaker 1: and it consists mostly of dust, and people think that

1182
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 1: they're probably just constantly created by micro meteorites hitting the

1183
00:58:29,160 --> 00:58:32,640
Speaker 1: planet's moons. Remember, Jupiter is very very massive and it

1184
00:58:32,680 --> 00:58:35,040
Speaker 1: has very strong gravity, so it's likely to just like

1185
00:58:35,120 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 1: suck a lot of this stuff up. But they think

1186
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:40,240
Speaker 1: that there's like a constant replenishment of this stuff as

1187
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 1: things hit the Moon create this like debris which forms

1188
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:46,720
Speaker 1: sort of a temporary ring around Jupiter, which eventually falls

1189
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:49,760
Speaker 1: back into Jupiter. So Jupiter's gravity is so strong there

1190
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:52,200
Speaker 1: doesn't really have a chance to accumulate a ring that

1191
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:53,280
Speaker 1: lasts very long.

1192
00:58:53,560 --> 00:58:56,040
Speaker 4: You mentioned that it's harder to see it because it's

1193
00:58:56,160 --> 00:58:59,680
Speaker 4: mainly made out of dust. What makes ice more visible.

1194
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:02,560
Speaker 1: It's just shinier, Like, it's just basic chemistry. You shine

1195
00:59:02,560 --> 00:59:03,960
Speaker 1: a light on a piece of ice, it's going to

1196
00:59:04,000 --> 00:59:06,640
Speaker 1: reflect more than a rock wheel, right, So ice is

1197
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: just brighter and wider.

1198
00:59:08,360 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 4: I guess that's why we call diamond's ice. That makes sense.

1199
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 1: And Jupiter also, remember, is not just gravitationally powerful. It

1200
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 1: has very strong magnetic fields and radiation, and so the

1201
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:22,920
Speaker 1: electromagnetic forces interact with these dust particles moving around Jupiter,

1202
00:59:23,200 --> 00:59:25,160
Speaker 1: and it means that it's hard for these things to

1203
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:27,560
Speaker 1: orbit Jupiter for more than like one hundred or one

1204
00:59:27,560 --> 00:59:30,880
Speaker 1: thousand years. And so for Jupiter to have a ring

1205
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 1: system at any point that lasts more than you know,

1206
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:35,280
Speaker 1: one hundred or one thousand years, means it needs a

1207
00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 1: constant source of replenishment. That's why this theory that micrometeorites

1208
00:59:39,560 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 1: are creating dust constantly to sort of feed Jupiter's ring system.

1209
00:59:44,000 --> 00:59:47,840
Speaker 4: I see, so Jupiter is just too hungry to maintain

1210
00:59:48,240 --> 00:59:53,120
Speaker 4: that ring without having some of those microcollisions spewing out

1211
00:59:53,160 --> 00:59:57,040
Speaker 4: more debris. Is Jupiter the only other planet that has rings.

1212
00:59:57,160 --> 01:00:00,360
Speaker 1: No Neptune also has rings. These are really fast. There

1213
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:03,480
Speaker 1: are five rings, but they're sort of the reverse of Saturn.

1214
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:06,800
Speaker 1: Instead of being mostly ice, they're actually mostly dark particles,

1215
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:09,800
Speaker 1: and they're confined to a few little narrow rings, and

1216
01:00:09,800 --> 01:00:12,600
Speaker 1: they're really interesting because they're not the same all the

1217
01:00:12,640 --> 01:00:15,720
Speaker 1: way around. It's not like Saturn that has this symmetry.

1218
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:18,360
Speaker 1: They have these like bright arcs and then these empty

1219
01:00:18,440 --> 01:00:20,960
Speaker 1: gaps between them, so it's really kind of weird.

1220
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:24,400
Speaker 4: So these like broken rings around Saturn.

1221
01:00:24,400 --> 01:00:28,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And people think that maybe there are moons there,

1222
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:30,600
Speaker 1: like little shepherd moons that are interfering with these rings

1223
01:00:30,600 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 1: and causing this structure, but we haven't been able to

1224
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:35,320
Speaker 1: see them because our telescopes aren't powerful enough yet. And

1225
01:00:35,560 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 1: Urinus also has rings. These rings are really strange because

1226
01:00:39,120 --> 01:00:43,520
Speaker 1: they're almost totally black. They're like lumps of coal, so

1227
01:00:43,560 --> 01:00:46,440
Speaker 1: they think they might be like carbon and hydrocarbon, but

1228
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:48,880
Speaker 1: they're just not sure. So we really need our like

1229
01:00:49,080 --> 01:00:52,320
Speaker 1: more exploration of the outer solar system to understand these

1230
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:54,600
Speaker 1: rings and the role they play in the history of

1231
01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:55,280
Speaker 1: these planets.

1232
01:00:55,720 --> 01:00:58,800
Speaker 4: I like that Uranus is going for a golf look

1233
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:01,240
Speaker 4: that is bringing Goth back. I don't know if it

1234
01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 4: ever left. So our solar system has a good number

1235
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:07,960
Speaker 4: of rings, but we talk about it at the beginning,

1236
01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 4: whether we are unique as a solar system, whether we

1237
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:16,000
Speaker 4: can find rings outside of our solar system. Is there

1238
01:01:16,000 --> 01:01:19,480
Speaker 4: any evidence of rings far and wide?

1239
01:01:19,560 --> 01:01:23,040
Speaker 1: So scientists think that it's very plausible that other planets

1240
01:01:23,160 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 1: might have rings, just because they're not that unusual in

1241
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 1: our solar system. As you can hear, they're like basically

1242
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 1: everywhere you know Saturn, Jupiter, Urinus, Neptune, even Mars might

1243
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 1: eventually have rings. So we suspect that just from that data,

1244
01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: they should be in other solar systems. But of course

1245
01:01:38,840 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: we want to see it and to know. We don't

1246
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:43,000
Speaker 1: just want to speculate about the nature of the universe.

1247
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:45,760
Speaker 1: And so what we can do is look for rings

1248
01:01:45,800 --> 01:01:47,920
Speaker 1: around planets in much the same way that we look

1249
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:51,479
Speaker 1: for the planets themselves. The way we detect planets around

1250
01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:54,640
Speaker 1: other stars, or one way at least, is the transit method.

1251
01:01:54,760 --> 01:01:57,080
Speaker 1: The planet passes in front of its star like a

1252
01:01:57,080 --> 01:02:00,200
Speaker 1: little mini eclipse and dims the light of that are

1253
01:02:00,400 --> 01:02:03,040
Speaker 1: a little bit. That's how we know the planet is there.

1254
01:02:03,160 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: How can we see rings around it? Well? From the

1255
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:07,120
Speaker 1: transit method, we can also get a sense of the

1256
01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:10,600
Speaker 1: size of the planet and its mass. So we get

1257
01:02:10,640 --> 01:02:12,959
Speaker 1: a sense of the size because of how much light

1258
01:02:13,160 --> 01:02:15,480
Speaker 1: is blocked from the star. We get a sense of

1259
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:17,880
Speaker 1: its mass because we can measure its orbit, and so

1260
01:02:17,960 --> 01:02:21,200
Speaker 1: if the planet seems to be really really large. There's

1261
01:02:21,280 --> 01:02:23,640
Speaker 1: like this extra reduction in the light of the star

1262
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: because it has like big fluffy things around it. That

1263
01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:30,360
Speaker 1: might be evidence for rings around the planet if it

1264
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:33,800
Speaker 1: seems like bigger than we would otherwise understand it to be.

1265
01:02:34,040 --> 01:02:36,400
Speaker 1: If it seems like bigger than we would otherwise expect

1266
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:38,800
Speaker 1: it to be from its mass and from its orbit.

1267
01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 4: I see. So if the orbit doesn't match how fluffy

1268
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:45,560
Speaker 4: it looks, how much light it blocks, that maybe a

1269
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:48,520
Speaker 4: sign of a ring. Could it be something else instead

1270
01:02:48,520 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 4: of a ring, like we mentioned, just having a bunch

1271
01:02:51,440 --> 01:02:54,640
Speaker 4: of junk kind of floating around the planet in not

1272
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:55,320
Speaker 4: ring form.

1273
01:02:55,560 --> 01:02:57,480
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be like a lot of moons.

1274
01:02:57,560 --> 01:03:01,320
Speaker 1: I suppose one candidate is this planet at hip forty

1275
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:04,760
Speaker 1: one thirty seven eight F, which looks like it has

1276
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:08,160
Speaker 1: a really really huge radius, like nine times the radius

1277
01:03:08,160 --> 01:03:10,360
Speaker 1: of the Earth. So either it's like a big styrofoam

1278
01:03:10,440 --> 01:03:13,600
Speaker 1: planet hardly filled with anything, or it's a planet with

1279
01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:17,000
Speaker 1: an extensive ring system that's blocking all of that light.

1280
01:03:17,080 --> 01:03:18,880
Speaker 1: And that's really the only thing we can really think

1281
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:22,280
Speaker 1: of is another planet, Proximus Centauri se, which is a

1282
01:03:22,320 --> 01:03:25,840
Speaker 1: planet orbiting our immediate neighbor Proximus Centauri. It has seven

1283
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:27,600
Speaker 1: times the mass of the Earth, but it's sort of

1284
01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:31,840
Speaker 1: weirdly bright and reflective, which makes people think like perhaps

1285
01:03:31,920 --> 01:03:34,959
Speaker 1: it's surrounded by icy rings. But as you can maybe

1286
01:03:34,960 --> 01:03:38,000
Speaker 1: get a sense for this is very uncertain stuff. We've

1287
01:03:38,120 --> 01:03:41,320
Speaker 1: only just recently been able to detect exoplanets. We're getting

1288
01:03:41,360 --> 01:03:43,520
Speaker 1: better and better at it, and soon we'll be doing

1289
01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:46,600
Speaker 1: things like studying the atmosphere of exoplanets, and this is

1290
01:03:46,640 --> 01:03:48,880
Speaker 1: sort of on that list of things we're just beginning

1291
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:49,840
Speaker 1: to be able to do.

1292
01:03:50,120 --> 01:03:53,959
Speaker 4: It's kind of like physicists need to start to catch

1293
01:03:54,040 --> 01:03:57,600
Speaker 4: up with jewelers, who can look at rings by using

1294
01:03:57,680 --> 01:04:00,720
Speaker 4: a magnifying glass to see things really, really really tiny,

1295
01:04:01,120 --> 01:04:05,720
Speaker 4: But physicists have to investigate their rings by looking at

1296
01:04:05,760 --> 01:04:08,760
Speaker 4: things really really far away and blowing them up as

1297
01:04:08,840 --> 01:04:09,600
Speaker 4: much as they can.

1298
01:04:10,080 --> 01:04:13,040
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I expect that some of those solar systems

1299
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:16,160
Speaker 1: may have spectacular ring systems. I suspect that when we

1300
01:04:16,200 --> 01:04:18,560
Speaker 1: get really nice images of them, you know, if maybe

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01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 1: from James Web or from the next generation of space telescopes,

1302
01:04:22,080 --> 01:04:24,760
Speaker 1: we'll see things that blow our minds, that make scientists say, what,

1303
01:04:25,000 --> 01:04:28,040
Speaker 1: that's impossible. You can't have rings like that that breaks

1304
01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:31,440
Speaker 1: all of our understandings, and breaking our understanding is exactly

1305
01:04:31,480 --> 01:04:34,600
Speaker 1: the moment to learn about the universe, to say, oh, well,

1306
01:04:34,640 --> 01:04:36,760
Speaker 1: it turns out we didn't understand this as well as

1307
01:04:36,760 --> 01:04:39,080
Speaker 1: we thought we did. We got to change our models.

1308
01:04:39,120 --> 01:04:41,800
Speaker 1: We have to add something new to it, or develop

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01:04:41,880 --> 01:04:44,560
Speaker 1: some new idea for how these things can form. And

1310
01:04:44,560 --> 01:04:46,920
Speaker 1: that's the exciting thing. It's like opening a new book

1311
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:49,920
Speaker 1: and being surprised by what you find in every one

1312
01:04:49,960 --> 01:04:53,600
Speaker 1: of these solar systems will have surprises for us, things

1313
01:04:53,640 --> 01:04:55,280
Speaker 1: that we probably can't imagine today.

1314
01:04:55,400 --> 01:04:59,000
Speaker 4: And isn't that the dream of every planetary fashionista to

1315
01:04:59,120 --> 01:05:03,800
Speaker 4: wear rings so spectacular it makes scientists scratch their heads

1316
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 4: and throw away all their textbooks.

1317
01:05:07,120 --> 01:05:10,600
Speaker 1: Exactly so, from rings down here on Earth, wowing all

1318
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:14,160
Speaker 1: of your friends to rings around the planets themselves, telling

1319
01:05:14,280 --> 01:05:17,080
Speaker 1: us something about how those planets formed, and something about

1320
01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:20,400
Speaker 1: their history and something about their future. Rings have a

1321
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Speaker 1: lot to tell us about the nature of our lives.

1322
01:05:23,120 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 1: All right, thanks very much Katie for joining us on

1323
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Speaker 1: today's episode about rings. Was a lot of fun, and

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Speaker 1: we hope you all ring in a wonderful day. Thank

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Speaker 1: you very much for listening and tune in next time.

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Speaker 4: Bye.

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Speaker 5: Thanks for having me, thanks for listening, and remember that

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Speaker 5: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

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