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