WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Moons of Uranus, Part 3 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:08.320 Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:10.920 is Robert Lamb. We returned to the vault once more, 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:14.560 this time for the Moons of UNO's Part three, originally 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:18.319 published five sixteen, twenty twenty three. Dive right in. This 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:23.240 is part three of three. Enjoy. 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:29.200 These are the forgeries of jealousy. And never since the 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:33.280 middle summer's spring met we on a hill in dale forest, 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:37.400 or mead by paved fountain, or by rushing brook, or 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:40.279 in the beached margin of the sea, to dance our 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:44.280 ringlets to the whistling wind. But with thy brawls thou 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.680 hast disturbed our sport. Therefore the winds piping to us 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.280 in vain as in revenge, have sucked up from the sea. 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:57.240 Contagious fogs, which falling in the land, have every pelting 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:01.440 river made so proud that they have over borne their continents. 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:06.000 The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vein, The 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:10.160 plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn hath rotted, 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.880 ere his youth attained a beard. The fold stands empty 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:17.400 in the drowned field, and crows are fatted with the 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.040 murray and flock. The nine men's morris is filled up 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:24.399 with mud, and the quaint mazes in the wanton green, 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:29.199 for lack of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.240 their winter here. No night is now with him or 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:37.520 Carol blessed. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, pale 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:42.040 in her anger, washes all the air that rheumatic diseases 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:46.679 do abound. And thorough this distemperature, we see the seasons alter, 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.840 hoary headed frosts far in the fresh lap of the 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:55.040 crimson rose, and on old highamps than an icy crown. 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:59.600 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds is as in 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:04.080 mock reset the spring, the summer, the child in autumn, 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:08.880 angry winter change their wonted liveries, and the mazed world, 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.880 by their increase, now knows not which is which. And 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.880 this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:20.320 our dissension, we are their parents and original. 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:30.880 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:39.200 Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow your mind. 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:42.080 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:45.160 I can't believe nine men's morris is filled up with mud. 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:46.400 It used to be a cool place. 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:50.000 Yeah, I know. So we're back with our third and 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:52.920 final part in the series on the moons of the 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.799 planet Uranus, and I started today with a reading from uh, 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.639 that's actually it's a speech given by the character Titania, 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:05.760 the Queen of the Fairies, in William Shakespeare's play A 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.800 Midsummer Night's Dream. Now I've read that half just because 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:10.680 I loved that speech and I thought it was really cool, 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:13.600 but it also seemed to kind of resonant with our 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:17.360 subject matter today. So the speech in the play is 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:22.440 delivered by Titania to Oberon, king of the Fairies, describing 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:26.359 how the jealous feuding between the two of them has 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:30.080 had malicious effects on the weather and the very environment 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:32.760 of nature and the human world, because you know, when 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:35.960 fairies fight, it's not just bad vibes. The bad vibes 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:41.080 apparently become quite physical, and they take the form of floods, drought, 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:46.000 frostbitten winters, famine, disease, etc. And this struck me as 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.800 interesting in this case because of the ways that hundreds 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:53.600 of years ago, the behavior of planets and moons and 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:57.120 other objects up in the heavens was thought to affect 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.160 the weather and produce not just affect the weather, but 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:03.520 to produce the bad air that brings plague. So both 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.400 of the things kind of mentioned in this speech bad 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:10.040 weather and disease. And we've talked about numerous specific examples 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:13.720 of that in previous episodes, but one being that during 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:18.039 the Second Plague pandemic in thirteen forty eight, a convocation 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.320 of scholars from the medical faculty at the University of 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.520 Paris was assembled by King Philip the sixth of France 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.000 to determine the cause of the plague, and they concluded 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:32.760 it was because of the thirteen forty five conjunction of Mars, 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:36.400 Jupiter and Saturn in the House of Aquarius, which had 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:39.839 caused evil vapors to rise up from the earth and 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.640 breathe death into the cities of humankind. So the idea 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:47.160 of this direct causal connection between what the planets are doing, 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.560 what things in the sky are doing, and then weather 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:54.200 on earth and then disease. And this struck me because 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:59.239 in Shakespeare the behavior of Oberon and Titania is thought 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:01.479 to change the weather and bring disease, but this was 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:07.600 before those characters were also the names of actual heavenly bodies, 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.440 moons of the planet Uranus. In fact, that would have 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.719 been before the official discovery of Uranus as a planet 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:18.920 at all. But Titanya and Oberon are now both major 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:22.760 moons of Uranus. Those two were discovered by William Herschel 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.880 in seventeen eighty seven, the same guy who discovered Uranus 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:30.200 as a planet, though curiously I was just reading about this. 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:35.040 William Herschel also at the same time reported discovering several 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:39.600 other moons that were never confirmed by later astronomers, so 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:44.000 nobody ever found moons matching the orbits of these other 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:48.039 couple moons he described. Herschel Apparently, I don't know, he 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:51.359 wrote something down wrong or something, you know. He claimed 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.000 to have found some non existent moons in addition to 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.560 these real ones. But anyway, I wonder if if the 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:02.479 Uranian moons Oberon and Titania had been known about in 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.719 Shakespeare's day, they might also, I wonder, have been have 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:09.320 been blamed for making the green corn rot and filling 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:11.680 the Nine Men's moris up with mud and spreading the 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:13.679 rheumatic diseases and all that stuff. 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:18.000 Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting. Despite all of the shakespeare 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:22.760 references in the naming of the Iranian moons. I don't 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:27.680 believe Shakespeare ever references the god Uranus or Uranos in 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.000 his works. Could be a lot wrong about that. I'm 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:35.360 not a Shakespeare scholar. I'm just combining memory of Shakespeare 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:39.279 with some searches on some digital databases of his work. 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:42.840 All the other gods featured in our planetary lineup are 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:47.080 referenced numerous times in his plays, but never never Uranos, 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:49.600 and the same seems to be true of Alexander Pope, 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:53.000 which I guess this ultimately just speaks to the limited 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:57.920 or non existent role Uranas had in literature of the 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.320 times of these these writers, right. 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:03.400 I guess he's just wasn't one of the flashiest gods, 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.680 you know. Yeah, yeah, But actually I was just thinking, 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:08.720 to come back on what I said a minute ago, I, 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.080 you know, wondering if the moons of another planet would 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:16.200 have been used in astrological explanations for weather patterns and disease. 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.680 Now that I think about it, I can't think of 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:22.920 a case where, then, at least that I'm familiar with, 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.600 where the moons of other planets were used to explain 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:30.800 that that. Maybe that's because like those moons of other 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.680 planets had only been known about since the time of Galileo, 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.440 but as far as I can recall, it's always invoking 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.320 the outer planets themselves and not their moons, of course, 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:43.720 apart from our own moon, which, according again to Titania, 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:45.600 is the governess of floods. 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.440 Yeah, I love that, the governess of floods. 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:52.480 You know, before I had ever seen or read Midsummer 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.480 Night's Dream and knew Oberon and Titania as characters here. 0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.760 Before I even knew them as the names of moons 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:02.720 of Uranus that I recall, I actually knew them from 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.520 a different place. I knew them as part of a 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:09.480 spooky chant in a song my dad used to listen 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.240 to when I was younger, the line you have to 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:16.680 imagine this with several voices and a strange dissonant harmony 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:22.720 saying Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania, Neptune Titan 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.600 stars can frighten, which is of course from the nineteen 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:31.560 sixty seven psychedelic space rock anthem Astronomy Domine by Pink Floyd. 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.360 I think this song was written by syd Barrett, a 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.440 song that I think I have to admit is still 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.160 sort of always looping in the back of my head 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.800 when I think about space, when I picture the empty 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:48.600 landscapes of other planets and moons. It manages to capture 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:53.200 a feeling of space that is simultaneously very unsettling but 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:58.040 also so inviting. And it really helped me be excited 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:00.559 about space before I knew much about it, like seeing 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:04.960 it as this realm of mysteries that were thrilling to unveil. 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:07.560 So I'm not saying the effect would be the same 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:11.240 with all kids, but for me personally, this weird song 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.840 by Pink Floyd was a wonderful early science education tool, 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:19.200 not because it contains any actual like information or educational content. 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:21.600 It doesn't, but because it really made me want to 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:23.240 know more about what's out there. 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.360 So you're saying Astronomy Domine was kind of your Star Wars? 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:28.280 Is that what Star Wars was for you? I mean, 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:30.840 I love Star Wars too, I you know, wore out 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:31.680 the videotape. 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:33.360 Yeah, I mean I get. When I think back on 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:36.600 just earliest idea things that got me excited about space, 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.840 I think they were mostly you know, space stories, Like 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.199 I remember really liking the black Hole from Disney, and 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:47.280 I had like a storybook and cassette of the black Hole. 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.080 Even though, of course, as we've mentioned on the show 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:51.920 before and maybe we'll get into again in the future, 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.280 you know, the black Hole contains very little that you 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:58.400 can take to the bank regarding actual information about this 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:00.800 about space and the nature of black holes. 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:03.840 Well, I guess this is part of the song's psychedelic qualities. 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:08.679 But yeah, Astronomy domine I always felt it was. It 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:11.959 was scary in the best possible way. It was scary 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:13.960 in the way that it's like, you know, you want 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.240 to know what's behind the door, but you're you're frightened 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:18.360 to open it in a way that makes you just 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:19.920 you have to look even more. 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.160 Hmmm. No, I know, having been hurt listened to part 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:25.280 of this song here, and I'm not super familiar with 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.120 Pink Floyd. You know, I know the big ones, of course, 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:30.000 but I haven't I've never done a deep dive into 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.240 their discography. Yeah, I see what you're saying about this. 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:35.880 This track, this is early Pink Floyd. Most of the 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.000 Pink Floyd stuff people know is from a later period 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:40.960 of the band where they sound totally different. They're more 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:42.920 the kind of you know, I don't know what you 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.520 call it progressive classic rock. This is from their early 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:50.480 couple of albums that were more weird British psychedelic rock. Okay, 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.400 all right, but anyway, in the line of lyrics from 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:56.720 from the song you Hear You Hear Three Names, it's 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:01.800 oberon Miranda in Titanya. So I think we're still taking 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:05.200 the moons somewhat in order. Right, last in the previous episode, 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.640 we talked about the inner moons of Uranus, and now 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.080 we're going to be talking about the major moons. 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:15.200 That's right, and we'll begin with Miranda here. Miranda's name 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:19.480 for Prospero's daughter in the Tempest. She's also the subject 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:23.240 of a pretty famous waterhouse painting. I included this for you, Joe. 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.040 I don't know, maybe I'm alone in this, but I 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:28.000 just remember seeing this one a lot. I feel like 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:29.760 this one. There were a lot of posters of this 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.120 on dorm rooms or something. I don't know. 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:35.160 If I did see it, it didn't really make an impression, 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:35.719 but I like. 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.400 It has sort of Gothic sensibility to it. I don't 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:40.760 think I've ever seen the actual painting. I'm not sure 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:43.080 where it is at any rate. It was discovered by 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:47.120 Gerald P. Kuiper on February sixteenth, nineteen forty eight, at 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:51.640 McDonald Observatory in Texas. It was the last moon of 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:55.640 the planet to be discovered prior to Voyager two, the 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.640 smallest and closest to the planet of the pre Voyager 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.640 two discovered moons of Uranus. Now. The composition here, like 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:06.120 all the larger moons, it's thought to consist mostly of 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.440 a roughly equal mix of water, ice, and silicate rock. 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:14.240 The significance is I've seen numerous descriptions referring to it 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.959 as a Frankenstein moon, which of course instantly sounds pretty 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:24.280 jazzy Frankenstein moon of seemingly mismatched landscapes and featuring Titanic 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.640 canyons thought to be twelve times as deep as the 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.800 Grand Canyon of Earth. In some cases. Its surface also 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:34.440 bears the mark of coroni, which are sound delicious what 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:37.160 they're found to be. They're found on the surface of 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:42.120 Venus as well. These like oval shaped geological markings caused 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:47.720 by upwellings of subsurface warm material. So Miranda is known 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.360 to or is thought to have frozen water ice on 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.720 its surface, and the corona here may have caused warm 0:12:54.760 --> 0:13:00.000 ice rising to cause tectonic faults in the rock here. 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:04.680 So you mentioned it has this peculiar, fascinating outer appearance. 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:06.679 I had a couple of I added a couple of 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.040 photos here to the outline so we could rub the 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:12.160 fur a bit to look at the different textures on Miranda. 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:16.480 Across much of the known surface, it does look a 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.200 lot like our moon. Like you can see sort of 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:22.920 swaths of gray landscape of rocks and soil, you know, 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:25.840 the very familiar looking dotted with that kind of fractal 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:30.199 vanishing pattern of craters. But then across some stretches of 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.240 the Moon's surface, it looks like a bear about the 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.240 size of the Sun, just like dug its claws in 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:40.480 and used it as a scratching post. Something absolutely tore 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:42.400 up the crust of this planet. 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:44.400 Now, you know. Part of this is I'm primed by 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.360 being described as the Frankenstein Moon, but also looking at 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:49.840 these images of it, it makes me think of this 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:54.000 moon as a mad ball, which I don't think. Well, 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:56.760 they're apparently still around. I think they started in the 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.280 mid eighties and they were a toy when I was 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:01.959 a kid. But they are like these bouncy balls that 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:08.280 have these like textured monster heads, like ones of cyclops 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:10.959 ones like a meducer or something, and. 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.040 I just looked it up. Yeah, okay, I think I've 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:14.600 seen these. 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:17.640 Yeah, so it's kind of like if you're familiar with these, 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:19.880 and I think they're still around. They have a website, 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.840 so I think you can probably buy them somewhere. Maybe 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:24.960 they're not the hot thing with kids these days, but 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:27.760 at any rate, I look at this moon and I 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:28.800 think of mad balls. 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:31.640 So I'm looking at an arrangement of six mad balls, 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.520 and five of them are some kind of monster I 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.680 don't know, like a like a one eyed, one horned, 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.760 purple people eater of some sort. And then but one 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:44.080 of them is just a baseball with an angry face. 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:46.160 It's just a baseball. Why do they got to put 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.800 a baseball in there? Even got the little seams with 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:51.440 the red thread, and I don't know, just. 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:53.720 An angry baseball. I guess monster. 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:55.840 Base I see what you're talking about, though, yet, Yes, 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.440 it is kind of like a mad ball. It has 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:01.880 very the different mismatched parts. It looks like it could 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:06.080 be you know, illustrated scarring or something. I don't know. 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:12.240 It's just like a hugely variable strange surface. So there 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:14.280 I mentioned the parts. Some just look kind of like 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:17.840 any moon you might imagine. Some look like the parts 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:20.600 where the bear dug its claws in. Other parts look 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.160 to me like you've ever seen the you know those 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:26.040 little zin gardens people have where they are like soft 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:31.360 patterns of parallel lines and raked into the sand. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:33.480 there are parts of the surface that look like that. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.680 Here you see these little kind of I'm not implying 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.040 that they were left there by an actual being, but yeah, 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.720 it looks like just kind of parallel lines gently raked 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:45.880 into the surface, but of course with massive proportions. And 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:50.160 there are some places that show jagged ruptures and protrusions 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:54.360 off of the Moon's surface that are really just scraping space. 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.960 Like you can really see like a kind of a 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:01.240 point coming off of there. Rob you mentioned that some 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:05.040 of the canyons on Miranda are thought to be twelve 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:07.840 times as deep as the Grand Canyon on Earth. I 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.160 wanted to zoom in on one particular feature that I 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:16.080 found very interesting. Let's go to the Verona rupus. Verona 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.120 is I believe here a reference to Romeo and Juliet, 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:23.080 because again the Shakespeare names of Urines's moons, and so 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:27.640 Romeo and Juliet is set in the Italian city of Verona. Meanwhile, 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:31.840 Verona Rupus Rupus is a word used in planetary geology 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:36.880 to refer to extraterrestrial escarpments or cliffs. It's the Latin 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.560 word for cliff. So Raba included a photo for you 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:44.280 to look at of Verona rupas zoomed in. This is 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:47.840 an image that was featured by NASA and Michigan Tech's 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:52.960 Astronomy Picture of the Day site, and this photograph was 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:56.000 taken by No Surprise Voyager two, as all these close 0:16:56.080 --> 0:17:00.240 up photos of Uranes's moons are. But what's really interesting 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.040 here is that you can see in the picture this 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.560 massive feature is not a gently sloping mountain side, but 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.960 a steep, sheer cliff. And what you can't tell from 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:16.400 the picture is the scale of this massive landscape feature. 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:20.959 According to the APOD write up, the drop from Verona 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:25.800 Rupus is thought to be about twenty kilometers deep. Now, 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:29.440 I've seen other estimates somewhere. I don't know exactly who's 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.480 the final authority on estimating the heights of features like 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:36.560 this from photos, but twenty kilometers is the estimate given here, 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:40.800 and for a point of comparison, they say that this 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:43.520 is in this case ten times the depth of the 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.199 Grand Canyon. For another one, I just looked up the 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:49.640 height of Mount Everest. That's about eight point eight kilometers 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.320 in height. So imagine a drop off more than double 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.119 the peak to ground height of Everest. But it's not 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.400 a slope, it's a cliff. It's a vertical cliff. 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:01.840 Wow, that's incredible. 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.040 I'm imagining the call avoid kind of thought patterns that 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:08.240 looking at a cliff of that size. Man, if you're 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:12.200 somebody with like krimophobia, you know, you get afraid of 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:17.040 sharp drop offs. I don't know, you can't even process it. 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:20.560 But another thing they point out is that, so you 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.879 imagine a future astronaut is somehow on the surface of Miranda, 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:30.359 and maybe they are suddenly they're cursed by Oberon and Titania, 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:32.880 you know, the fairy magic falls upon them and they 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.239 are made to jump the cliff. This source estimates that 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:39.040 it would take them about twelve minutes to fall to 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.879 the bottom, though the length of that fall is somewhat 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:46.719 stretched out because Miranda has relatively very low gravity compared 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.080 to Earth. But despite the lower gravity, the fall would 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:52.960 probably still probably would still hurt you. 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:57.800 I mean, I guess in the future extreme base jumpers 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.680 might venture there and they're like robot avide hard bodies 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:04.280 and take a leap off, And in that case, I 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:06.280 guess you survived the fall because you're just back in 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:08.560 your actual body at the end of it. Yeah, always 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.280 safety precautions though, just a heap of robots at the 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:17.320 bottom though, just smashed down to a thin sheet. 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:22.439 So what causes this chaotic patchwork landscape? There are a 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:27.000 couple of hypotheses. One appears to be the idea of collisions. 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:31.920 Basically that Miranda was actually somewhat smashed to pieces by 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:35.359 collision with a large object, but these pieces did not 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:38.800 fly off into deep space. They were still caught in 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:43.080 orbit around Uranus, and they were ultimately attracted to each 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.679 other by gravity and reformed into a moon once again. 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.159 But then you'd have the different pieces sort of fitting 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:52.440 together weirdly, explaining the patchy surface. 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.240 Yeah, so a Miranda's a mess, but potentially she's a 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:57.120 work in progress. 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:00.680 Yes, And if that were indeed the case, that sort 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:02.800 of reminds me of the whole thing about like why 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:06.200 planetary defense concepts you know, like protecting Earth from comets 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:10.199 and asteroids, don't tend to focus on trying to blow 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.600 up incoming asteroids. So you got an asteroid that's coming 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:15.880 toward Earth, you don't want to like, you know, nuke 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.199 its core and smash it to a million pieces like 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:22.560 in you know movies like Armageddon or something, because fragmenting 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:26.439 it into pieces, it potentially would just still hit Earth anyway, 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:28.480 like the pieces would hit Earth, or it might be 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:32.640 gravitationally attracted to itself reform and still hit Earth. So instead, 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.440 the better plan is to deflect its path. You want 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:37.800 to blow it off course, not blow it up. 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:42.040 Yeahudget, nudget a little bit. Make sure it just gradually 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.640 goes off course far enough ahead of the injuring any 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:46.960 kind of danger zone. 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.840 But another possible explanation for the weird mismatched surface of 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:55.879 Miranda is a not a collision and a reforming together, 0:20:56.000 --> 0:21:00.320 but instead is like that Miranda is struck by like 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:05.440 large rocky objects or meteorites of some kind. These impacts 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:10.280 partially melt the ice that is underneath the surface of Miranda, 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.320 and then that melting from the heat of the impact 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:17.119 causes water to rise to the surface, icy water to 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:19.639 come up to the surface and then it re freezes 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:23.879 somewhat chaotically, giving rise to these strange patterns of different 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:25.160 types of surface texture. 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.480 Well, however, it comes together. Definitely worth pulling up an 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:30.640 image of this so you'll see what we're talking about here, 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:34.360 because it's, uh, visually, it's I think one of, if 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:46.600 not the most notable of the Uranian moons. All right, 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:48.920 let's move on to the next one. The next one 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:52.320 is aerial and this one, this one pulls double duty 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:57.560 because it is a spirit who serves Prospero in the tempest, 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:03.720 but it is also a sylph or a sylphid from 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:07.960 Alexander Pope's the Rape of the Lock. This is like 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:12.320 an invisible air elemental being that is brought up in 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.000 the works of Paracelsus. 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:15.400 Oh that's interesting. 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:18.960 Yeah, So anyway, double duty. This one's in both camps 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:23.040 of Pope and Shakespeare. Discovered by English astronomer William Lassel 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:26.240 in eighteen fifty one. The composition, you know, same as 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:29.520 Miranda and other larger moons, but carbon dioxide has also 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:34.000 been detected, and the significance here it's tidally locked like 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:37.400 our Moon, youngest surface of the moons of Uranus and 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:40.080 the most recent geologically active. 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:42.760 So like Earth and Knits Moon, if you were able 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:45.120 to stand on the surface of Uranus and look up 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:47.320 at Ariel, I mean you can't stand on the surface 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:49.080 of Uranus, but if you were to look up at Ariel, 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:51.320 you would always see the same side of it facing 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:55.440 the planet right. So, to invoke another Pink Floyd reference, there, 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.199 there would not actually be a permanent dark side of 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:00.320 the Moon on aerial but there would be an always 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:03.280 facing away side of the Moon, the far side. 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.480 All right. Moving on to the next one. Umbriel, also 0:23:06.520 --> 0:23:10.400 discovered by William Lassel in eighteen fifty one. This one 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.560 is named after an evil spirit in Alexander Pope's poem 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:17.680 Rape of the Lock significance here it has a mysterious 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:20.720 ring on its surface, revealed by Voyager two, which might 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.680 be due to frost deposits from an impact crater. It's 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:27.240 ancient and dark, as the shadowy name suggests. Just a 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:30.720