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

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Speaker 1: upcoming episode. Alright, as long as you don't put me

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Speaker 1: in that collider of yours. Not this time, but you know,

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Speaker 1: in general, no promises, so just make sure you always

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Speaker 1: read the waiver very carefully. All right, I'll wear a helmet.

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Speaker 1: So what are we researching? Well, I'm trying to understand rings,

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Speaker 1: all right, and how can I help? Well, you got

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Speaker 1: engaged and married recently, didn't you. Yeah, during the pandemic.

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Speaker 1: I had a zoom wedding. It 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? I got a real ring, not just an

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Speaker 1: n f T pointing tour ring. Yes, I have a

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

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Speaker 1: Is it made out of icy particles or mostly dust

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Speaker 1: and rocks. It was actually grown in a lab lab

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Speaker 1: grown diamonds, which is pretty neat to me. Well, I

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Speaker 1: wonder if castor and planetary rings have anything in common. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I wonder the same thing. You know. Actually, my husband

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Speaker 1: later told me that he had the choice to get

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Speaker 1: like a ring made out of a meteorite, So sometimes

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Speaker 1: they do converge. While it'd be awesome a little bit

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Speaker 1: of space on your finger. Well, we will have to

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Speaker 1: invite Saturn on the podcast to ask how it got

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Speaker 1: its rings and when it's fiance proposed to it. Saturn's

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Speaker 1: got the best bling in the Solar system. Hi, I'm Daniel.

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Speaker 1: I'm a physicist at UC Irvine and I do research

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Speaker 1: at the Large Hadron Collider. I am Katie Golden. I

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Speaker 1: host Creature Feature, a biology podcast, So I'm not actually

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Speaker 1: a physicist, but I have used a hula hoop before,

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Speaker 1: so I feel fairly confident I can talk about Saturn's

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Speaker 1: rings today. Oh. I think that makes you an engineer,

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Speaker 1: doesn't it. That's right, Just get me some tape and

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Speaker 1: a few paper clips, and boom, I'm an engineer. Well,

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and here we are twenty years later, I'm still wearing

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Speaker 1: the same silver ring. No, that's so sweet. I love

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Speaker 1: that story. Yeah, it's a nice memory. It helps me

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Speaker 1: understand where I came from. And you know, in the

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Speaker 1: same way, we can look up at the night sky

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

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Speaker 1: to get an idea of like where they came from,

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Speaker 1: what is the history of this planet? How did it

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Speaker 1: get that ring? Who gave it to it? And you know,

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Speaker 1: what is that wedding going to look like? So you're

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Speaker 1: saying because my ring was made in a lab, that

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Speaker 1: I two was made in a lab. Maybe your love

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Speaker 1: was grown in the lab, you know, which doesn't make

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Speaker 1: it any less authentic. I'm a big fan of labs

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Speaker 1: and research. It's very romantic test tube romance and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe in

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Speaker 1: which we try to grow your understanding of the nature

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Speaker 1: of this universe that we find ourselves and we cast

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Speaker 1: our minds out into the deepest darkness of space and

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Speaker 1: try to ring out understanding of everything that's out there

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Speaker 1: in the universe, and we zoom on into the tiniest

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Speaker 1: little things between our toes and under our fingernails, because

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Speaker 1: we want to understand the fundamental nature of the universe,

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Speaker 1: the nature of space and time itself, and matter and

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Speaker 1: energy and all those tiny little bits which, in their

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Speaker 1: two ing and frowing, come together to make the universe

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Speaker 1: that we know and love. My friend and co host

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Speaker 1: Jorge can't be with us today he is on vacation,

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Speaker 1: but we are very pleased to have the be Ringed,

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Speaker 1: be Jeweled, be Blinged Kiti two join this today. Well,

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Speaker 1: thank you for ringing me up for this episode. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I'm very excited. I love science, but that doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: I can't appreciate some good old fashioned cosmic jewelry. Well,

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

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

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Speaker 1: and you see them with ear rings or with a necklace,

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

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Speaker 1: bought for them, or they got it for some big event,

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Speaker 1: or maybe they inherited it from their family, and it

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Speaker 1: tells like an even deeper story about where they came

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

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Speaker 1: wearing jewelry is walking around telling little stories about themselves. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love that. Or it bears an ancient curse? Are

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Speaker 1: we going to take a deep dark turn on this podcast?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. It is Saturn cursed? Is that where

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Speaker 1: we're going to discover maybe Aliens visited the Solar System

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Speaker 1: and had a war with the Octopi living under the

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Speaker 1: oceans of Insulatus, and the rings are just the left

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Speaker 1: over remnants that interstellar conflict. That's very spooky, and I

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Speaker 1: would love that story for a ring that I had,

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Speaker 1: that it was made by some kind of intergalactic war.

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Speaker 1: I think it is one of the things about the

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Speaker 1: Solar System that really adds a bit of magic to it,

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Speaker 1: adds a bit of artistry to it, because of course

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Speaker 1: I think all the planets are lovely, but they're all orbs,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're they're all these roughly of course, not

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Speaker 1: exact precise spears, but you know, roughly spherical. But then

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Speaker 1: you have these rings. And it always when I see

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Speaker 1: Saturn that gives me a feeling of awe about the

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Speaker 1: mystery and artistry of space that I don't necessarily get

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Speaker 1: with other planets, absolutely because it's so easy to grab onto,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's so visible out there. And it must

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Speaker 1: have been an amazing moment in sixteen ten when Galileo

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

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Speaker 1: and how shocking to discover that planets can have these

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Speaker 1: incredible dis you know, these things are like ten times

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Speaker 1: the size of Saturn. We'll talk later about how Saturday

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Speaker 1: might have rings that go out like two hundred times

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Speaker 1: the size of its radius. It's an incredible thing. Like

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

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Speaker 1: if I was wearing a ring that was like two

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Speaker 1: hundred times the size of me. You know, some might

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Speaker 1: say that's a little overstated. It would be a statement piece,

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Speaker 1: for sure. You know. I was actually just in the

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Speaker 1: Galileo Museum in Florence, And when you think of Galileo

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Speaker 1: with his telescope, he's often depicted with this small, you know,

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Speaker 1: telescope he can hold in his hands. But you look

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Speaker 1: at the actual telescopes he used to observe Saturn and

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Speaker 1: they were huge. Yeah, he wasn't the inventor of the telescope,

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Speaker 1: but he was the first one to really perfect it

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

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Speaker 1: so he got like the biggest first scoop of all

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Speaker 1: these discoveries. You know, he saw the moons of Jupiter,

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Speaker 1: he saw the rings of Saturn. He's on mountains on

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Speaker 1: the Moon on a moment or like really look out

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Speaker 1: into the universe. And I think that one of the

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Speaker 1: most interesting things for me about it is that they

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Speaker 1: do reve yield the history of the Solar System. You know,

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Speaker 1: we look out unto the night sky and we want

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Speaker 1: to understand not just what's out there, but why it's

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Speaker 1: out there and why it looks the way that it does.

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Speaker 1: And so anything that's weird or strange or unusual that's

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Speaker 1: not just like a ball floating in the sky, Let's

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Speaker 1: just ask the question, how did that get there? How

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Speaker 1: long can that live? What does that tell us about

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Speaker 1: the history of the Solar System? Have those rings just

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

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Speaker 1: there since the beginning of the Solar System? Why do

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Speaker 1: Saturn have rings and not other planets? Or do they right?

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Speaker 1: There's just so many immediate questions that you can ask

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Speaker 1: when you see these rings, and then those questions open

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Speaker 1: the door to try to understand the formation of the

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Speaker 1: Solar System. The other aspect, which is super fascinating for me,

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Speaker 1: is just thinking about what physics can do. You know,

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Speaker 1: you throw a whole bunch of stuff out into space

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Speaker 1: and it forms stars and it forms planets, But not

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Speaker 1: just that right, it can also do these other incredible things.

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Speaker 1: And it's all these fascinating little wrinkles, these little bits

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

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Speaker 1: of and 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? Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there,

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Speaker 1: because I think I have the answer. It is aliens,

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Speaker 1: giant aliens doing ring toss with our planets, or maybe

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Speaker 1: it's hula hoops from a leftover enormous alien birthday party.

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Speaker 1: We're basically their garbage bin. But it's an interesting question

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Speaker 1: not just why are there rings, but how do planets

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

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

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Speaker 1: have more moons and fewer rings. What is the connection

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

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

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Speaker 1: System weird for having this incredible planet with these huge rings,

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Speaker 1: or are we weird for not having rings around every

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Speaker 1: single planet? These are the kinds of questions we can

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Speaker 1: now ask about our solar system because we have looked

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Speaker 1: out through our telescopes into even other solar systems around

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Speaker 1: other stars to try to get an answer to the

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Speaker 1: question of is our solar system strange or is our

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Speaker 1: solar system totally vanilla and typical. I find that an

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Speaker 1: interesting way to describe if our solar system is similar

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Speaker 1: to other solar systems, which is boring and vanilla. Well,

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

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Speaker 1: 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. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you would favor us being basic solar system with

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Speaker 1: our ugg boots and our Saturn's rings. That is kind

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Speaker 1: of an interesting personality quick personality tests, like would you

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Speaker 1: prefer our solar system to be unique and special in

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Speaker 1: us to be the only planet with life or would

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Speaker 1: you prefer us to be run of the mill lots

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Speaker 1: of solar systems like ours out there and not feel

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Speaker 1: so alone. I agree with you. I hope we're basic

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Speaker 1: so that we've got some friends out there. Exactly, We

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Speaker 1: can't answer that question directly today because our telescopes are

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Speaker 1: not powerful enough to look through the atmospheres of exo planets.

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Speaker 1: But we can look in our own backyard and try

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Speaker 1: to understand how our solar system formed and if there's

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Speaker 1: anything in it that we cannot explained. And it's an

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Speaker 1: incredible piece of science to look around you and understand

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Speaker 1: how we came together to build a model for the

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Speaker 1: processes that could have formed such incredible structures, and to

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Speaker 1: think about how long they might have taken. You know,

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Speaker 1: we've done something similar here on Earth by looking under

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Speaker 1: our feet and asking questions like do we understand how

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Speaker 1: the Earth formed? And how the mountains have formed? And

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Speaker 1: all the ridges that we see in the layers of rock,

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Speaker 1: and those things are clues, the clues that led us

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Speaker 1: to understand something really shocking, that the Earth is billions

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Speaker 1: of years old, not thousands of years old. Right. We

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

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

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Speaker 1: here on Earth, out there in space, and one of

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: still a big source of mystery, or people thought they

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

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Speaker 1: out there to our cadre of Internet volunteers, who are

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Speaker 1: my random questions without a chance to prepare, which gives

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Speaker 1: us a sense for what people know, what they think about,

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Speaker 1: and what they want to hear about. If you'd like

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Speaker 1: to participate for future episodes. Please don't be shy, just

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Speaker 1: write to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.

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Speaker 1: Before you hear these answers, think to yourself, do you

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Speaker 1: have a good idea of where rings come from on planets?

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Speaker 1: Here's what our listeners had to say, UM, and I'm

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Speaker 1: pretty sure that I learned about this that UM like

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Speaker 1: it's asteroids colliding near the planet itself and the remnants

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Speaker 1: of those asteroids going into orbit and creating a sort

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Speaker 1: of disc. I think the two classical ways are by

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Speaker 1: planets capturing space debris um that's just floating through the

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Speaker 1: Solar System, or by recapturing debris caused by an impact.

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Speaker 1: But I've also heard of a moon orbiting Saturn. I

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Speaker 1: believe that has a geyser and when the guys are

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Speaker 1: spits out water um it forms into ice crystals, and

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Speaker 1: then that joins the rings of Saturn. So maybe that's

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Speaker 1: another option. Well, the rings are kind of like small satellites,

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Speaker 1: I would say, like small moons, Like we have the

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Speaker 1: most most really tiny moons that get around the planet.

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Speaker 1: Each planet has its own way of doing the rings. Well,

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Speaker 1: I wanted to say that planets can get rings if

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Speaker 1: they collide with big rocky bodies, but I don't know

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Speaker 1: how that would work with like gas giants and how

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Speaker 1: they got their rings. So I'm going to guess that

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Speaker 1: it's just stuff that is left over um from when

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Speaker 1: the planet was formed, and it was just stuff that

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Speaker 1: was so far away when it was being formed that

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Speaker 1: it didn't become part of the planet, but it was

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Speaker 1: still 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 acreation

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Speaker 1: process of when a planets formed and the attraction of

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

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Speaker 1: really sure actually, because I think planets form when like

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Speaker 1: a heavy metal gets caught in orbit around the star,

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Speaker 1: so I think something similar happens around the planet. Debris

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Speaker 1: and maybe rocks or particles of ice or something um

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Speaker 1: gather around a planet in much the same way that

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Speaker 1: planets gather around stars. Does all seem like really intelligent answers,

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Speaker 1: but I still kind of like my giant alien ring

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Speaker 1: toss theory. We'll put it on the list as the

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Speaker 1: dark horse theory that might storm out at the end

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

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Speaker 1: So it seems like there are so many options for

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Speaker 1: what these rings could be made of. How on Earth

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Speaker 1: are we, or I should say, how in our Solar

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Speaker 1: system are we going to be able to figure out

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Speaker 1: what exactly they're made of? If there are so many

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Speaker 1: different theories, so many different options for what they could

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Speaker 1: be made of. Yeah, it's a great question. I listen

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Speaker 1: to these answers and seems to me like they form

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Speaker 1: in roughly two categories. There are some folks that say

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Speaker 1: that it's basically debris from other stuff that broke up,

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Speaker 1: like maybe you had comments or moons that smashed new

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: make a new comment or something. And the other category

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Speaker 1: is like, maybe it's just left over from when the

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Speaker 1: planet was formed, the same stuff that formed the planet,

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Speaker 1: but some of it didn't get into the planet. So

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Speaker 1: it seems like those are two different categories of ideas,

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Speaker 1: And you ask a great question, how could we possibly

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Speaker 1: ever figure this out? How could we know what the

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Speaker 1: history is of the Solar System? And the answer is that.

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Speaker 1: Of course, we can't just like watch a video of

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Speaker 1: its formation, though we'd love to, but we can just

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Speaker 1: look around us for clues. We can try to build

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Speaker 1: up models for how rings might form, and then compare

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Speaker 1: the details of those models to what we see. So

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Speaker 1: the short answer is we need more money and more

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Speaker 1: data to measure these rings, to look closely at them,

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Speaker 1: to see what they are made out of, how much

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Speaker 1: mass they have, what their distribution is. The more detail

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Speaker 1: we can get about what they look like and what

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Speaker 1: they're made out of, the better we can compare them

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

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Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like a worthy use of funding. However,

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Speaker 1: might I suggest an n f T of a farting

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Speaker 1: panda instead? I'll put that on the proposed list and

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Speaker 1: see where it goes. So when we're talking about rings,

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Speaker 1: like what is it? Because you know my wedding ring

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Speaker 1: is this solid band that sits around my finger. Hula

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Speaker 1: hoop is this very thin tourists that you kind of

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Speaker 1: use the motion of your hips to keep moving around

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Speaker 1: with its momentum? So what are the rings that are

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Speaker 1: around Saturn? Are they spinning around like a hula hoop

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Speaker 1: or they just kind of sitting on it, like my

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Speaker 1: wedding ring. It's a great question, and when it comes

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Speaker 1: to astronomy, you always have to start with the definition,

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Speaker 1: which immediately puts you in to a swamp, because nothing

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Speaker 1: falls nicely into clean categories out there in space. You know,

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

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Speaker 1: A lot of these definitions come from history because we

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Speaker 1: didn't really understand what was going on, and we just

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

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Speaker 1: of stuck with different categories and so often they could

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Speaker 1: be a bit of a mess. Well, we're lucky in

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Speaker 1: biology because species is super simple and never has that

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Speaker 1: problem exactly. Nature doesn't confine itself to our categories. Was

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: out there so that we can talk to each other

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Speaker 1: about it. So one of the most common definitions of

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

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Speaker 1: materials such as dust or moonlits. Moonlits. That sounds really cute,

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Speaker 1: what's a moonlit moon is like a little moon, you know,

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Speaker 1: like a little Moonito, the old baby moon, exactly a

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Speaker 1: little my in your moon. Immediately understand, these rings are

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Speaker 1: not actually a solid object. It's not like a hulu, right,

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Speaker 1: or the rings around Saturn are not huge circles. They're

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Speaker 1: actually a bunch of tiny little particles, a bunch of

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Speaker 1: chunks that are moving in the same orbit. And so

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Speaker 1: from far away it looks like a ring. Of course,

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: not touching each other. So cartoons have lied to me.

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Speaker 1: I cannot drive a race car or a skateboard around

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Speaker 1: the rings of Saturn. That's right. You can't do Mario

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Speaker 1: Kart on the rings of Saturn and you would fall

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Speaker 1: right through. It's very disappointing. Cartoons play it real fast

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Speaker 1: and loose with physics I'm discovering. And so basically a

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Speaker 1: ring is just like a disc of material in a

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Speaker 1: single orbit, moving all around. And that makes it a

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Speaker 1: little bit unusual because orbits are usually for one object

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Speaker 1: you know, like the Moon orbits the Earth and there's

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Speaker 1: nothing else in the Moon's orbit. It's not like there's

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Speaker 1: something else on the other side, or the Earth disorbiting

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Speaker 1: the Sun and there's nothing else in Earth's orbit, right,

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Speaker 1: it clears its own path. So it's a bunch of

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Speaker 1: individual things sharing a single orbit, kind of like a

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Speaker 1: lazy river at a water park exactly so to like

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Speaker 1: a lazy river. And once you define it that way,

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Speaker 1: you can ask questions like, well, what counts as a ring?

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Speaker 1: You know, does it have to be natural? For example,

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Speaker 1: like Earth has a bunch of stuff out there in space,

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Speaker 1: things we have launched out there, a bunch of satellites

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Speaker 1: in the same orbit, you know, zooming all around. Does

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Speaker 1: that count as a ring? Have we built our own

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Speaker 1: ring system around the Earth because all of the junk

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Speaker 1: that we put out there in space. Nobody talks about

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Speaker 1: Earth's rings, but technically, you know, it seems like that

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Speaker 1: might qualify. There's no like minimum mass requirement for the

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Speaker 1: rings as far as I can tell, so we're one

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Speaker 1: step closer to Halo am I right, high fibes everyone

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Speaker 1: who plays computer games. Another requirement for rings usually is

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Speaker 1: that they are pretty flat right, if you have just

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Speaker 1: like a swarm of spherical swarm of objects, then your

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Speaker 1: planet is just surrounded by junk. A ring is typically

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Speaker 1: something which is flattened, right, it's more like a disc.

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Speaker 1: And this already shows off what's going on with gravity.

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Speaker 1: You know, gravity has pulled the planet together and it's spinning,

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Speaker 1: and it's also pulled the ring together. And the reason

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Speaker 1: that rings form in disks is the same reason that

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Speaker 1: the Solar system is a disc. Right. That most of

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Speaker 1: the stuff is spinning in the same direction, along the

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Speaker 1: same plane, and that's because of conservation of angular momentum.

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Speaker 1: Stuff that spinning keeps spinning, and if gravity pulls it together,

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Speaker 1: it keeps spinning. It's harder for gravity to pull together

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Speaker 1: towards the spin axis than along the spin axis the

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Speaker 1: same way. For example, that like Earth resists falling into

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Speaker 1: the Sun because of its speed because of its angular momentum, right,

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Speaker 1: But the Earth didn't resist falling into the Sun's plane.

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Speaker 1: So gravity is free to compress things down into a

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Speaker 1: flat disc. But angular momentum keeps things spinning and keep

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Speaker 1: things from falling in That's what gives rings these sort

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Speaker 1: of flat structure. So that's another typical thing we expect

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Speaker 1: of rings that they're not spherical distributions of stuff. They're

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Speaker 1: like these flat disks. Because that's sort of like if

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Speaker 1: you pile a bunch of peas on a plate and

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Speaker 1: then spin the plate, all the p's are going to

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Speaker 1: scatter outwards and get everywhere, but in sort of a

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Speaker 1: flat circle. I've never done that experiment, but yes, in

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Speaker 1: my mind that that's exactly what you don't do that.

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Speaker 1: We call it pea spinning in this household. But in

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Speaker 1: our Solar system, of course, there's gravity, and gravity would

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Speaker 1: hold those p's in right, so those p's would end

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Speaker 1: up in like a circular orbit exactly instead of like

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Speaker 1: a bunch of different orbits. And so that's why the

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Speaker 1: planets are all roughly in the same plane, because they

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Speaker 1: have the same spin from the original blob of gas

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Speaker 1: and dust that formed our Solar system. And so that's

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Speaker 1: already a clue that tells you something about the origins

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Speaker 1: of these rings, because if we're if rings were formed

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Speaker 1: with the planet, then you would expect them to have

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Speaker 1: roughly the same alignment, the same spin as the planet.

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Speaker 1: And if they were not, then they necessarily have to

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Speaker 1: have that same spin that came in from like a

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Speaker 1: comet that smashed into the planet or broke up a moon,

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Speaker 1: it might give you a different kind of distribution. So

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Speaker 1: already that's a clue that tells you something about where

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Speaker 1: rings might have come from. Oh, that's really interesting. So

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Speaker 1: when you have debris from a planet's formation, everything's spinning

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Speaker 1: at the same rate, sort of going with the same flow.

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Speaker 1: But then if you have something smash into a planet,

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Speaker 1: release all these all this debris and it starts orbiting

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Speaker 1: the planet, it doesn't need to spin at the same

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Speaker 1: rate as the planet spins. Just like our moon. Our

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Speaker 1: moon doesn't spin at the same rate as Earth. Right,

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Speaker 1: that's right now, it does not, right, So that would

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Speaker 1: suggest that the moon was not necessarily formed when the

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Speaker 1: Earth was formed, right exactly. And we think that the

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Speaker 1: moon is the result of a huge collision, that something

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Speaker 1: came and smashed into the Earth and released an enormous

431
00:22:55,880 --> 00:23:00,240
Speaker 1: amount of debris which then coalesced into a moon. Right,

432
00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:02,920
Speaker 1: So that after that collision, Earth may have had a

433
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 1: very large cloud of debris which then probably coalesced into

434
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:11,080
Speaker 1: a ring system, which then further gathered into a moon.

435
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:14,439
Speaker 1: So our moon may have once been a ring. So

436
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: do we know with the rings of Saturn if they

437
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:20,119
Speaker 1: are moving at the same rate of Saturn where to

438
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:23,600
Speaker 1: differ rate The rings of Saturn are especially complicated because

439
00:23:23,640 --> 00:23:25,919
Speaker 1: there are so many rings, and some of them are

440
00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:27,800
Speaker 1: moving with Saturn, and some of them may actually be

441
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:32,439
Speaker 1: rotating the other direction. It's really tricky and complicated, and

442
00:23:32,440 --> 00:23:34,240
Speaker 1: we'll dig into it in a moment when we talk

443
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 1: about how the rings of planets are formed, the various

444
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 1: theories and the pieces of evidence for and against the

445
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:45,160
Speaker 1: first Let's take a quick break. All right, I'm gonna

446
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 1: try to imagine those rings moving in different directions without

447
00:23:49,400 --> 00:24:05,639
Speaker 1: getting sea sick during the break. All right, we are back.

448
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:09,679
Speaker 1: I got a little dizzy trying to think about Saturn's rings,

449
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: some moving in one direction, others moving in another. It's

450
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 1: pretty trippy. But yeah, I still have a lot of

451
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:20,199
Speaker 1: questions about these rings we're talking about, like how maybe

452
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: they're formed, whether they're formed when the planet forms out

453
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,959
Speaker 1: of basically the same stuff that the planet is formed

454
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:31,000
Speaker 1: out of, or if it is made out of kind

455
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,879
Speaker 1: of some outside stuff, stuff that wasn't around when the

456
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:36,880
Speaker 1: planet was formed, like by a collision, Like how maybe

457
00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:40,879
Speaker 1: our moon was formed do we know like what stuff

458
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,880
Speaker 1: is inside of these rings? And how do we know

459
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:47,320
Speaker 1: what is inside a ring without actually going up there

460
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: and taking a scoop of it. Yeah, that's a good question.

461
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:51,639
Speaker 1: One thing we can do is we can look at

462
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 1: it through a telescope and see what kind of light

463
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:56,880
Speaker 1: it reflects. Is it opaque, is it transparent? Is transparent

464
00:24:56,920 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: to different kinds of light? Each planet reflects sunlight, but

465
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 1: or all so emits particles, And so we can see

466
00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: whether the rings create shadows in some sort of the

467
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:08,439
Speaker 1: wind of Jupiter or the wind of Saturn. And we

468
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,120
Speaker 1: have also sent probes out there, and these probes will

469
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: talk about them in a minute have made some really

470
00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 1: startling discoveries by getting very close up to these rings.

471
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:18,679
Speaker 1: But first I want to talk about sort of the

472
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: general question like talked a minute ago about the Earth's

473
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: moon and how it used to be a ring. And

474
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: you know, in my mind, one of the first question

475
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 1: is is like why do sometimes things form together into

476
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,439
Speaker 1: a moon and sometimes they don't and they stay as

477
00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: rings or is there like a process there where every

478
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 1: ring eventually turns into a moon. It's really fascinating question,

479
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: and it turns out to be totally dominated by the

480
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 1: gravity of the planet and how far you are away

481
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:48,320
Speaker 1: from that planet. So Saturn's rings could conceivably have turned

482
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: into moons if they had been in a different situation. Conceivably. Yeah,

483
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,200
Speaker 1: And it actually turns out the Saturn's rings have little

484
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:58,639
Speaker 1: moonlits inside them that move around and shepherd them and

485
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:01,199
Speaker 1: keep them apart. Though really fun. But the crucial thing

486
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:03,880
Speaker 1: that determines whether something is a moon or a ring,

487
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 1: whether it gets torn up into little bits, or whether

488
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:09,199
Speaker 1: it gets clumped together by gravity, is the gravity of

489
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 1: the host planet. You know, you have a bunch of

490
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: stuff out in the middle of space, gravity will eventually

491
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 1: gather it together. Gravity is very, very weak, it's the

492
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 1: weakest force we know. But it's also very patient and

493
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:22,399
Speaker 1: eventually will pull things together to make a clump. So

494
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,679
Speaker 1: you might expect that all rings would be transient, that

495
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: they would be eventually just gathered together into a moon,

496
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily the case because of the gravity

497
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: of the planet. This gravity does more than just pull

498
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:36,879
Speaker 1: the moon into orbit or keep the rings in orbit.

499
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 1: You can also pull them apart. This is the concept

500
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the podcast before, called tidal forces.

501
00:26:43,280 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 1: The ideas they have a very strong source of gravity

502
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: like Jupiter or a black hole, or the Sun or

503
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: even the Earth, and it's pulling on you right But

504
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,439
Speaker 1: the strength of its force on you depends on how

505
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: close you are to that object. So if your feet

506
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: are closer to the Sun than your head, then the

507
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: Sun is pulling on your feet harder than it's pulling

508
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: on your head, and effectively it means it's trying to

509
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:11,040
Speaker 1: pull your head off of your body. Nobody ever said

510
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: the Sun was a nice guy. Okay, oh, I know what.

511
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,439
Speaker 1: I know that right now in July, and that's happening

512
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 1: right now. If you stand on the surface of the Earth,

513
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:22,120
Speaker 1: then the Earth is literally trying to pull your head

514
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: off of your body. Now we've evolved with strong enough

515
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:27,159
Speaker 1: next or is this this and the title forces here

516
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:30,879
Speaker 1: are not that strong? Yeah, take that Earth. But if

517
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:34,159
Speaker 1: you're in a situation where the gravitational forces get strong

518
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 1: very quickly, so the force on your feet is much

519
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 1: stronger than the force on your head, you can be

520
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 1: torn apart. And if you're near a black hole for example,

521
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:44,880
Speaker 1: where this is very dramatic, this is what we call spaghettification,

522
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:47,919
Speaker 1: you can get pulled apart into tiny little pieces, the

523
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:52,359
Speaker 1: most delicious way to describe a horrific that exactly. And

524
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 1: we've seen this happen when comet shoemaker Levy came into

525
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: the Solar System in the nineties. It was headed for

526
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: an impact with Jupiter, but before it hit Jupiter, it

527
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 1: made a near miss and Jupiter pulled it apart into

528
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: twenty six pieces. So you have this comment coming into

529
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,360
Speaker 1: the Solar System, which got shredded by jupiter gravity. Then

530
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 1: it went around the Sun and it hit Jupiter twenty

531
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: six different times, which is pretty awesome for everybody to

532
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,480
Speaker 1: look at these huge fireballs the size of the Earth.

533
00:28:19,560 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: But for our six today, this is just a demonstration

534
00:28:22,119 --> 00:28:25,439
Speaker 1: of tidal forces. So a planet doesn't just pull stuff

535
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:27,880
Speaker 1: in and keep it in orbit. It can also tear

536
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 1: it apart if you are close enough, I see so

537
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: because gravity gets weaker the further away you are from something,

538
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: but stronger the closer you are to something. If part

539
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: of you is far enough away that it's pretty weak

540
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 1: and it's not pulling on you, but the other part

541
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: of you is closer and it's tugging on you more strongly,

542
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: that part of you is going to get kind of

543
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: ripped off of the other part of you. Is that

544
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: what's happening to these poor baby little moonlits, That's what's

545
00:28:56,120 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 1: happening to those rings. So if you're a big blob

546
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: of material and you're too close to a planet, you

547
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,200
Speaker 1: cannot form a moon because the planet will just keep

548
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: tearing you apart. If you're far enough away, then you

549
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: can form a moon. So there's a limit there. It's

550
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: called the Roche limit r O. C h E, after

551
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: a scientist who came up with this idea. If you

552
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: are closer than the Roche limit, then you cannot form

553
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: a gravitationally bound object because the gravity of the planet

554
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: is stronger than you're inherent gravity to hold yourself together.

555
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: If you're out past it, then the tidal forces are

556
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 1: so weak that you can clump the ring together into

557
00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 1: a moon. So past the Roche limit you get moons.

558
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 1: Closer in than the Roche limit, you get rings. So

559
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 1: Saturn's rings are too close to Saturn itself to form

560
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: the moon, whereas our moon, which maybe started as a ring,

561
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 1: was far enough away that it could do its own

562
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: thing without Earth overbearing and deciding its fate for it.

563
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and it depends a little bit on

564
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:58,560
Speaker 1: like what you're made out of. The roche limit itself

565
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 1: is technically just as me your hell together gravitationally, but

566
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:04,120
Speaker 1: things can also be held together in different ways. You know,

567
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 1: if you have a blob of diamond, for example, as

568
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: opposed to a loose bag of golf balls, then the

569
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 1: diamond is going to be able to hold itself together

570
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: closer to a planet than your bag of golf balls.

571
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: I wish my wedding ring was a bag of golf balls. Now,

572
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 1: that would be fun. I hope your husband listens to

573
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: this podcast to hear you complaining about his gift to you.

574
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 1: There's a beautiful gift of love. I wish it was

575
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: a bag of golf balls. Well, in the case of

576
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: our system, for example, you know, the moon holds itself together,

577
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:35,640
Speaker 1: but if it was closer to the Earth, the Earth

578
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: would shred it. Our moon is about three five thousand

579
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 1: kilometers away, and the roche limit for the Earth and

580
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:45,200
Speaker 1: an object the size of the moon is about ten

581
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers, so the Moon would have to be much

582
00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 1: much closer to the Earth in order for the Earth

583
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: to pull it apart um and make it into a

584
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,200
Speaker 1: ring system. And so that's why the moon is a moon.

585
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:58,640
Speaker 1: In a similar way. You know, the Sun has a

586
00:30:58,680 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: tidal force on the Earth, pulling on the part of

587
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: the Earth that's closer to its stronger than it's pulling

588
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: on part of the Earth that's further from it. So

589
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: the Sun is trying to rip the Earth apart, but

590
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 1: the Earth is too far away, it's too strong. It

591
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: has structural integrity that keeps the Sun from destroying us

592
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,080
Speaker 1: or about a hundred and fifty million kilometers from the Sun.

593
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: If we were just less than a million kilometers, then

594
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: the Earth would get pulled apart and we get torn

595
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 1: into a ring system around the Sun. Seems like planetary

596
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 1: bodies are like complicated friendships. You've got to set strong

597
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:33,479
Speaker 1: boundaries or else you're going to get destroyed exactly. So

598
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: you just you gotta know where you are. You know,

599
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: you've got to have the conversation sometimes to figure this out. Listen, son,

600
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: we love you. You provide us with energy that gives

601
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: us food. But you know, if we're too close to you,

602
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,400
Speaker 1: we all die. So you know how it is. And

603
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 1: so this is the basic physics of it, right, You

604
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 1: get too close, you turn into a ring. You stay

605
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:52,880
Speaker 1: far away, you can be a moon. But that doesn't

606
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 1: answer the question of like where these things come from,

607
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 1: because there's still two basic ideas there. One is that

608
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: some of this stuff is from the original formation of

609
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: the Solar System. You know, you have this huge cloud

610
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 1: of gas and dust. A lot of it formed the Sun.

611
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: Some of the clumps together to form planets. You can

612
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 1: imagine that some of the stuff is close enough to

613
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: the planet that it gets trapped by the planet's gravity,

614
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: but not so close that it actually gets sucked in.

615
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: It has like too much angular momentum to actually fall

616
00:32:20,760 --> 00:32:23,239
Speaker 1: to the Earth, you know, the same way, like the

617
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:26,160
Speaker 1: Earth right now has particles that are trapped by its

618
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 1: gravity and also particles that are not. The Earth's atmosphere

619
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: is boiling away into space. So you can imagine that

620
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: at the edge of the planetary formation, there might have

621
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 1: been particles there that didn't quite get captured by the gravity,

622
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: but they're too close to clump together into their own moon.

623
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: So that's one theory of how these rings get formed.

624
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: They're like the fastest moving bits of the planet didn't

625
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: quite get captured, but they're not fast enough moving to

626
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: be like out on a further orbit, far enough away

627
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: where they could make their own moon. So the other

628
00:32:56,480 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 1: theory has to do with something that wasn't there during

629
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: in the origin of the Solar System coming in and

630
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 1: creating some debris around Saturn or whatever planet decides to

631
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 1: make a ring. Yeah, so the first theory that they

632
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: are made with the planet that suggests the rings are old, right,

633
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 1: that they're as old as the Solar System, like four

634
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 1: and a half billion years old. The other theories you

635
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 1: say is that rings could be fairly new. Maybe they're

636
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: sort of transient. Maybe they come from a cataclysmic event,

637
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 1: like something comes in and smashes into a moon or

638
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:31,720
Speaker 1: breaks up a moon, and that moon gets shredded into pieces,

639
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: and maybe it will eventually get gathered back together into

640
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 1: a new moon. Right, So these rings might be short

641
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:41,640
Speaker 1: lived events in that scenario, like a comet or an

642
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 1: asteroid or something else might have created this huge mess.

643
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 1: But the Solar System will eventually clean itself up. But

644
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: if it's in that sweet spot where it's still getting

645
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: shredded by the planet's gravitational force, but it's not so

646
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:58,880
Speaker 1: close that doesn't get sucked into the planet's going to

647
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: stay a ring, right, it could right, It depends a

648
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: lot on the details. Like you could have a moon

649
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: that was past the roche limit, but then an impact

650
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: creates a huge amount of debris, some of which falls

651
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:10,759
Speaker 1: into the sort of the ring zone, some of it

652
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:12,439
Speaker 1: could fall into the planet, or some of it could

653
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:14,760
Speaker 1: stay out in the sort of moon area and form

654
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: a new moon. So you're right that you could also

655
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,279
Speaker 1: form rings, which then can be fairly stable. If you

656
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:22,480
Speaker 1: have a collision which creates a lot of mess, and

657
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: some of that mess is stable in the sort of

658
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: ring zone, then you could have a long, living ring.

659
00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 1: That's how I like to describe myself, a stable mess.

660
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: So that seems really difficult to kind of parse out

661
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: those theories, I guess without taking a closer look, because

662
00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:43,120
Speaker 1: stuff that comes crashing into Saturn and stuff that was

663
00:34:43,200 --> 00:34:47,280
Speaker 1: originally there when Saturn was formed may from a distance

664
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 1: look pretty similar unless we keep investigating right exactly, And

665
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:55,400
Speaker 1: so to understand where its specific ring comes from, we

666
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 1: need to look at that ring in detail, and we

667
00:34:57,360 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 1: need to think about isn't made out of the same

668
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:01,439
Speaker 1: stuff as the plan in it or something weird and new?

669
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: Does it look like it's aged a lot, and does

670
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,400
Speaker 1: it look like it's a fairly fresh result of a

671
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:08,959
Speaker 1: collision or does it look like really weathered from lots

672
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 1: of Solar system radiation and collisions. We can also understand

673
00:35:12,680 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: the distribution of the rings, like where the mass is

674
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:17,759
Speaker 1: in the ring, and build models to see like is

675
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: it stable, could it hold itself together? Could have developed

676
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:23,720
Speaker 1: into this over time? So for each ring, the crucial

677
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: thing is to get as much information as possible and

678
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 1: then to build these models to try to explain what

679
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 1: we see, and that will help us discriminate between various scenarios.

680
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: And a key thing to understand is that it might

681
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:37,279
Speaker 1: not be one answer for every ring. It might be

682
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: there are some rings that are ancient and other rings

683
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 1: that are very fresh. What is the difference between what

684
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 1: we can tell with like a telescope here on Earth

685
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,479
Speaker 1: versus something we send out to get a closer look.

686
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:52,240
Speaker 1: There's no fundamental difference, right. We can do the same

687
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 1: things here as we can do getting close. But of

688
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:57,360
Speaker 1: course the closer you get, the better your data. You

689
00:35:57,360 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: can resolve these things better just because you're closer up,

690
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 1: so you don't need like as big a lens. You

691
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 1: can also bring instruments closer up, you know, things like

692
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 1: spectrometers to measure these things. There's one thing that you

693
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 1: can do by sending a satellite that you can't do

694
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 1: from Earth, which is to try to measure the mass

695
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:15,719
Speaker 1: of the rings. We'll talk about it when we get

696
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: into Saturn, when we send Cassini out to Saturn and

697
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 1: actually dove in between the rings and the planets and

698
00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: measure the effect of the rings gravity on Cassini itself

699
00:36:27,080 --> 00:36:29,560
Speaker 1: as a way to measure the mass of the rings.

700
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:31,879
Speaker 1: And that's just not something you can do from Earth.

701
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: That's something that requires perturbing, a gravitationally throwing something out

702
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: there which is going to actually interact with the mass

703
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 1: of the ring itself to see how much stuff there

704
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 1: is in there. Is it dangerous for the satellite to

705
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: be in the rings? Like, is it going to get

706
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: hit by a bunch of little little space baby? It

707
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: can be dangerous, But a dove in between in one

708
00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: of the gaps to avoid collisions. Yeah, And you know

709
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:57,840
Speaker 1: these things seem smooth, they seem like, oh, it's a

710
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:01,080
Speaker 1: continuous blob, but actually there's lots of gaps in between them,

711
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:03,720
Speaker 1: so you could fly through the rings and survive, though,

712
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: you know, it would be a little bit harrowing. I

713
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,759
Speaker 1: see it, well, brave little satellite, But we don't have

714
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 1: any satellites that have like a little extendable ice cream

715
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: scoop that scoops up some of the stuff in the rings.

716
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:18,920
Speaker 1: So how do we know what they're made of? And

717
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:20,920
Speaker 1: do we know what they're made of? So we can

718
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: so we know a little bit about what they're made

719
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,000
Speaker 1: out of based on our models, you know what's in

720
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:28,279
Speaker 1: the Solar system, and also based on our studies of

721
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: what light reflects off of them. That's really our best

722
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 1: way to understand what's in them. Mostly we think that

723
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: the rings are made out of ice and dust, and

724
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 1: that's also you know what the planets are made out of.

725
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 1: The Planets when they were forming, were made out of

726
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: the basic ingredients of the Solar system, which was dust

727
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:47,799
Speaker 1: and ice and gas. Now, most of the gas got

728
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: slurped up by the Sun or by the gas giants themselves,

729
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,839
Speaker 1: and so you're left over with ice and dust. Now,

730
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: in the inner Solar system, a lot of that ice

731
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: is vaporized. But in the outer Solar system, past what

732
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 1: we call the frost line, it was cold enough for

733
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:03,919
Speaker 1: that ice to stay solid, and so it helped form

734
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 1: some of these ice giants, And so the rings are

735
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 1: made out of that same stuff, mostly ice and dust.

736
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: Beyond the frost line, there's a lot of ice in them.

737
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:15,400
Speaker 1: Saturn's rings, for example, are mostly icy particles in closes ring.

738
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: You expect more rock and dust in rings. So when

739
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:20,640
Speaker 1: we're talking about ice, you know, I think of I

740
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:22,919
Speaker 1: mean especially today because it's so hot, but I think

741
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: of a big chunk of ice that I would put

742
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:27,839
Speaker 1: in my drink, like in my glass. But is that

743
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: what this ice is? Are they big chunks? Is it

744
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:34,399
Speaker 1: sort of like ice crystals and a bunch of them?

745
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: What form does this ice take? So when we're talking

746
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 1: about ice, we do mean water ice. This is like

747
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 1: h duo. But there's also other kinds of ice, you know,

748
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:45,800
Speaker 1: ammonia ice and other kinds of things. So when chemists

749
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,839
Speaker 1: say ice, they mean a wide range of stuff, not

750
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:51,160
Speaker 1: just the stuff you put in your summer cocktails. But

751
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: it does include you know, drinkable water ice, like if

752
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: you are building a colony around Saturn and you need water,

753
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:01,520
Speaker 1: like the rings are a great source of water the

754
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: humans could actually drink and it comes in chunks. You know.

755
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:06,800
Speaker 1: Some of these things are as small as a centimeter,

756
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:10,000
Speaker 1: like cute little ice cubes that would fit in your glass.

757
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:11,520
Speaker 1: And some of them are like are as big as

758
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:15,280
Speaker 1: ten meters, so you know, like really pretty big chunks.

759
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: You'd have to be a giant to enjoy that in

760
00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 1: your limited So I couldn't theory right that satellite hold

761
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:23,719
Speaker 1: out a glass eliminated and get some ice in there.

762
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,480
Speaker 1: As long as I don't get pulverized by a giant

763
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 1: ice chunk, that's great news. What's the dust made out of?

764
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:32,919
Speaker 1: So the dust is just you know, silicates, it's like rock,

765
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: the same kind of stuff that the Earth is made

766
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:37,800
Speaker 1: out of. Like it's just basically dirt, you know, huge

767
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,280
Speaker 1: chunks of rock and dirt. And some of these things

768
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:43,760
Speaker 1: have organic compounds in them, you know. We wonder about

769
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: like the formation of life whatever. The interesting area of

770
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:49,759
Speaker 1: research is like where do organic molecules come from the

771
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 1: basic building blocks of life? Are they only found on

772
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: Earth or are they found all over the universe? So

773
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 1: looking at the rings helps us understand that kind of thing.

774
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 1: We also study asteroids and comets and we find is

775
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: that there are organic compounds all over the Solar system.

776
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 1: These basic building blocks are not rare, They're everywhere. So

777
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 1: you've got ice, which is, you know, the solid form

778
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:14,880
Speaker 1: of water, and you've got organic compounds. Is there a

779
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 1: reason why we wouldn't expect there to be life on Saturn?

780
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: Is it because the ice would be solid? Or is

781
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 1: it because Saturn's surface is not hospitable to the formation

782
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 1: of life. I don't know if there's life on Satura.

783
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: And of course, if there is, life on Saturday would

784
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: have to be quite different from life on Earth because

785
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 1: the environment on Saturday is very different. Right Saturday is

786
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,439
Speaker 1: a gas giant and so it's very high pressure. There's

787
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 1: a lot of radiation on Saturn, so it would have

788
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: to be quite different. But one of the moons of Saturn, Insulatus,

789
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: which we've talked about, has an icy shell, and underneath

790
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:53,400
Speaker 1: is a liquid ocean, and that liquid ocean is partially

791
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: kept liquid by those tidal forces. Saturny is squeezing that moon,

792
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 1: which keeps it from freezing. It's imparting energy to it,

793
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,680
Speaker 1: sort of like by massaging it with its gravity. So

794
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: in the water under the surface of Ensilatus might be

795
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:10,879
Speaker 1: some life. We just don't know, but the rings are

796
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 1: mostly frozen. They're mostly just big chunks of ice. And

797
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:17,440
Speaker 1: you know, there's a fascinating sort of geometrical structure here

798
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: because they are very, very wide. You know, these things

799
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:25,399
Speaker 1: are like seventy two hundred thousand kilometers wide. We're talking

800
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 1: about Saturn's rings, but in terms of thickness, they're like

801
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: twenty meters thick. So there are tens of thousands of

802
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:35,719
Speaker 1: kilometers wide and only tens of meters thick. If you

803
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:38,319
Speaker 1: had a sheet of paper of this thickness, they would

804
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 1: have to be like a kilometer wide sheet of paper

805
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 1: to have the same proportions as Saturn's rings. That's an

806
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 1: idea for your science project, elementary schoolers, a model of

807
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: Saturn's rings. And you know, you can see Saturn's rings

808
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 1: from Earth, which is incredible without a really powerful telescope.

809
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: But there's a lot more rings to Saturn than you

810
00:41:57,520 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 1: can just see. There's three really bright ring which astronomers

811
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:04,799
Speaker 1: have cleverly named A, B, and C, of course, but

812
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 1: there are other rings that go out even further out

813
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 1: to the G ring and the E ring, and these

814
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: go out like past three to nine times the radius

815
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: of Saturn itself, So like the volume of Saturn is

816
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 1: dominated by these rings. It's like the biggest thing in

817
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:24,479
Speaker 1: the Saturn system. That's really interesting. So how many rings

818
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 1: are there total? Denal, Well, there are rings out to

819
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:29,480
Speaker 1: G rings and the rings right and so there are

820
00:42:29,600 --> 00:42:31,719
Speaker 1: like dozens of these rings. And it depends a little

821
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:33,840
Speaker 1: bit on how you count, because each of the rings

822
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: can be subdivided into like sub rings. And some of

823
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: these rings that have there are these gaps between them

824
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: which are maintained by these little shepherd moons. So you

825
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 1: have these little moonlits which are strong enough to survive

826
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:48,719
Speaker 1: inside the roche limit. Remember the rocial limit not a

827
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:50,960
Speaker 1: hard and fast rule, depending on what you're made out of.

828
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: So if you're a small enough moon and you made

829
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 1: have a really tough stuff and you can survive in

830
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,520
Speaker 1: the ring system and you sort of perturb the rings,

831
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:01,239
Speaker 1: you can like keep the rings from mixing with each other.

832
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:03,880
Speaker 1: So a lot of these gaps are because there's a moon.

833
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:06,800
Speaker 1: They are a little moonlit that's keeping them apart, a

834
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:10,799
Speaker 1: little hall monitor moon that's adorable exactly, and it keeps

835
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,279
Speaker 1: them having the like really crisply sharply defined edges. It

836
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 1: seems like there's a bunch of mass and these rings,

837
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: how do we know that, like Saturn's gravity is strong

838
00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:25,920
Speaker 1: enough to keep them in that sort of sweet spot

839
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 1: of staying rings and not drifting out or forming moons.

840
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:32,919
Speaker 1: So we didn't know until pretty recently how much mass

841
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 1: there was. You knew we could see it, but we

842
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 1: didn't really know like how much stuff is there is

843
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: equivalent to a moon? Is it like thousand times and moons?

844
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:41,799
Speaker 1: It much less than a moon of Saturn. And so

845
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:43,880
Speaker 1: it was when Cassini went up there and it passed

846
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:46,799
Speaker 1: between these rings that it gave us a measurement for

847
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:49,239
Speaker 1: how much mass there is. And what we discovered was

848
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 1: that the rings had sort of surprisingly low mass. We

849
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: expected them to have some more mass, to be like

850
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 1: more substantial, but they're really sort of like light and fluffy.

851
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,719
Speaker 1: The other thing that's really interesting for Cassini is that

852
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 1: we got these very close up pictures of what these

853
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: rings were made out of, and scientists were surprised to

854
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 1: see that the components of the rings were still sort

855
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: of sharp, you know, they have like crisp edges to them.

856
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: They're really quite reflective compared to what we expected if

857
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:17,120
Speaker 1: these rings were ancient. If they've been there for a

858
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: long long time, you would expect them to bump into

859
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 1: each other. Things eventually get rounded. All the radiation from

860
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:25,319
Speaker 1: Saturn would have weathered them a little bit. That gives

861
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: people the impression that maybe these things are quite new. Right,

862
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: If you add up all the mass of these rings,

863
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 1: it's just about the mass of a typical moon of Saturn,

864
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:37,760
Speaker 1: which is very suggestive. It says maybe this was once

865
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 1: a moon of Saturn. Maybe one of the moons of

866
00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 1: Saturn got smashed up in a collision, they bounced into

867
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:45,880
Speaker 1: each other, or something came into the Solar system and

868
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 1: destroyed a moon of Saturn and created this big mess

869
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 1: which then fell into the Roche limit and became the

870
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: rings of Saturn. It's a theory. We just don't know,

871
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: but it's one speculation. So if when you're saying these

872
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 1: are relatively new, what do you mean by that? Because

873
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: I've learned that when you say new in terms of

874
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: the Solar System or the universe, it means very old exactly.

875
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:12,279
Speaker 1: It means new on a universe time scale. So we're

876
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:16,240
Speaker 1: talking like maybe in the last hundred million years, whereas

877
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:18,960
Speaker 1: the Solar system is four and a half billion years

878
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 1: old if you're forty five, for example, saying you had

879
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: a ring in the last year or so makes it

880
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: feel sort of new, right, Yeah, I mean my ring

881
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 1: feels still pretty new even though it's about a year old.

882
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: But yes, so that is really interesting. Do you think

883
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:39,719
Speaker 1: these rings around Saturn are permanent? Well, we don't know

884
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 1: how long they are going to last. If they're fairly new,

885
00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:44,799
Speaker 1: it suggests that they might not. They might be like

886
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:48,319
Speaker 1: falling into Saturn. Saturn might be losing its moods as

887
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 1: its gravity pulls these little bits into it. Or they

888
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 1: could also be quite stable, right, even if they are new,

889
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 1: they could still be stable if they ended up in

890
00:45:55,960 --> 00:45:58,360
Speaker 1: the right spot, if they're within the roche limit. So

891
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 1: in order to understand that whether it's and it's going

892
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: to keep its rings, we need to understand some of

893
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:05,240
Speaker 1: the process is going on there, like is Saturn gathering

894
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 1: these things up? Are things falling into Saturn or not.

895
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:10,719
Speaker 1: We also need to understand like whether there are new

896
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: sources for these rings. That same moon we talked about

897
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:17,720
Speaker 1: insult Us also has geysers on it, so like cracks

898
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: in those oceans shoot water out into space, constantly, and

899
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,240
Speaker 1: this is new material for rings, as those newly formed

900
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:28,759
Speaker 1: crystals in space gets sucked in by Saturn's gravity. So

901
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:31,560
Speaker 1: there's a really far out ring called the E ring,

902
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: which probably is being constantly replenished by geysers from one

903
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: of Saturn's moons. Well, that's interesting. So you've got like

904
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: a sprinkler system that is keeping these rings alive. Well,

905
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:47,440
Speaker 1: I hope Saturn has a sense of commitment so keeps

906
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:50,280
Speaker 1: that ring for our benefit because it is so pretty

907
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 1: to look at. But I'm also curious why Saturn is

908
00:46:55,200 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: so unique in its rings in the Solar System, or

909
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:01,680
Speaker 1: whether it is unique. But first I need to take

910
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 1: a break, and I'm gonna do a little hula hooping

911
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 1: so I can feel more like I am saturned, so

912
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 1: I can visualize what it's like to be saturned. And

913
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:29,880
Speaker 1: we're back after an exhausting five minutes of me hula hooping.

914
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,440
Speaker 1: Remind me never to do that again. But I was

915
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 1: asking before the break, is Saturn unique in the Solar

916
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:39,960
Speaker 1: System in terms of its rings and why is it unique?

917
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: Because it seems like it at least has the most

918
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:46,480
Speaker 1: spectacular rings in the Solar System. It definitely has the

919
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,520
Speaker 1: most spectacular rings and the most obvious from Earth, but

920
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:51,839
Speaker 1: it turns out it's actually not unique, and that there

921
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 1: are rings all over the Solar System, and there are

922
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: rings that might be right in our backyard and in

923
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 1: our future. When you look up at more Cars, which

924
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: is one of our neighboring planets, you don't see rings

925
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:05,720
Speaker 1: on it. But that might be different in about thirty

926
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:09,320
Speaker 1: two fifty million years, because Mars is in the process

927
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 1: of pulling apart its moons and shredding them, so they

928
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 1: eventually might turn into rings. So physicists out there, I

929
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: want to give you some advice. If you are in

930
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:22,319
Speaker 1: a relationship and you tell your partner, I see a

931
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:25,919
Speaker 1: ring in our future, just before warned that they may

932
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: not know you're talking about Mars, and that you've got

933
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 1: to wait quite a while. You know, we're talking about

934
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 1: tens of millions of years, and Mars is a really

935
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 1: fascinating case because it might sort of up end this clear,

936
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 1: crisp difference between rings and moons a little bit. I

937
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 1: read a recent paper that suggests that it might be

938
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:48,800
Speaker 1: in the middle of a ring moon cycle. Then it

939
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:51,760
Speaker 1: might be forming moons which then get shredded into rings.

940
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:54,479
Speaker 1: Which then get formed back into moons. So it could

941
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,760
Speaker 1: be like slashing back and forth between ringed and mooned

942
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:00,239
Speaker 1: and ringed and mooned. That's interesting, I do you know

943
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: some people like that. But so how does it If

944
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:06,959
Speaker 1: it keeps shifting back and forth, that must mean that

945
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:11,319
Speaker 1: this roche limit is not always stable. What makes it unstable? Well,

946
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 1: it depends again on how strong this thing is, the

947
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:18,120
Speaker 1: structural integrity of the object, and exactly where it is.

948
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,840
Speaker 1: The idea here is you have a giant impact, and

949
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:23,759
Speaker 1: this giant impact doesn't just create a big spray of

950
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 1: debris which can form into rings and moons, but it

951
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:30,400
Speaker 1: can also actually change the gravitational field of the planet itself,

952
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 1: so like exactly where the roche limit is can change.

953
00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: So you can have, for example, the formation of a moon,

954
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: which can last for a little while, but then as

955
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: the planet itself settles back down, you know, part of

956
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:44,399
Speaker 1: this debris then falls back onto the planet, it can

957
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: change where the roche limit is. So the moon forms

958
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 1: when the rocial limits in one place, but then as

959
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: the stuff settles in and some of it falls onto

960
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 1: the planet, the rochial limit shifts, and so the moons

961
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:57,759
Speaker 1: can then be torn apart. Some of that stuff might

962
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:00,239
Speaker 1: fall down to the planet, some of it might former ring,

963
00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:02,479
Speaker 1: some of it might like form like a half moon

964
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:06,360
Speaker 1: which gets pushed out even further. So we're talking about Mars'

965
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:10,240
Speaker 1: potential future here and potential past. But you also mentioned

966
00:50:10,239 --> 00:50:12,800
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of rings in the Solar

967
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:15,799
Speaker 1: system currently, right, There are a lot of rings in

968
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 1: the Solar System exactly. So Jupiter, for example, also has rings.

969
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:20,959
Speaker 1: These are interesting because they're one of the first ones

970
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:24,359
Speaker 1: discovered by a satellite. Like it's very hard to see

971
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:29,239
Speaker 1: Jupiter's rings from Earth, even with a very very powerful telescope,

972
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 1: and so these were discovered in seventy nine by voyage

973
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 1: of one And the reason that they're hard to see

974
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 1: is that they're very faint and it consists mostly of dust,

975
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 1: and people think that they're probably just constantly created by

976
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:45,319
Speaker 1: micro meteorites hitting the planets moons. Remember, Jupiter is very

977
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:48,479
Speaker 1: very massive and it's very strong gravity, so it's likely

978
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 1: just like suck a lot of this stuff up. But

979
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: they think that there's like a constant replenishment of this

980
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 1: stuff as things hit the Moon create this like debris

981
00:50:56,840 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: which forms sort of a temporary ring around Jupiter, which

982
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: eventually falls back into Jupiter. So Jupiter's gravity is so

983
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 1: strong that doesn't really have a chance to accumulate a

984
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:08,840
Speaker 1: ring that lasts very long. You mentioned that it's harder

985
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 1: to see it because it's mainly made out of dust.

986
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:14,600
Speaker 1: What makes ice more visible? Ice is just shiny or like,

987
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:16,800
Speaker 1: it's just basic chemistry. You shine a light on a

988
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: piece of ice, it's going to reflect more than a

989
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: rock will. Right, So ice is just brighter and wider.

990
00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: I guess that's why we call diamonds ice. That makes fun.

991
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: And Jupiter also, remember, is not just gravitationally powerful. It

992
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:32,239
Speaker 1: has very strong magnetic fields and radiation, and so the

993
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: electromagnetic forces interact with these dust particles moving around Jupiter,

994
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 1: and it means that it's hard for these things to

995
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:41,279
Speaker 1: orbit Jupiter for more than like a hundred or a

996
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 1: thousand years. And so for Jupiter to have a ring

997
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 1: system at any point that lasts more than you know,

998
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 1: a hundred or a thousand years, means it needs a

999
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 1: constant source of replenishment. That's why this theory that micro

1000
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: meteorites are creating dust constantly to sort of feed Jupiter's

1001
00:51:56,960 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 1: ring system. I see, so Jupiter is just too hungry

1002
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:05,360
Speaker 1: to maintain that ring without having some of those micro

1003
00:52:05,480 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 1: collisions spewing out more debris. Is Jupiter the only other

1004
00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:13,160
Speaker 1: planet that has rings. No Neptune also has rings. These

1005
00:52:13,160 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 1: are really fascinating, the Air five rings, but they're sort

1006
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:18,680
Speaker 1: of the reverse of Saturn. Instead of being mostly ice,

1007
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 1: they're actually mostly dark particles and they're confined to a

1008
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 1: few little narrow rings, and they're really interesting because they're

1009
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:27,960
Speaker 1: not the same all the way around. It's not like

1010
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:30,760
Speaker 1: Saturn that has this symmetry to have these like bright

1011
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:33,719
Speaker 1: arcs and then these empty gaps between them, so it's

1012
00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: really kind of weird. So these like broken rings around Saturn, yeah, exactly.

1013
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 1: And people think that maybe there are moons. They're like

1014
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:44,440
Speaker 1: little shepherd moons that are interfering with these rings and

1015
00:52:44,520 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: causing this structure, but we haven't been able to see

1016
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 1: them because our telescopes aren't powerful enough yet. And Urine

1017
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:52,920
Speaker 1: is also has rings. These rings are really strange because

1018
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:57,319
Speaker 1: they're almost totally black. They're like lumps of coal, so

1019
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 1: they think they might be like carbon and hydrocarbon, but

1020
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:02,640
Speaker 1: they're just not sure. So we really need are like

1021
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 1: more exploration of the outer Solar system to understand these

1022
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 1: rings and the role they play in the history of

1023
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:11,880
Speaker 1: these planets. I like that Urineus is going for a

1024
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:14,799
Speaker 1: golf look that is bringing Goth back. I don't know

1025
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:18,719
Speaker 1: if it ever left. So our solar system has a

1026
00:53:18,760 --> 00:53:21,239
Speaker 1: good number of rings. But we talked about at the

1027
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:25,320
Speaker 1: beginning whether we are unique as a solar system, whether

1028
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 1: we can find rings outside of our solar system. Is

1029
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 1: there any evidence of rings uh far and wide. So

1030
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: scientists think that it's very plausible that other planets might

1031
00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:39,960
Speaker 1: have rings, just because they're not that unusual in our

1032
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:42,880
Speaker 1: solar system. As you can hear, they're like basically everywhere

1033
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:46,760
Speaker 1: you know, Saturn, Jupiter, Urinous, Neptune, even Mars might eventually

1034
00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:50,360
Speaker 1: have rings. So we suspect that just from that data,

1035
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:52,640
Speaker 1: they should be in other solar systems. But of course

1036
00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:54,400
Speaker 1: we want to see it and to know. We don't

1037
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:56,800
Speaker 1: just want to speculate about the nature of the universe.

1038
00:53:56,880 --> 00:53:59,520
Speaker 1: And so what we can do is look for rings

1039
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: around planet's in much the same way that we look

1040
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 1: for the planets themselves. The way we detect planets around

1041
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,440
Speaker 1: other stars, or one way at least, is the transit method.

1042
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:10,880
Speaker 1: The planet passes in front of its star like a

1043
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:13,959
Speaker 1: little mini eclipse and dims the light of that star

1044
00:54:14,160 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: a little bit. That's how we know the planet is there.

1045
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:19,040
Speaker 1: How can we see rings around it? Well? From the

1046
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:20,880
Speaker 1: transit method, we can also get a sense of the

1047
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 1: size of the planet and its mass. So we get

1048
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:26,759
Speaker 1: a sense of the size because of how much light

1049
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:29,279
Speaker 1: is blocked from the star. We get a sense of

1050
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: its mass because we can measure its orbit. And so

1051
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:35,000
Speaker 1: if the planet seems to be really really large, there's

1052
00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:37,439
Speaker 1: like this extra reduction in the light of the star

1053
00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 1: because it has like big fluffy things around it, that

1054
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 1: might be evidence for rings around the planet. If it

1055
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:47,640
Speaker 1: seems like bigger than we would otherwise understand it to be.

1056
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:50,279
Speaker 1: It seems like bigger than we would otherwise expect it

1057
00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:52,879
Speaker 1: to be from its mass and from its orbit. I see.

1058
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 1: So if the orbit doesn't match how fluffy it looks,

1059
00:54:56,520 --> 00:54:59,680
Speaker 1: how much light it blocks, that may be a sign

1060
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:02,400
Speaker 1: of a ring. Could it be something else instead of

1061
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:05,359
Speaker 1: a ring, like we mentioned, just having a bunch of

1062
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:09,320
Speaker 1: junk kind of floating around the planet in not ring form.

1063
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:11,240
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be like a lot of moons.

1064
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 1: I suppose one candidate is this planet h I p

1065
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:19,200
Speaker 1: S eight F, which looks like it has a really

1066
00:55:19,280 --> 00:55:22,359
Speaker 1: really huge radius, like nine times the radius of the Earth.

1067
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:25,360
Speaker 1: So either it's like a big styrofoam planet hardly filled

1068
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:28,520
Speaker 1: with anything, or it's a planet with an extensive ring

1069
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,399
Speaker 1: system that's blocking all of that light. And that's really

1070
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 1: the only thing we can really think of. Is another planet,

1071
00:55:33,880 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: Proxima Centauri C, which is a planet orbiting our immediate

1072
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,440
Speaker 1: neighbor Proximus Centauri. It has seven times the mass of

1073
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:43,640
Speaker 1: the Earth, but it's sort of weirdly bright and reflective,

1074
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:47,800
Speaker 1: which makes people think like perhaps it's surrounded by icy rings.

1075
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:49,839
Speaker 1: But as you can maybe get a sense for this

1076
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:53,439
Speaker 1: is very uncertain stuff. We're only just recently been able

1077
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 1: to detect exo planets. We're getting better and better at it,

1078
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:58,879
Speaker 1: and soon we'll be doing things like studying the atmosphere

1079
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: of exo planets, and this is sort of on that

1080
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:03,680
Speaker 1: list of things we're just beginning to be able to do.

1081
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:07,760
Speaker 1: It's kind of like physicists need to start to catch

1082
00:56:07,840 --> 00:56:11,439
Speaker 1: up with jewelers, who can look at rings by using

1083
00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 1: a magnifying glass to see things really really tiny, but

1084
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 1: physicists have to investigate their rings by looking at things

1085
00:56:20,080 --> 00:56:22,799
Speaker 1: really really far away and blowing them up as much

1086
00:56:22,840 --> 00:56:25,920
Speaker 1: as they can. Absolutely, and I expect that some of

1087
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 1: those solar systems may have spectacular ring systems. I suspect

1088
00:56:29,600 --> 00:56:31,920
Speaker 1: that when we get really nice images of them, you know,

1089
00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:34,560
Speaker 1: if maybe from James Web or from the next generation

1090
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:37,320
Speaker 1: of space telescopes, we'll see things that blow our minds,

1091
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:40,480
Speaker 1: that make scientists say, what, that's impossible. You can't have

1092
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:43,319
Speaker 1: rings like that. That breaks all of our understandings. And

1093
00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:46,439
Speaker 1: breaking our understanding is exactly the moment to learn about

1094
00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:49,040
Speaker 1: the universe, to say, oh, well, it turns out we

1095
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:51,200
Speaker 1: didn't understand this as well as we thought we did.

1096
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 1: We got to change our models. We have to add

1097
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:56,640
Speaker 1: something new to it, or develop some new idea for

1098
00:56:56,719 --> 00:56:59,279
Speaker 1: how these things can form. And that's the exciting thing.

1099
00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:02,319
Speaker 1: It's like opening a new book and being surprised by

1100
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:04,920
Speaker 1: what you find in Every one of these solar systems

1101
00:57:05,200 --> 00:57:08,319
Speaker 1: will have surprises for us, things that we probably can't

1102
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,560
Speaker 1: imagine today. And isn't that the dream of every planetary

1103
00:57:11,719 --> 00:57:16,920
Speaker 1: fashionista to wear rings so spectacular it makes scientists scratch

1104
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 1: their heads and throw away all their textbooks. Exactly so

1105
00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:25,160
Speaker 1: from Rings down here on Earth, wowing all of your friends,

1106
00:57:25,360 --> 00:57:28,960
Speaker 1: two rings around the planets themselves, telling us something about

1107
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:31,640
Speaker 1: how those planets formed, and something about their history and

1108
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:34,800
Speaker 1: something about their future. Rings have a lot to tell

1109
00:57:34,880 --> 00:57:37,440
Speaker 1: us about the nature of our lives, all right, Thanks

1110
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:41,000
Speaker 1: very much Katie for joining us on today's episode about Rings.

1111
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,400
Speaker 1: Was a lot of fun and we hope you all

1112
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:46,320
Speaker 1: ring in a wonderful day. Thank you very much for

1113
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: listening and tune in next time. Hi, thanks for having me,

1114
00:57:57,200 --> 00:57:59,960
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain

1115
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:02,600
Speaker 1: in the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio

1116
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 1: or more podcast from my Heart Radio. Visit the I

1117
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

1118
00:58:09,520 --> 00:58:12,240
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. Ye