Speaker 1: What's the color of ice? I think about the wedge
Speaker 1: of ice broken from the lid of the lake in winter.
Speaker 1: It goes from dusky white to clear as it leaks
Speaker 1: itself into your hands. But when the glacier shears off
Speaker 1: and unveils its inner face, forged over one hundred thousand years,
Speaker 1: now you see a questioning blue. Now the glacier melts
Speaker 1: into the sea and it's gone, becomes green with algae,
Speaker 1: gray with mud, and a color that was once called
Speaker 1: wine dark. But what is the color of ice? That's
Speaker 1: not the ice we know that lies hidden behind a
Speaker 1: haze and swims in a darkness, crushed by diamond rain.
Speaker 1: We approach our destination along the orbital plain, great wide
Speaker 1: table of the sun.
Speaker 2: But as the.
Speaker 1: Planet comes into view, we're looking at the north pole.
Speaker 1: This is summer. The frozen eye reclines on its flank.
Speaker 1: There's the pole now bathing in the season of light.
Speaker 1: The hidden face the opposite pole now holds cord in
Speaker 1: the bitter cold of the stars. There's something about that blue,
Speaker 1: almost as cold as a thing can be, but joyful
Speaker 1: in the way it devours the sunshine. It reminds us
Speaker 1: of something something on Earth. That brings life, or invites
Speaker 1: the living, or is alive itself.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be
Speaker 1: fulfilling a very common request. Years ago, we did a
Speaker 1: series of episodes where we looked at the moons of
Speaker 1: various planets in the Solar System, the moons of Jupiter,
Speaker 1: the moons of Saturn, the moons of Mars, and I
Speaker 1: think we even did one even though Venus doesn't have
Speaker 1: a moon.
Speaker 2: We did an.
Speaker 1: Episode sort of about the alternative universe where there would
Speaker 1: be a moon of Venus something like that. But today
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about the moons of the
Speaker 1: seventh planet in our Solar System. In this first episode
Speaker 1: in the series, I think we're going to be focusing
Speaker 1: mainly on the planet itself, and then we will get
Speaker 1: more into the moons in the subsequent part or parts.
Speaker 1: And since this is an audio medium, the question of
Speaker 1: how to pronounce that planet's name is unavoidable. I thought
Speaker 1: we should tackle it right here at the beginning, because
Speaker 1: I know we have said it moultiple ways on the
Speaker 1: podcast before. I think I have said it multiple ways before,
Speaker 1: and the only thing to do is give ourselves preemptive,
Speaker 1: full absolution to pronounce it any which way we want.
Speaker 1: But basically, so I was trying to figure out, like
Speaker 1: what is actually the right way, and I think it
Speaker 1: goes like this. If you listen to astronomers and planetary
Speaker 1: scientists talk about this planet, most often you will hear
Speaker 1: them pronounce it urinus, basically the word urine and then
Speaker 1: the word us. On the other hand, there's sort of
Speaker 1: a dos Boot situation going on with this planet name,
Speaker 1: like for the most part, like the scientists might say urinus,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, just people say uranus, you know,
Speaker 1: at least they do in America. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's different in other English speaking cultures or other languages
Speaker 1: where the name would be you know, a direct homophone.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Uranus is. It's sort of part of the culture,
Speaker 1: it's part of the world we grew up in, and
Speaker 1: there's really no fixing that. So I think that will
Speaker 1: probably come out of our mouths as well.
Speaker 2: Well. The tragedy of it is that I feel like
Speaker 2: most of the time. When you hear uranus as the
Speaker 2: pronunciation for the planet Uranus, it is coming out of
Speaker 2: the mouth of, say a of a talk show host
Speaker 2: or you know, late night news situation, a little bit
Speaker 2: of t he. Yeah, I mean not just a little
Speaker 2: bit of t he, but like a front loaded, like
Speaker 2: dump truck quality of t he to the to the
Speaker 2: to the detriment of whatever the actual news is. Like,
Speaker 2: it could be announced tomorrow that life was discovered on Uranus,
Speaker 2: but the the the late night talk show hosts would
Speaker 2: say you're anus, everyone would laugh and completely forget that
Speaker 2: the most breathtaking news in the history of our species
Speaker 2: was just revealed. Because Uranus if pronounced slightly incorrectly, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: From my point of view, it sounds like you're saying
Speaker 2: somebody's anus.
Speaker 1: Right, a benevolent jellyfish inhabit the clouds. It's it's very interesting,
Speaker 1: But the main thing is we did successfully probe uranus.
Speaker 2: Haha. Yeah, yeah, So it's it's I mean, especially for
Speaker 2: a professional space science communicators, people working for NASA and
Speaker 2: so forth. I don't know, I guess it probably comes
Speaker 2: to the point where you've got to just embrace it, yeah,
Speaker 2: and enroll with it, but it also there has to
Speaker 2: still be some at least low level of just fixed
Speaker 2: frustration over the situation.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things that becomes annoying
Speaker 1: and then it comes full circle and becomes funny again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but for another wrinkle, we have the apparently correct uranus
Speaker 1: and then we have the common uranus. But according to
Speaker 1: an interview I saw with the American physicist Kevin Grazier,
Speaker 1: who writes a lot about space and about science fiction
Speaker 1: from a science perspective, he was the editor and a
Speaker 1: contributing author on the science of Doune, which we have
Speaker 1: talked about on the show before. He says in one
Speaker 1: interview that it technically it is uranus. So you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he's right, But apparently nobody says it that way.
Speaker 2: I mean, it starts with everyone who wants to start
Speaker 2: pronouncing it differently. You know, say uranus sounds good to.
Speaker 1: Me, so you say uranus. I say uranus. Most experts
Speaker 1: say urinus. But in any case, it's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: We all know which planet we're talking about. It's number seven.
Speaker 1: It's big, it's blue, it's cold, it's beautiful, and it
Speaker 1: has a heck of a lot of moons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and the fair amount of mystery surrounding it.
Speaker 2: You know, in this episode we're venturing farther out into
Speaker 2: the void here, so we're gonna encounter some more space
Speaker 2: to wonder. We'll also, I think eventually be getting to
Speaker 2: a fourth pronunciation for your old boy, So so strap in,
Speaker 2: but Urinus. Here are some of the basics for anyone
Speaker 2: who needs a refresher, and I think we can all
Speaker 2: deal with a refresher. Uranus is the seventh planet from
Speaker 2: the Sun, and in size it has the third largest
Speaker 2: diameter in the Solar System. It's about four times larger
Speaker 2: than Earth in diama. Yes, While Uranus and its neighbor
Speaker 2: Neptune were previously classified as gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn,
Speaker 2: it became clear in the nineteen nineties so they are
Speaker 2: actually a subset of gas giants ice giants. So most
Speaker 2: of the planet's mass is believed to be a hot
Speaker 2: and dense fluid of icy materials around a small rocky core.
Speaker 2: Its atmosphere is mostly molecular hydrogen and atomic helium, and
Speaker 2: there also seems to be a small amount of methane.
Speaker 2: It experiences the equivalent of a seventeen hour day like
Speaker 2: a seventeen hour seventeen hours of Earth day, and an
Speaker 2: eighty four year solar orbit.
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned that most of the planet's mass is
Speaker 1: this relatively hot and dense fluid of icy materials. But
Speaker 1: that should not give you the wrong impression about the
Speaker 1: planet overall, because an interesting fact about Uranus is that
Speaker 1: it is the coldest planet in the Solar System, even
Speaker 1: though it is not the farthest from the Sun. Neptune
Speaker 1: is much farther away from the Sun. I think something
Speaker 1: like ten times the distance from the Earth to the
Speaker 1: Sun farther away than Urinus is, and yet it is
Speaker 1: actually a little bit warmer. On average, the temperature in
Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere of Urinus reaches negative two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty four degrees celsius, colder than equivalent measures on Neptune,
Speaker 1: which are about ten degrees celsius higher. I want to
Speaker 1: come back in a little bit to why that might be.
Speaker 1: But yeah, not the farthest away, but the coldest.
Speaker 2: It's cold out there. It's lonely out there.
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned that it takes eighty four years for
Speaker 1: Uranus to orbit the Sun once. That means since its
Speaker 1: discovery in seventeen eighty one, which we will narrate in
Speaker 1: a few minutes. Here, less than three full years have
Speaker 1: elapsed on Uranus. It's seventeen eighty one plus eighty four
Speaker 1: Earth years is eighteen sixty five plus another eighty four
Speaker 1: is nineteen forty nine, and then it will be another
Speaker 1: full year on that planet. When it's twenty thirty three
Speaker 1: on Earth. Calendar pages tear away quite a bit slower there.
Speaker 1: This longer year also gives you an idea of how
Speaker 1: far away from the Sun this planet is. You know.
Speaker 1: This comes up on the show a good bit. When
Speaker 1: we make visual representations of the Solar System. One thing
Speaker 1: that's pretty much always impossible to capture is the real
Speaker 1: relative size and distance between objects. There really, I think
Speaker 1: is no convincing way to represent the real distance between
Speaker 1: planets in the Solar System within the same image and
Speaker 1: have it make intuitive sense. So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: scaling up of distances as one moves further out from
Speaker 1: the Sun. The average distance from Earth to the Sun
Speaker 1: is a commonly used measurement. It's called an astronomical unit,
Speaker 1: or AU for short, and it's equivalent to about one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty nine point six million kilometers, pulling up
Speaker 1: numbers cited by NASA JPL for these other planets. Both
Speaker 1: Mercury and Venus, of course, are within one AU, so
Speaker 1: Mercury is about zero point four and Venus is about
Speaker 1: zero point seven AU from the Sun. They're both closer
Speaker 1: than Us. Mars is about one point five AU, so
Speaker 1: about one point one and a half times the distance
Speaker 1: from Us to the Sun. Suddenly Jupiter is more than
Speaker 1: five times the distance. Saturn is nine point five AU,
Speaker 1: and then Urinus is suddenly nineteen point two AU, So
Speaker 1: the distances multiply greatly the further you go out, and
Speaker 1: then Neptune is about thirty so another another ten basically
Speaker 1: sort of ten AU between Saturn and Uranus, and then
Speaker 1: another ten between Uranus and Neptune.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So venturing into into the outer Solar system, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like leaving an urban center and traveling
Speaker 2: out into the boonies. The gas stations that you you
Speaker 2: would venture into or are are farther and farther apart,
Speaker 2: and you begin to wonder where your next tank is
Speaker 2: going to come from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's always impossible to reckon the real scale
Speaker 1: of space. And the funny thing is, this is just
Speaker 1: our Solar system. You know, this is like the things
Speaker 1: that are actually relatively very close together from a space perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right, So let's see some more facts
Speaker 2: about Urinus itself. It has thirteen rings, and like Venus,
Speaker 2: it rotates east to west. It also rotates at a
Speaker 2: near ninety degree angle from the plane of its orbit,
Speaker 2: so this gives it the appearance of spinning on its side.
Speaker 1: That is a very interesting and unique fact about Uranus.
Speaker 1: So if you can picture it, all of the other
Speaker 1: planets in the Solar system, you know, they all have
Speaker 1: some degree of axial tilt, but they more or less
Speaker 1: spin like a top, with the north and south poles
Speaker 1: facing more or less perpendicular to the solar plane. So
Speaker 1: you can imagine the Sun in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Solar system, and then there is a disc of flat
Speaker 1: discs spreading out from the Sun that all of the
Speaker 1: planets orbit on. Those planets have some tilt, but they
Speaker 1: more or less rotate so that their equator is in
Speaker 1: line with that plane, and their north and south poles
Speaker 1: are at right angles to it. Urinus is the exception.
Speaker 1: It lies on its side Its axial tilt is something
Speaker 1: like ninety seven or ninety eight degrees, so almost perfectly
Speaker 1: sideways from the perspective of the solar plane. Its equator
Speaker 1: rotates up and down, and its poles point to the sides,
Speaker 1: which has the strange effect that its seasons as it
Speaker 1: orbits the Sun throughout its year, mean that the poles
Speaker 1: get like many Earth years of light and darkness as
Speaker 1: the year progresses. So for forty two years, its north
Speaker 1: pole will be in relative sunshine and its south pole
Speaker 1: will be in relative darkness, and then it flips around
Speaker 1: for the other season. It's a weird planet, very strange.
Speaker 1: This actually comes back to the question of why Uranus
Speaker 1: is the coldest planet, even though it's not the farthest
Speaker 1: from the Sun. How could a planet closer to the
Speaker 1: Sun be colder than one farther away. The answer is
Speaker 1: that planets give off their own heat, and compared to most,
Speaker 1: Urinus gives off very little. So one major idea proposed
Speaker 1: to explain why Urinus gives off so little intrinsic heat,
Speaker 1: is the same as the reason it, unlike other planets
Speaker 1: in the Solar System, rotates on its side. Scientists think
Speaker 1: that billions of years ago during the formation of the
Speaker 1: Solar System, Urinus very likely suffered a colossal impact from
Speaker 1: a roughly Earth sized or Mars sized object, which was
Speaker 1: able to both knock it out of its original orientation
Speaker 1: and give it its its backwards rotation pattern opposite the
Speaker 1: rest of the Solar System and its a sideways orientation
Speaker 1: sways axial tilt, but also to blast away much of
Speaker 1: its mass and energy, leaving it with less intrinsic heat
Speaker 1: than even other ice giants like Neptune, and so if
Speaker 1: this impact hypothesis is correct, it would explain much of
Speaker 1: what we know about Uranus, why it's so cold, why
Speaker 1: it's tilted, and why its rotation is the way it is.
Speaker 1: One of the most striking things about Uranus is its appearance,
Speaker 1: which can vary based on seasonal conditions. But in the
Speaker 1: famous true color images assembled from what was captured by
Speaker 1: the narrow angle camera of Voyager two in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: the planet looks like an almost perfectly uniform field of
Speaker 1: pale blue green color, like a featureless Cyan ocean of fog.
Speaker 1: And this is especially strange when you think about it
Speaker 1: in contrast to the sort of banded surface of Jupiter,
Speaker 1: it's just ripping with visible storms, or or like the
Speaker 1: sandy stripes you see on Saturn with that big, nasty
Speaker 1: polar hexagon. The truth is Urinus is not always as
Speaker 1: calm looking as it is in these famous photos. For
Speaker 1: one example, I found a February seventh, twenty nineteen NASA
Speaker 1: news article by Ray Villard and Claire Seravia noting photos
Speaker 1: that had been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of
Speaker 1: visible storms on both Uranus and Neptune. And in these pictures,
Speaker 1: the storm on Urinus appears as a gigantic white dome
Speaker 1: of clouds swarming over the planet's north pole, and the
Speaker 1: authors note that this gigantic weather pattern might have been
Speaker 1: formed by seasonal changes of flow in the atmosphere, because remember,
Speaker 1: the planet is tilted on its side, so as the
Speaker 1: seasons change, the part of the planet facing the direction
Speaker 1: of the sun goes from a polar region that basically
Speaker 1: remains in direct sunlight for many, many Earth years at
Speaker 1: a time to an equatorial reaon that rotates through standard
Speaker 1: day night cycles like Earth does, except it's rotating on
Speaker 1: its side, and these drastic changes in seasons may give
Speaker 1: rise to major changes in the flow of the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: resulting in weather like this. I was reading an article
Speaker 1: by the astrophysics blogger Ethan Seagull which made the point
Speaker 1: that the Voyager two images are probably especially featureless because
Speaker 1: they were taken during the solstice on Uranus, when the
Speaker 1: continuous rays of sunlight had been falling on one of
Speaker 1: the planet's polar regions for many earth years, and so
Speaker 1: this regime of NonStop polar daytime created a haze of
Speaker 1: methane in the upper atmosphere. So up at the top
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere, there's all this methane up there, which
Speaker 1: both masks the clouds and the visible weather patterns below,
Speaker 1: so you can't really see what's going on beneath all
Speaker 1: that methane, and it absorbs red light, leading to the
Speaker 1: pale blue green color that we can't stop staring at.
Speaker 1: By contrast, when you see photos of Uranus taken by
Speaker 1: telescopes during its equinox, you will see more defined atmospheric
Speaker 1: bands and storms and clouds, not as dramatic at all
Speaker 1: as what you'd see on Jupiter, but the stuff is there,
Speaker 1: so Uranus is not actually always featureless. This seems to
Speaker 1: be a function of when and how it was photographed
Speaker 1: by Voyager two. But in those voyager images it is
Speaker 1: deeply striking, almost haunting, how frozen and unperturbed and uniform
Speaker 1: the planet appears.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's there's a there's
Speaker 2: a calmness. So it's a call like you look at
Speaker 2: images of of of Urinus and it's it's calming compared
Speaker 2: to like the the the the the evident kind of
Speaker 2: complexity and chaos of Jupiter.
Speaker 1: Absolutely colder, stiller, more uniform, it'll even lying on its side,
Speaker 1: and not to get to anthropomorphic, but as if dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's also a sense of the sky to it,
Speaker 2: which is fitting. We'll come back to that in a second.
Speaker 2: But yeah, mostly though this episode, we're getting into the
Speaker 2: moons of Uranus and it has a healthy number of
Speaker 2: moons twenty seven known moons. This is a good n
Speaker 2: this is a number that we can handle, we can
Speaker 2: actually name, I think, all the moons of Urinus, where as,
Speaker 2: of course there are some really robust moon counts for
Speaker 2: Jupiter and Saturn. So things are leveling out a little
Speaker 2: bit for us as we continue our journey out through
Speaker 2: the Solar system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is more of a fair fight.
Speaker 1: I don't think we said the names of all the
Speaker 1: moons of Jupiter or Saturn.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, we can't promise in this series that we're going
Speaker 1: to like discuss all of Urinus's moons deeply, because some
Speaker 1: of them are just kind of rocks that I don't
Speaker 1: know how much there is to say about them. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to be offensive if you're a devotee of
Speaker 1: any particular Bianca or something, but yeah, we will have
Speaker 1: more to say about some than others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's just not a lot to say about
Speaker 2: some of them, just because we just haven't explored Uranus
Speaker 2: or its moons as much. We've only had the one
Speaker 2: voyager two fly by, really, and that's it, basically.
Speaker 3: Know.
Speaker 2: In addition to things like Hubble analysis and so.
Speaker 1: Forth, Before we explore more about the planet and its moons,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a little bit of time
Speaker 1: to discuss the origins of this name, the mythological moniker
Speaker 1: that has caused so much pleasure and pain among astronomers worldwide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and you know, it could have been
Speaker 2: it could have been weirder in some respects because it
Speaker 2: took about seventy years for this to be firmly decided
Speaker 2: upon that, yes, this planet is Uranus. William Herschel wanted
Speaker 2: to name it after King George the Third, so he
Speaker 2: wanted to call it essentially the George Star Georgian Sidas,
Speaker 2: but luckily we didn't. Can you imagine if if that
Speaker 2: was the we had all these you know, these Roman
Speaker 2: deity names, and then George Starr amazing presumably not.
Speaker 1: I've got a story to tell about William Herschel in
Speaker 1: a little bit here, but yeah, wanting to name it
Speaker 1: after King George the third, He's just forever in the
Speaker 1: heavens that that would be hilarious. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the modern equivalent like this is the this is
Speaker 1: the gerald Ford planet.
Speaker 2: I mean it is. There's always gonna be something weird
Speaker 2: about naming these astral bodies after things and a given culture,
Speaker 2: and we'll run into some of that again when we
Speaker 2: get into some of the literary names that are invoked
Speaker 2: in the moons. But but yeah, I just can't imagine
Speaker 2: this being the George Star. So the namesake here is
Speaker 2: the Greek primordial deity of the sky urin Us or
Speaker 2: I think I think more correctly, or it would be Urunas. Right.
Speaker 2: We've talked about this before on the show.
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd stand by that. I've heard
Speaker 1: it said that way too, So we've got Urinus is
Speaker 1: what most astronomers and planetary scientists say. The lay public,
Speaker 1: at least in the US, says Uranus. We got one
Speaker 1: interview with the guy who says, technically it's Uranus, and yes,
Speaker 1: I've also heard uranus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though, I love Uruanas. But I'm gonna feel like
Speaker 2: a weirdo if i start calling it that just among
Speaker 2: friends and family or even on the podcast. So I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna have to stick with you. Okay, let's do
Speaker 2: it all right, So who is we can say Urunas?
Speaker 2: Though when we're referring to the god, I think maybe
Speaker 2: that's a good way of differentiating it. Here Greek primordial
Speaker 2: deity of the sky and both a child and a
Speaker 2: consort of Gaya, the parent and a parent of Titans
Speaker 2: of the Cyclopses, as well as the Hecataneries, the one
Speaker 2: hundred handed warriors who don't get enough I think attention
Speaker 2: in the various wars of the gods, perhaps just because
Speaker 2: they're hard to illustrate. It's hard to maybe imagine what
Speaker 2: one hundred handed monster looks like.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you can imagine two hands is just
Speaker 1: kind of multiply from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like an absurdity of goro coming at you. There.
Speaker 1: What's the Latin prefix for fifty? Like the quinta deca goro?
Speaker 2: I don't know that sounds good. Okay, that's a lot
Speaker 2: of button inputs though, for the punches. Anyway, Uranas is
Speaker 2: the one who stands on high. He is the rain maker.
Speaker 2: Among his many children was the titan Cronus, who, at
Speaker 2: Gaya's urging, rebelled against his father, And of course Cronus
Speaker 2: famously castrated his father in the myths and cast the
Speaker 2: bloody pieces over his shoulder and ushered in a new
Speaker 2: age of gods. Cronus would of course, eventually be overthrown
Speaker 2: by his own son Zeus.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, here I thought, this is a good opportune, ever,
Speaker 1: reading from Hesiod's Theogony to explain what happened to old Urinus. Here, Oh,
Speaker 1: let's happy, Okay. This is the version hosted on Harvard
Speaker 1: Center for Hellenic Studies website. This is a translation by
Speaker 1: Naggie and banks. Oh, and it's gonna mention Earth and Sky.
Speaker 1: I think Earth would be the goddess Gaia, and Sky
Speaker 1: would be Urinus. Here yeah, Hesiod writes, Now monstrous strength
Speaker 1: is powerful joined with vast size. Four of as many
Speaker 1: sons as were born of Earth and Sky. They were
Speaker 1: the fiercest and were hated by their father from the
Speaker 1: very first. As soon as any of these was born,
Speaker 1: he would hide them all and not send them up
Speaker 1: to the light. In a cave of the Earth and
Speaker 1: Sky exulted over the work of mischief, while huge Earth
Speaker 1: groaned from within. Straightened as she was, and she devised
Speaker 1: a subtle and evil scheme. For quickly, having produced a
Speaker 1: stock of white iron, she forged a large sickle blade,
Speaker 1: and gave the word to her children, and said, encouragingly,
Speaker 1: though troubled in her heart, children, of me and of
Speaker 1: a father madly violent, if you would obey me, we
Speaker 1: shall avenge the baneful injury of your father, for he
Speaker 1: was the first that devised acts of indignity, so spoke she,
Speaker 1: But soon seized on them all, nor did any of
Speaker 1: them speak till, having gathered courage, great and wily Cronos
Speaker 1: addressed his dear mother. Thus in reply, Mother, this deed
Speaker 1: at any rate I will undertake and accomplished. Since our
Speaker 1: father of detested name, I care not, for he was
Speaker 1: the first that devised acts of indignity. They're really hitting
Speaker 1: the talking points here. Thus spoke he and huge Earth
Speaker 1: rejoiced much at heart, and hid and planted him in ambush.
Speaker 1: In his hand she placed a sickle with jagged teeth,
Speaker 1: and suggested to him all the stratagem. Then came vast Sky,
Speaker 1: bringing night with him, and eager for love, brooded around Earth,
Speaker 1: and lay stretched on all sides but his from out
Speaker 1: his ambush grasped at him with his left hand, while
Speaker 1: in his right he took the huge sickle, long and
Speaker 1: jagged toothed, and hastily mowed off the genitals of his father,
Speaker 1: and threw them backwards to be carried away behind him.
Speaker 2: Pretty rough stuff. I don't know why the sickle had
Speaker 2: to have jagged teeth.
Speaker 1: I don't know either.
Speaker 2: Thed was just laying it in there a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's a serrated sickle. I've never even heard of such
Speaker 1: a thing. It's like a steak knife.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But as I mentioned Urinus there, his name is synonymous
Speaker 1: with Sky, so in this translation they just call him Sky.
Speaker 1: So I think it's very interesting that we end up
Speaker 1: with a planet that, in a way, based on the
Speaker 1: original mythological context, could just be called sky. It is
Speaker 1: the sky planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And of course it's interesting that we're switching
Speaker 2: from Roman to Greek in coming out here to Uranus.
Speaker 2: And of course this may raise the question of why
Speaker 2: why are we talking about modern discussions of what this
Speaker 2: planet will be named? And of course you know that
Speaker 2: has to do with with how late it was discovered,
Speaker 2: properly discovered, because when discussing basically this comes down to
Speaker 2: a discussion of the classical planets versus the the more
Speaker 2: outer and I guess you could say modern planets. The
Speaker 2: classical planets are those visible to the naked eye and
Speaker 2: bright enough to be considered important in ancient astronomy and astrology.
Speaker 2: And we'll discuss a little bit more about what that
Speaker 2: means in just a second there. There there are many
Speaker 2: names for the classical planets because they pop up in
Speaker 2: various astronomical systems.
Speaker 1: Right, they were known to many different ancient cultures, so
Speaker 1: they have many different names exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, for instance, mercury through Saturn have
Speaker 2: names that indicate elemental alignment in Chinese tradition, So Mars
Speaker 2: is the fire star, Jupiter is the wood star, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But the Chinese for the outer planets,
Speaker 2: interestingly enough, is not based in an actual like Chinese
Speaker 2: at astrological history, but in translation of at least the
Speaker 2: spirit of the Western names. So Uranus in Mandarin is
Speaker 2: Tan wang Shing or sky king star. So I think
Speaker 2: that's that's center, just basically alluding to this is a
Speaker 2: sky god. That's the name that we've used in naming
Speaker 2: the planet. So it's sky sky king star. Neptune is
Speaker 2: ocean king star, Pluto is nether World king star. In translation.
Speaker 1: I love that, Yes, translating the sense of the names.
Speaker 1: So the name in Mandarin is like a summary of
Speaker 1: where the name comes from, like the Latin or Greek name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again talking about the classical planets here, these
Speaker 2: were the planets that were known to antiquity Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
Speaker 2: and Saturn. Uranus was the first planet discovered via the
Speaker 2: aid of a telescope, and it happened in seventeen eighty
Speaker 2: one by astronomer William Herschel In addition, he also discovered
Speaker 2: infrared radiation. He's also credited with the discovery of Titania
Speaker 2: and Oberon, which are some moons we'll get into in
Speaker 2: a bit, as well as two of the moons of Saturn,
Speaker 2: Enceladus and Mimas. His son John Herschel got to carry
Speaker 2: on their tradition and named seven moons of Saturn and
Speaker 2: four moons of Uranus.
Speaker 1: Now, a really interesting thing about the discovery of Uranus
Speaker 1: by William Herschel is that at first he did not
Speaker 1: realize he had discovered a new planet in the Solar System.
Speaker 1: And the reason for this will sort of tie into
Speaker 1: things we've been talking about. I was reading about this
Speaker 1: in a paper called Uranus in the Establishment of Herschel's
Speaker 1: Astronomy by Simon Schaeffer, published in the Journal of the
Speaker 1: History of Astronomy in nineteen eighty one, and so the
Speaker 1: story of the discovery of Urinus goes like this. William
Speaker 1: Herschel had undertaken a project, beginning in seventeen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: to survey all of the stars in the sky to
Speaker 1: the limit of the eighth magnitude using a seven foot
Speaker 1: reflecting telescope, mainly for the purpose of identifying double stars
Speaker 1: so that Herschel could try to make measurements of stellar parallax.
Speaker 1: In March seventeen eighty one, Herschel had his telescope moved
Speaker 1: to his house on New King Street in Bath in Somerset, England,
Speaker 1: and he was picking up with his observations from this location.
Speaker 1: And on the week of the discovery of Uranus, he
Speaker 1: had been occupied cataloging the visible stars within the constellation Gemini,
Speaker 1: and also with some observations of the planet's Mars and Saturn.
Speaker 1: And on Tuesday, March thirteenth, at ten thirty pm, Herschel
Speaker 1: made a note of an object in the area of
Speaker 1: the star Pollux, also known as Beta Geminorum. The object
Speaker 1: was quote a curious either nebulous star or perhaps a comet,
Speaker 1: and later translated this discovery to his volume in progress,
Speaker 1: which was called Observations on the Fixed Stars.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: Looking at a star in the quartile between oreguess right
Speaker 1: foot and the left foot of Castor, I discovered a comet.
Speaker 1: It was at the distance of almost two thirds of
Speaker 1: my field of view from a small telescopic star which
Speaker 1: followed it, and seemed to have the same declination. Now
Speaker 1: Herschel didn't seem to be immediately overwhelmed with ideas of
Speaker 1: the importance of this finding. He after this just went
Speaker 1: back to looking for double stars, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: Saturday March seventeenth, which was four days later, that he
Speaker 1: went back and looked for the curious nebulous star or
Speaker 1: perhaps comet again, and this time he concluded that it
Speaker 1: must be a comet rather than a star, because it
Speaker 1: had changed its place. So he invited some friends over,
Speaker 1: including a guy named doctor William Watson, to come take
Speaker 1: a look at the comet he had found, and he
Speaker 1: noted in his journal that unfortunately the measurements he took
Speaker 1: that night were written down wrong because Watson and another
Speaker 1: gentleman wouldn't stop talking at him while he was trying
Speaker 1: to write them. But he eventually sent off his findings
Speaker 1: in a letter to the Royal Society in London, and
Speaker 1: Herschel reported that the object was a newly discovered comet,
Speaker 1: but there were some strange things about it. Based on
Speaker 1: initial observations, it would seem that the comet was quote
Speaker 1: much larger in diameter but less luminous than any comet
Speaker 1: known at the time, and that quote its body seemed
Speaker 1: very well defined, having neither beard nor tail. Now that
Speaker 1: struck me because I was like, what is a beard?
Speaker 1: Comets are often said to have tails, but the idea
Speaker 1: of a beard I was less familiar with. As best
Speaker 1: I could figure out, this, I think seems to just
Speaker 1: be another way of describing the tale of a comet, which,
Speaker 1: of course the tale is an elongated cloud trailing off
Speaker 1: of the comet away from the Sun, caused when the
Speaker 1: comet approaches closer in its orbit to the Sun and
Speaker 1: then solar radiation and heats the volatile materials on the
Speaker 1: surface of the comet and they vaporize and stream away
Speaker 1: into space. I don't know if the following is the
Speaker 1: difference emphasized by beard versus tail, but comets often do
Speaker 1: have two distinct tails. A dust tail made of the
Speaker 1: dust to find particles coming off of the comet from
Speaker 1: this outgassing when it's heated, and then also a gas
Speaker 1: tail made of glowing ionized gases. However, I could find
Speaker 1: archaic references to comets in general simply calling them quote
Speaker 1: bearded stars. So I don't know. Maybe a beard means
Speaker 1: either one. I guess the other ideas that it could
Speaker 1: possibly refer to the idea of a coma, which is
Speaker 1: the sort of tenuous atmosphere of a comet, seen usually
Speaker 1: as a fuzzy spherical cloud around the solid nucleus.
Speaker 2: I wonder too if this might come down to sort
Speaker 2: of the distinction between sort of more modern telescope generated
Speaker 2: imagery and your telescope observation. You know, we've talked about
Speaker 2: that a little bit, like the role of the observer
Speaker 2: in real time and sort of you know, classical telescope
Speaker 2: astronomy versus the more modern use of imagery.
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure about that, but so he's like, ah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's a comet, but it just it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of the characteristics we would expect of a comment.
Speaker 1: In fact, the paper cites a letter from the French
Speaker 1: astronomer Charles Messier, who was known as quote the ferret
Speaker 1: of comets. I'd never heard that before, but I think
Speaker 1: he found a lot of them. Messier, the Ferret of comments,
Speaker 1: wrote to Herschel in April of seventeen eighty one. It
Speaker 1: was quoted in the paper in French, so I had
Speaker 1: to translate. Apologies if this is a little bit approximate
Speaker 1: but Messier says, I'm amazed at this comment, which does
Speaker 1: not carry with it any distinctive character of comets, and
Speaker 1: that it does not resemble any of those which I
Speaker 1: have observed, which are eighteen in number. So I just
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. It seemed at first all of
Speaker 1: the learned astronomers were calling it a comet, even though
Speaker 1: they recognize that it's really not like a comet at all,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't have any of the characteristics we would expect,
Speaker 1: doesn't behave like a comet. It seems that the first
Speaker 1: person on record to have mentioned that this new comet
Speaker 1: might actually be a planet was the British astronomer Royal
Speaker 1: Neville Masculine, who argued that it might be a comet,
Speaker 1: but it might also be a new planet, and if
Speaker 1: it were a comet, it would be unlike any other
Speaker 1: Herschel apparently did not refer to Uranus as a planet
Speaker 1: until the summer of seventeen eighty two, when he called
Speaker 1: it quote my planet and again he wanted to originally
Speaker 1: call it GEORGI mciitas the George Star again lol. But
Speaker 1: so I was just wondering, like, why is everybody so
Speaker 1: quick to assume it's a comet? Why did it take
Speaker 1: them a little while to come around to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that it was actually a planet? And Schaeffer in this
Speaker 1: paper argues that even though Maskerline was the first to
Speaker 1: suggest it might be a planet, quote, Maskerline's own practice
Speaker 1: was fundamentally conditioned by the eighteenth century triumphs in cometary astronomy.
Speaker 1: Comets dominated the contemporary perception of the heavens. It seemed
Speaker 1: inconceivable that a new planet could be discovered. And I
Speaker 1: think this must just come back to the state of
Speaker 1: astronomy as it was at the time, because as you
Speaker 1: were talking about rob Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, all
Speaker 1: the other planets up to this point had been known
Speaker 1: about since antiquity. They were written about by Babylonian astronomers
Speaker 1: thousands of years ago. They were charted with the naked eye,
Speaker 1: and Copernicus had correctly figured out that they orbited the
Speaker 1: Sun and not the Earth.
Speaker 2: Now, I just want to drive home here that again, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the classical planets are those that could be seen with
Speaker 2: the naked eye, but also were distinct enough to be
Speaker 2: of value. But if you're really looking with the naked eye,
Speaker 2: and the conditions are just right, you apparently can see Urinus.
Speaker 2: But again, the whole deal here is that what you
Speaker 2: see is not significant enough to have, you know, had
Speaker 2: any impact on these ancient astrological and astronomical systems. According
Speaker 2: to Pete Lawrence, writing for BBC Sky at Night magazine
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, yeah, it is possible to see Uranus
Speaker 2: with the naked eye conditions and preparations or just right.
Speaker 2: He stresses, however, that the planet quote shines at the
Speaker 2: edge of naked eye visibility, and any direct views of
Speaker 2: Urinus aren't always conclusive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my understanding from reading all this stuff
Speaker 1: as well, that it's sort of right on the edge
Speaker 1: of naked eye visibility, to the point where some people
Speaker 1: argue that, oh, maybe this thing that somebody said, you know,
Speaker 1: a naked eye astronomer in the ancient world observed was
Speaker 1: actually an observation of Urinus. But it's hard to know.
Speaker 2: To put it in terms of are weird how cinema
Speaker 2: listeners might appreciate. It's like watching The Devil's Rain and
Speaker 2: then asking is John Travolta in this is John Travolta
Speaker 2: a star?
Speaker 1: Evidence is inconclusive, right, but so coming back to this,
Speaker 1: so like all the planets through Saturn had been known
Speaker 1: since antiquity to multiple different cultures, there had been other
Speaker 1: heavenly bodies identified since the invention of telescopes, but none
Speaker 1: of them were planets in the Solar System. Galileo had
Speaker 1: identified moons of Jupiter, Cassini and Heuygen's identified moons of Saturn,
Speaker 1: but Herschel's identification of Uranus was actually the first time
Speaker 1: since ancient times that the existence of a new planet
Speaker 1: in the Solar System had been confirmed. That's just not
Speaker 1: something these astronomers were really expecting to find. Comets, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, were constantly being discovered. Discovering new comets
Speaker 1: was one of the major endeavors of astronomers of the day.
Speaker 1: You had the ferret of comets out there doing ferreting
Speaker 1: them out, so you could think of this as a
Speaker 1: kind of astronomical confirmation bias. Comets were just that's what
Speaker 1: you discover, that's the thing you're expecting to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's planets, and then just it's filthy with
Speaker 2: comets and you got to send the comet truffle hog
Speaker 2: out there to root them out.
Speaker 1: So of course there were many subsequent discoveries of the
Speaker 1: moons of Urinus, but a lot of what we now
Speaker 1: know about Urinus really comes in the later twentieth century
Speaker 1: with the fly by a Voyager two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we'll really be driven home as we
Speaker 2: discuss these moons one by one. It's like Voyager two
Speaker 2: is the defining mission. Like a lot of what we
Speaker 2: know comes either in it from that fly by or
Speaker 2: it's the combination of that flyby information combined with say
Speaker 2: Hubble telescope information as well. So it's a lot of
Speaker 2: the mysteries of Uranus and its moons remains all right,
Speaker 2: So when we come back in the next stepisodeisode, we
Speaker 2: will blow through the twenty seven known moons of Urinus.
Speaker 1: All twenty seven in one episode.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we can do that all twenty
Speaker 2: seven one episode. That's a guarantee. That's a guarantee, so
Speaker 2: be sure to join us for that. And then I
Speaker 2: don't know, And then at some point in the future
Speaker 2: we'll move on to Neptune. But next episode will be
Speaker 2: Moon by Moon the moons of Uranus. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: if you would like to check out other episodes of
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind. Well, check out the Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. If you go back
Speaker 2: far enough, you'll find those episodes we did about the
Speaker 2: other moons in our solar system and Jupiter, Saturn, Mars,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But yeah, core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: On Mondays we do listener mail. Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 2: short form monster fact or artifact, and tomorrow's will also
Speaker 2: tie into Urinus, so tune in for that. And then
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Pausway. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com.
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