WEBVTT - From the Vault: Saturn's Brood 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.560 Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:10.639 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:13.120 Time to go into the Vault. That's right. And since 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:16.320 the last Vault episode was about the moons of Jupiter, 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.160 we figured what we should also revisit our episode about 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:22.959 the moons of Saturn. Right. So this originally aired on 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.479 August four, two thousand sixteen, and it's an episode called 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.200 Saturn's Brood Beyond the Outer Ring, which, man, that would 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:31.720 have been a good B movie title. I don't know 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:33.800 if we say the same thing in the episode. I 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.159 think we do get into a little bit into films 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:38.320 that take place on or around Saturn. I think we 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.479 talk a little bit about Outland. Do we talk about Ali? 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:43.960 I think we did, yeah, and uh. And then also 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.440 I think Silent Running comes up as well, the classic 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:50.720 Brewster and film where he sort of hides out in 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.720 your Saturn man, what is wrong with our brains? The 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.160 main thing we remember about every episode we do is 0:00:56.320 --> 0:01:00.240 what Sean Connery sci fi movie we talked about. These 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.280 are the Sean Connery based guide posts that are just 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.760 kind of tacked into the ground so we can revisit 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:10.360 these episodes in the future coming soon on Stuff to 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:14.360 Blow Your Mind The Science of Czardas. Okay, well, we 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.000 shouldn't take any more time at the beginning here have 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:24.720 fun with Saturn's brood. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:42.360 Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. There's peace in 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:47.400 those rings. As we spiraled into Jupiter, our orbit decaying 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:51.840 rapidly inside the path of the sulfurous io we assumed 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.880 that we and our forest ste bio arc were headed 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:58.600 for the same fate as the old Galileo probe, through 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:03.040 the fierce radiation ELTs, through the crushing gravity, into the 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:08.280 Jovian atmosphere, and all the way down. But then something happened. 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.399 It was as if a hand of a silent god 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.800 reached out from the darkness of space and just plucked 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.000 us gently from the depths of the gas giant's gravity 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:23.359 well and lifted us up up to freedom. We still 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:27.480 don't know what happened. Our navigational computers have no explanation, 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.120 but our orbits ceased its decay, and with the slow 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:35.560 gradual acceleration, driven from some source totally foreign to the 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.960 ship itself, we were on our way, but not on 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:43.720 our way home, something out there, some unknown forces urging 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.440 us in the other direction. Despite the long journey, our 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:51.360 ever dwindling share of sunlight, and the powerful radiation bath 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:54.800 we just endured, the plants that once struggled for life 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.280 in our forest dome are now unexpectedly thriving, as if 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.000 more of the Solar system great moons want to be seen, 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:07.160 want to be understood, and some hidden intelligence is helping them. 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:10.640 And now the cold golden wheel of Saturn looms in 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:14.519 the foreground, with its major moons appearing as tiny points 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:17.799 of light in the darkness, growing ever closer as our 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:25.639 spiral begins again. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.200 My name is Robert lamp and my name is Joe McCormick, 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.080 and backed by popular demand, we are now going to 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:34.680 explore the moons of Saturn. So this will be, I guess, 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.200 a sequel of sorts to the episode we did a 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:39.720 while back about the moons of Jupiter or the major 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.280 moons of Jupiter. In both cases, these are large gas giants. 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:46.120 They have lots of moons, so we have to uh, 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.200 I would say, pick our battles, but they're not battles. 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.400 Their missions of peace and exploration, that's right. Yeah, and 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.760 the case of Saturn here, there are currently fifty three 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:58.680 known moons, nine currently awaiting confirmation, So that's a lot 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.280 of moons. But we are gonna, indeed going to stick 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.800 to just the the key items of interest here, the 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.840 ones indeed that you've likely heard of in science fiction, 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:12.160 that you've certainly heard of h in science journalism. So yeah, 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.920 we're gonna, we're gonna. We've picked up some good destinations 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:17.800 here for our trip. So Robert, Saturn is a kind 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.760 of different beast than Jupiter, isn't it. Yeah, I mean 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.719 it's easy to lump them together. They're the two biggest 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.679 objects in our Solar system, the biggest objects to enormous 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:31.520 gas giants, easily the two jazziest planets as well. Like 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.839 my my son who's four, I haven't really been pushing 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.359 the space agenda as much as I have like the 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:41.000 Earth sciences agenda, But even he instantly knows Saturn and 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.480 he knows Jupiter. Well. Saturn, I would say, is the 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:48.200 iconic image of a planet. Now, if you go to 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.240 if you're looking for clip art or vector images or 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.960 something like that of images of planets, you're gonna see Saturn. 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.920 Because Saturn you can recognize it's got the rings. It's 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.880 the planet that's not just different in terms of coloring 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:04.440 and uh and what you might see about its atmosphere 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.760 or lack thereof, or cratering and stuff like that, its 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.839 whole profile is different. It's like a different animal altogether. Yeah, 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.280 and it's it's kind of the pin up model of 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:16.359 the Solar System. It is the one that you see 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:22.200 the most just really gleaning, elegant, just crisp images. And 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.200 if you have just a row of globes, a row 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.760 of circles, the presence of Saturn, perhaps more so than 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:30.839 any of the others, is going to queue you in. 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:32.839 Oh I'm looking at a model of the Solar System. 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:35.400 Oh right, Yeah. It's the difference between a bunch of 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:40.320 balls and planets. But it's also different than Jupiter in 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:45.560 that Jupiter was this very intense experience. Now Saturn also 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:47.960 is very large, it has a deep gravity. Well you know, 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:51.560 it's got those same things going forward. But Saturn, i 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:56.760 would say, is a more peaceful and colder thing to experience, 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:01.720 unlike the intense radiation bath of Jupiter. Yeah, it's a 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:05.719 little more serene. Those we'll discuss here. It itself is 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:09.760 a very hostile world, and its moons are pretty hostile 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:12.680 as well, at least two beings like at least too, 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:15.400 you know, weak fragile beings like us, so we can 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.159 scarcely survive outside of a slim portion of our own 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.520 planets environment. Reading reading up for this episode, I was 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:26.960 astonished to discover how excited scientists are about the possibility 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.520 for life and a couple of Saturn's moons. Because when 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.440 you think about life in our Solar system beyond Earth, 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.880 everybody always mentions Europa that that's the one that comes 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:38.400 to mind, and for a good reason. There's a lot 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.720 of reason to want to study Europa from an astrobiological perspective. 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:45.480 But Saturn has some really good moons going for it, 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:47.839 and we're going to explore what's going on on those 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:50.440 moons today. All right. Before we get into that, though, 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:52.960 let's let's just roll through some of the basics about Saturn, 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:56.120 just to give everyone a grounding in the planet that 0:06:56.200 --> 0:07:00.560 plays host to all of these wonderful spheres and ovals 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.080 in occasion, just lumps of rock, uh, and the potatoes, 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.839 the spongey potato. So again, it's the second largest planet 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.280 in our Solar system. It's a gas giant without solid 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:14.360 substance save it's dense, hot, pressurized core of rock, ice, water, 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:18.080 and other compounds, and all of this is enveloped by 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:22.120 liquid metallic hydrogen inside a layer of a liquid hydrogen. 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.960 So it's located nine point five astronomical units away from 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:28.360 the Sun six planet in our Solar system, as the 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:33.200 posters tell us, and has seven icy rings that encircle it, 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.080 spanning up to one seventy five thousand miles or two 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.760 two thousand kilometers. So what are the rings consist of? Yeah, 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.760 I've always wondered this. Yeah, the contrary to what bugs 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:46.480 Bunny may have taught you, if I remember correctly, they 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.400 are not the solid rings that you can run around on. 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:52.640 They're not like a treadmill or anything. But scientists haven't 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.320 always known that that's true. They have not always been 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.480 aware of that. We know now that it's it's mostly 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.520 water ice. The planet's ring system extend hundreds of thousands 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.400 of kilometers out from the planet, but the vertical height 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.280 is typically about ten meters or thirty feet in the 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.080 main rings. Are you serious? But but but but there's 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:13.960 there's there's a key butt coming up. They can grow 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:19.360 far larger. During Saturn's autumn two thousand nine equinox, the 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:23.680 Cassini spacecraft images showed us that vertical formations and some 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:26.600 of the rings had piled the particles up, but in 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.800 ridges more than three kilometers or two miles tall. And 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.720 there's some fascinating structures and behaviors that you can see 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:37.079 within the rings to including these like a propeller shaped 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:41.440 objects that can form. It's crazy now light Jupiter. Saturn 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:43.840 is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, and in the 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.040 upper atmosphere, wind speeds can reach five hundred meters or 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:52.120 sixteen hundred feet per second in the equatorial region. These 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.880 winds fast. It's pretty fast, so it looks more peaceful 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:57.240 than it is. Just because it doesn't have a big 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:00.840 red spot doesn't mean it has some some anger to it. Uh. 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.400 These winds, combined with heat rising from the planet's interior, 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.200 cause the yellow gold bands that we see visible in 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:11.559 the atmosphere. But they're not as visible as the bands 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:15.280 we see on Jupiter. Right, Yeah, it's not. It's not 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:17.880 as angry. It's not. It doesn't look like somebody just 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.200 poured a bunch of like red liquid into you know, 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:27.360 a swirling mixer bowl of pancake batter and blood. That 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:29.240 is a great way to describe it. That's how I 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:31.360 think of Jupiter. Yeah, this one is more just like 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:34.280 pancake batter with some with some honeyead. You know. There's 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.760 a wonderful coincidence with the other episode that we recorded 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:40.719 this week, Robert, which was the episode on the Library 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.560 of Babel. And now I'm not sure what the publishing 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:44.800 schedule is going to be, but in the episode on 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.360 the in the Library of Babble, we discussed how people 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.640 in the Library of Babel seek out the Crimson hexagon. 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:55.120 That's right, and indeed there is a hexagon on Saturn. 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:57.520 It's it does not contain any books. It is not 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:00.600 a room per se. Well, you don't know that, I'm 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.920 pretty sure, but yes, if you look at you I'm 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:05.880 sure I'm number of people have seen seen images of 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.200 this here. But if you if you look at various 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:10.520 images of Saturn, there appears to be a hexagon at 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.520 the top, almost as if it has a little hexagonal hat, 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:17.680 a little skull cap on um. And it's weird to 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:19.960 look at because you're seeing this in nature. This is 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.680 not obviously an object designed by anybody on purpose. But 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:28.000 it's not circular. It's got these clear corners. Yeah, it's 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.320 not the kind of shape that you would necessarily expect. 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:33.040 But there is, of course a very natural reason for this. 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:35.800 This is caused by jet streams uh in the in 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.320 the wind systems of Saturn. Basically you have a region 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:43.320 here that's bound on each side by different editing edditing storms. 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:46.120 So it's uh, it's the kind of thing if you've 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.000 ever met somebody who's playing with a lot of bubbles, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:51.199 you know, like doing a lot of bubble art and 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:53.800 not sure what you mean bubble bubble, like blowing bubbles 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:57.200 and then sticking other bubbles, maybe blowing smoke into those bubbles. Okay, 0:10:57.400 --> 0:10:59.640 I'm not very familiar with this art form. Oh you're not. 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:04.319 Oh it was big medicine on like Sesame Street and 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:06.920 and um Mr Rogers neighborhood and back in the day, 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.800 I really completely lost touch with my inner child. Well, 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.920 blowing big bubbles is a lot of fun, but blowing 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.400 small bubbles too, because you can join them together and 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.000 if you really know what you're doing, you can form 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:21.720 geometric shapes at the center where these bubbles bubbles border 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.160 other bubbles and kind of force different shapes towards the center. 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:27.400 Oh yeah, okay, I think I know what you're talking about. 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:29.080 So I I tried to think of that when I 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.880 think of this particular scenario, to try and remind myself 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:38.920 that yes, uh, non spherical shapes are possible within nature 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:44.240 given the right circumstances. Now, another quick fact about Saturn. 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.440 Here a day last ten hours and a year. The 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:49.480 time it takes for the body to orbit its central 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:54.280 star last twenty nine earth years, and the planet's magnetic 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.959 field is smaller than Jupiter's, but still five seventy eight 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:00.880 times as powerful as Earth's, shielding Saturn and many of 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.760 its moons from the solar wind. Okay, well that's going 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:05.960 to be important if we're talking about, I don't know, 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:09.320 putting a colony there or something very important. So on 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:12.440 that note, let's start talking about the discovery of Saturn, 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:15.360 the discovery of Saturn's moons. Saturn, of course, is a 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:17.960 very We've known about Saturn for a very long time. Right, 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:21.680 nobody knows who discovered Saturn, because the ancients knew about Saturn. 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.320 We've known about Saturn as long as we've had history. 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:26.800 You know, naked eye astronomers could peer up into the 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:31.679 night sky and see Saturn. So uh so, what we're 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:34.360 really going to be talking about is the first telescopic 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.760 studies of Saturn. And you might recall from the last 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:40.560 episode that the person usually credited with discovering the largest 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:44.240 moons of Jupiter, the four Galilean Moons, was the Italian 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:49.560 astronomer Galileo Galilei, and Galileos also given credit for discovering 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:52.320 the rings of Saturn, though he didn't really understand what 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:54.520 he was looking at. Now, Like we said, everybody already 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.600 knew about Saturn, but they knew it as a point 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:00.600 of light in the sky. And when gali Leo looked 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:05.120 at Saturn, he saw something very odd, a triple star. 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:10.760 It looks like one enormous star with two tiny stars 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.880 attached to it on either side, like little side cars 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:18.760 riding along with it. Now. Fun fact, Galileo wanted to 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:21.160 get credit for being the first person to discover this 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.559 triple star, but he wasn't ready to publish his findings yet, 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:27.040 so he used a method that I thought was pretty clever. 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:32.200 He instead disseminated an anagram and by the way, when 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.120 this came up, I had to look up anagrams of 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:37.560 our names for fun. I have no good ones, not really. 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.200 My name is. I've got comic jock rim and that's 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.360 about it. But Robert, you've got some awesome anagrams in 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.040 case you've never looked him up before. You've got Mr 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.520 babele Rot. That's pretty good. You've also got barrel tomb, 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:54.880 barrel to m okay. But anyway, uh So, anagram jumbled 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:57.360 around letters, you know, jumbled up, and then you can 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:00.520 you can un jumble them to spell the original message 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.199 and show if it's a sufficiently short number of letters, 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:06.880 you know, you can show that you had this idea 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:09.600 all along, and that that was Galileo's idea. So the 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:12.480 antagram that Galileo spread around could be un jumbled to 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.640 read something along the lines of I've discovered the triform planet, 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:19.920 and if anybody tried to scoop him, he could just 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.360 unscramble it and show that he had seen it first. 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.880 But we now know that Saturn is not a triform planet. 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.400 So who figured that out? Well? In sixteen fifty five, 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.560 around six fifty six, the Dutch astronomer mathematician and all 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:39.120 around science guy Christian Hygans made a study of Saturn 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:42.240 through a more powerful telescope, and he made his own discoveries. 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:46.240 So by observing how the side stars of Saturn could 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.520 disappear and then reappear. And this is something other observers 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:53.320 hadn't noticed too, Hygans realized that he was actually looking 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.600 at a planet surrounded by a flat disc of rings. 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.480 It could disappear because of what you mentioned about how 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.240 flat it is, right, so it could be very bright 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:04.200 when we're looking at it at an angle where the 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.760 rings are reflecting up toward us. But when the rings 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:10.920 suddenly turned to where they're pretty much perpendicular with our view, 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:14.680 they completely disappear. There's not enough surface to reflect anything. 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:16.720 It's like a It's like a lady in a hat 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.920 with a wide brim. Depending on how she is holding 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.560 her head, the positioning of her neck, you may or 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:24.320 may not see the brim of the hat, and you'll 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:26.280 see at a very degree. Yeah, so she tilts her 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:28.560 head towards you, you see the brim. She tilts her 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:32.120 head flat relative to your perspective, you don't really see much. 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.560 And so Hyggan's observed that but Hygan's didn't know what 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:37.840 the rings were made of. I think he actually thought 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.280 they might be some kind of solid structure, maybe more 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:43.800 like the bugs money example, And just try to imagine 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.520 that in reality. Again, I love thinking about like when 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.360 you had less information and and just we're trying to 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.680 conceive of what the universe was like solid rings around 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:57.320 the planet. Yeah, I mean they based on the information 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:02.120 avaiable at the time. Yeah, why not fascinating. But of 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.880 course subsequently we learned more about the rings of Saturn. Now, 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.920 of course, Hygan's discovered something else while studying Saturn, a moon. 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:12.720 Nobody had seen any of the moons of Saturn up 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:15.360 until this time, and he discovered the largest moon of Saturn, 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:18.520 which is Titan, which is going to be a fascinating 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.240 thing to explore in a little bit here. But then 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.960 subsequently other moons of Saturn were discovered by astronomers like 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:29.280 Giovanni Cassini and William Herschel, And we're still learning more 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:32.800 about Saturn's smaller satellites. Today, we don't know everything there 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:37.120 is to know about Saturn's moons, and especially it's smallest moons. Yeah. Again, 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:40.920 like I mentioned earlier, fifty three known moons, nine currently 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.880 awaiting confirmations, so we're still figuring it all out. Now. 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.680 We have actually sent exploration missions to Saturn, so there 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:51.880 were several fly bys Pioneer eleven, Voyager one and two 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:53.920 that they did fly bys of Saturn, did a little 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.920 bit of observation. But the big one, the real hero 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:01.520 for for planetary science and discovery and the Saturn sphere 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:06.600 is Cassini. The Cassini Hoygien's mission. So the Cassini orbiter 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:11.400 entered Saturn's orbit in two thousand four during Saturn's northern winter, 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:14.320 and it's been conducting research on Saturn and its moons 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:18.320 ever since, and it has sent back some awesome photos. 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:20.800 One of the coolest thing about the Cassini photos I've 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:25.439 always thought is how real photos that are taken by Cassini. Now, 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:28.720 of course they're usually like color enhanced or enhanced in 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.800 some way, but real photos taken by this probe look 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:35.840 like illustrations. They often they just don't look like a 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:39.040 picture that somebody took with a real camera, but they 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:42.920 are with of course some enhancements. I don't know. I 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:47.440 love that. I love it when reality can't pass for real. Yeah, 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:52.480 because the thing that you're photographing is so utterly unreal. Yeah, 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.360 I mean to our earthling conceptions, to everything that we 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:59.840 have evolved a view here on this world. Yeah. And 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.240 of course another part of the Cassini mission was the 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.880 Huygens probe, which went down landed on Titan in two 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.560 thousand five after Cassini reached Saturn in two thousand four, 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.520 and that also sent back some amazing imagery and made 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.480 some fascinating discoveries that we will talk about in a 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.840 bit when it's time to speak of Titan. So now 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.000 it's time to take a quick break. But when we 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.879 come back, we will be spiraling in towards Saturn, beginning 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:34.080 with the outermost moons and working our way in. All right, 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:37.520 we're back, Robert. It it seems like we're coming up 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:41.480 on a on a strange outer moon. Yes, we in fact, 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:44.320 we're coming up on the largest of the outer moons. 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:49.280 Iappodus Appetus. Yes, it didn't that sound lovecraft. I in 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:52.160 like something they would worship. A chanted name I appatus. 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.639 You just want to invoke it. Yeah, named, by the 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.800 way for a Tartarus bound Titan. So it's nice and 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:03.960 has a nice gloomy feel to it. Iopodus is not 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:08.000 unlike the Yen Yang of Chinese philosophy. Just to prepare 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.919 everyone for what you're gonna see here. Uh, it's leading 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:14.760 hemisphere is dark, while it's trailing hemisphere is significantly brighter. 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:17.800 It's a tidally locked world, like a number of moons, 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:20.600 meaning that one side always faces Saturn and the other 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:25.040 side always faces the void. It essentially looks like the 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:27.280 yen Yang. It essentially looks like the black and white 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.800 cookie from that episode of Signfeld. It's like that the 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:36.359 two face of Saturn's moons, and it's it's crazy to behold, 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:38.960 and it's been crazy for scientists to try and figure 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.440 out exactly why this is. We'll get into shortly and 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.360 mentioning two face. It's it's monstrous in more than one 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:48.639 way in appearance, that's right. It also has an equatorial ridge, 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.520 which is a chain of six mile or ten kilometer 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:55.480 high mountains. And this is wonderful. It it might have 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.760 formed that during a high speed rotation period or most 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:02.320 exciting abot all of it might be a collapsed ring. No, 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:04.639 you're making that up. No, that's one of the theories. 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.840 Collapsed ring. Yeah, these are essentially like the collapsed ring mountains, 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.280 which sounds like a perfect It sounds like something out 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:13.640 of a Jack Vance novel, you know. So it could 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:16.479 have had a ring that was drawn into the planet 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:21.040 by gravity, collapsed into it and became this planet wide 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.480 ridge of mountains that looks like a horror movie monster 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:29.040 backbones sticking up out of the planet's flesh. Yeah, it's crazy, 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:34.920 a killer now. It It orbits at about a little 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:38.680 over two million miles or three million kilometers away from Saturn, 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.080 and it has probably and this has probably protected it 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.720 from tidal forces and melting episodes that would have resurfaced it. 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.840 So it's far enough away from Saturn that it Saturn's 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:52.200 gravity is not warping it too much. It's not heating 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:56.200 it and causing the geological activity exactly. But you do 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:00.159 have the strange dark and white side. And there have 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.360 been three major theories over the years as to why 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:05.920 one side is black and the other is white. Hit 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:09.040 me all right. So one theory is that i Appetus 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.760 maybe sweeping up particles from the more distant dark moon 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:17.520 phobe and steadily renewing this dusting to cover up all 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:21.639 but the newest craters. Okay, so that's one possibility. Another 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:25.119 one is that I saw a volcanism may be distributing 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:30.000 the dark materials. We're talking of volcano like eruptions of hydrocarbons, 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:32.560 perhaps to due to chemical reactions that are in turn 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.600 caused by solar radiation. Oh nice, so you've got a 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.800 planet that's half covered in soot sort of. Yeah. Now 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:42.240 the third theory, then, this is the one that's that 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:44.840 is backed up by a lot of data from two 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:48.320 thousand seven's uh Cassini fly by, and that is that 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:53.320 thermal segregation is going on. So what is that? So, yeah, 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:55.600 the salad works. It takes the Moon as long as 0:21:55.680 --> 0:21:59.240 seventy nine days to rotate around Saturn, and it's some 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:01.840 dark material areal made its way to the Moon at 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:05.520 some point in the past. Perhaps dude tying into one 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:09.200 and to the first theory, um, then the long periods 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:12.040 of solar exposure on the dark side would have caused 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:15.480 the dark material to heat up and volatile icy materials 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:19.640 within the dark to sublime out and retreat to colder regions. 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:24.240 The bright regions become brighter and the dark regions get dark. Okay, 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:27.480 so sort of a slow attrition. Yeah, okay, so a 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:30.360 Yapodus is a fairly small world, right, it's about one 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:34.680 seven the mass of Pluto, about the width of Earth's moon. 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:37.679 But what is the life potential? I want to know? 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:40.760 That's our main question with all these right, yeah, yeah, 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.320 that's certainly, that's the one thing we want to know 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:45.280 on each of these. Is it possible that there's some 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.240 sort of life clinging to this little moon? Now we 0:22:48.280 --> 0:22:51.280 know that the planet itself is probably alive and it's 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:54.199 a curled up movie monster that's going to unfurl with 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:57.760 its backbone finally sinking in as it stretches its back 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:01.520 out and raises its claws. But assuming that's not the case, 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:04.359