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