WEBVTT - Saturn's Brood: Beyond the Outer Ring 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.880 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stop 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:24.880 works dot com. There's peace in those rings. As we 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:29.280 spiraled into Jupiter, our orbit decaying rapidly inside the path 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.960 of the sulfurous io we assumed that we and our 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:35.960 forest stone bio arc were headed for the same fate 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:40.479 as the old Galileo probe, through the fierce radiation belts, 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:45.400 through the crushing gravity, into the Jovian atmosphere, and all 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:49.760 the way down. But then something happened. It was as 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.400 if a hand of a silent god reached out from 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:57.120 the darkness of space and just plucked us gently from 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:00.680 the depths of the gas giant's gravity well lifted us 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.560 up up to freedom. We still don't know what happened. 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:09.520 Our navigational computers have no explanation, but our orbit ceased 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:13.920 its decay, and with the slow gradual acceleration, driven from 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.800 some source totally foreign to the ship itself, we were 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:21.160 on our way, but not on our way home. Something 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:24.800 out there, some unknown force, is urging us in the 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:28.800 other direction. Despite the long journey, our ever dwindling share 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.560 of sunlight, and the powerful radiation bath, we just endured. 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:35.720 The plants that once struggled for life in our forest 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.399 dome are now unexpectedly thriving, as if more of the 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.800 Solar System's great moons want to be seen, want to 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:47.480 be understood, and some hidden intelligence is helping them. And 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:51.680 now the cold golden wheel of Saturn looms in the foreground, 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:55.160 with its major moons appearing as tiny points of light 0:01:55.200 --> 0:02:04.480 in the darkness, growing ever closer as our spiral begins again. Hey, 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:06.160 welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.800 Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick, and backed 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:12.200 by popular demand, we are now going to explore the 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:14.919 moons of Saturn. So this will be, I guess, a 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:17.640 sequel of sorts to the episode we did a while 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:20.200 back about the moons of Jupiter, or the major moons 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:23.440 of Jupiter. In both cases, these are large gas giants. 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.079 They have lots of moons, so we have to uh, 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:28.400 I would say pick our battles, but they're not battles, 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:31.680 their missions of peace and exploration, that's right. Yeah. In 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:34.920 the case of Saturn here there are currently fifty three 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.880 known moons, nine currently awaiting confirmation, so that's a lot 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.600 of moons. But we're gonna, indeed going to stick to 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.960 just the the the key items of interest here, the 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.000 ones indeed that you've likely heard of in science fiction, 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:52.359 that you've certainly heard of, uh in science journalism. So yeah, 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.120 we're gonna, we're gonna. We've picked up some good destinations 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.000 here for our trip. So Robert, Saturn is a kind 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:00.960 of different beasts than Jupiter, isn't it. Yeah, I mean 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:03.880 it's easy to lump them together. They're the two biggest 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:06.840 objects in our solar system, the biggest objects to enormous 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:11.720 gas giants, easily the two jazziest planets as well. Like 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.000 my my son who's four, I haven't really been pushing 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:17.560 the space agenda as much as I have like the 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.200 Earth sciences agenda, but even he instantly knows Saturn and 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:24.600 he knows Jupiter well. Saturn, I would say, is the 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:28.360 iconic image of a planet. Now, if you go to 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.440 if you're looking for clip art or vector images or 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.440 something like that of images of planets, you're going to 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.840 see Saturn because Saturn you can recognize it's got the rings. 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:40.560 It's the planet that's not just different in terms of 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.839 coloring and uh and what you might see about its 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:47.480 atmosphere or lack thereof, or cratering and stuff like that. 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:52.040 Its whole profile is different. It's like a different animal altogether. Yeah, 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:54.480 and it's it's kind of the pin up model of 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:56.520 the Solar System. It is the one that you see 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:02.400 the most, just really gleaming lt just crisp images. And 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.400 if you have just a row of globes, a row 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.960 of circles, the presence of Saturn, perhaps more so than 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.200 any of the others, is going to queue you in. Oh, 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.800 I'm looking at a model of the Solar System. Oh right. Yeah, 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:17.400 it's the difference between a bunch of balls and planets. 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.120 But it's also different than Jupiter in that Jupiter was 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:26.560 this very intense experience. Now Saturn also is very large, 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:29.279 it has a deep gravity. Well you know, it's got 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:32.200 those same things going for it. But Saturn, i would say, 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:37.719 is a more peaceful and colder thing to experience, unlike 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:42.200 the intense radiation bath of Jupiter. Yeah, it's a little 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:46.039 more serene. Those we'll discuss here. It itself is a 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:50.320 very hostile world, and its moons are pretty hostile as well, 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:53.080 at least to beings like at least two, you know, 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.160 weak fragile beings like us. We can scarcely survive outside 0:04:57.200 --> 0:04:59.960 of a slim portion of our own planets environment. Reading 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.240 reading up for this episode, I was astonished to discover 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.680 how excited scientists are about the possibility for life and 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.320 a couple of Saturn's moons, Because when you think about 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.680 life in our Solar System beyond Earth, everybody always mentions Europa. 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.320 That that's the one that comes to mind, and for 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:19.359 good reason. There's a lot of reason to want to 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:24.120 study Europa from an astrobiological perspective. But Saturn has some 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:26.720 really good moons going for it, and we're gonna explore 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.880 what's going on on those moons today, all right. Before 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:31.839 we get into that, though, let's let's just roll through 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:33.880 some of the basics about Saturn just to give everyone 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:37.520 a grounding in the planet that plays host all of 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:41.400 these wonderful spheres and and ovals in a case of 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.560 alf just lumps of rock uh and the potatoes spongey potato. 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:48.760 So again, it's the second largest plane in our Solar system. 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:52.240 It's a gas giant without solid substance save it's dense, hot, 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:56.440 pressurized core of rock, ice, water and other compounds. And 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.839 all of this is an enveloped by liquid metallic hid 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.360 gen inside a layer of a liquid hydrogen. Okay, so 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.479 it's located nine point five astronomical units away from the Sun, 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.720 six planet in our solar system, as the posters tell us, 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:14.920 and has seven icy rings that encircle it, spanning up 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:17.960 to one and seventy five thousand miles or two two 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:20.920 thoud kilometers. So what are the rings consist of? Yeah? 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.960 I've always wondered this. Yeah, the contrary to what bugs 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.320 Bunny you may have taught you, if if I remember correctly, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.039 they are not the solid rings that you can run 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.000 around on. They're not like a treadmill or anything. But 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.719 scientists haven't always known that that's true. They have not 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:37.039 always been aware of that. We know now that it's 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:41.200 it's mostly water ice. The planet's ring system extends hundreds 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:43.760 of thousands of kilometers out from the planet, but the 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:47.119 vertical height is typically about ten meters or thirty feet 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.839 in the wine rings. Are you serious? But but but 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:53.520 but there's there's there's a key butt coming up. They 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:59.200 can grow far larger. During Saturn's autumn two thousand nine equinox, 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.640 the Casine Any spacecraft images showed us that vertical formations 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.520 and some of the rings had piled the particles up, 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.679 but in ridges more than three kilometers or two miles tall. 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.640 And there's some fascinating structures and behaviors that you can 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.760 see within the rings to including these like a propeller 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:21.200 shaped objects you can form. It's crazy now. Light Jupiter 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.920 Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, and in 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.040 the upper atmosphere, wind speeds can reach five hundred meters 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.920 or sixteen hundred feet per second in the equatorial region. 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.680 These winds fast. It's pretty fast, so it looks more 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:37.240 peaceful than it is. Just because it doesn't have the 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:39.840 big red spot doesn't mean it has some some anger 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:43.600 to it. Uh. These winds combined with heat rising from 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:47.360 the planet's in tier cause the yellow gold bands that 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.560 we see visible in the atmosphere. But they're not as 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.680 visible as the bands we see on Jupiter. Right, Yeah, 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.960 it's not. It's not as angry. It's not. It doesn't 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:59.480 look like somebody just poured a bunch of like red 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:04.160 liquid into you know, a swirling mixer bowl of pancake 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:08.960 batter in blood. That is a great way to describe it. 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.080 That's how I think of Jupitery. Yeah, this one is 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:13.559 more just like pancake batter with some with some honey 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.560 at you know, there's a wonderful coincidence with the other 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.240 episode that we recorded this week, Robert, which was the 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.840 episode on the Library of Babel. And now I'm not 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:23.840 sure what the publishing schedule is going to be, but 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:26.280 in the episode on the in the Library of Babble, 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:29.280 we discussed how people in the Library of Babel seek 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.839 out the Crimson hexagon. That's right, and indeed there is 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:37.160 a hexagon on Saturn. It's it does not contain any books. 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.560 It is not a room per se. Well you don't 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:43.480 know that, I'm pretty sure, but yes, if you look 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:45.280 at you I'm sure a number of people have seen 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.640 seen images of this here. But if you if you 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:49.840 look at various images of Saturn, there appears to be 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.400 a hexagon at the top, almost as if it has 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:56.920 a little hexagonal hat, a little skull cap on um. 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.240 And it's weird to look at because you're seeing this 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.640 in nature. This is not obviously an object designed by 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.079 anybody on purpose. But it's not circular. It's got these 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.040 clear corners. Yeah, it's not the kind of shape that 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:11.560 you would necessarily expect. But there is, of course a 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.200 very natural reason for this. This is caused by jet 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:18.800 streams uh in the in the wind systems of Saturn. Basically, 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.360 you have a region here that's bound on each side 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:25.559 by different editing editing storms. So it's uh, it's the 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:28.320 kind of thing if you've ever met somebody who's playing 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:30.600 with a lot of bubbles, you know, like doing a 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.079 lot of bubble art, and not sure what you mean bubble, 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.000 like blowing bubbles and sticking other bubbles, maybe blowing smoke 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:38.760 into those bubbles. Okay, I'm not very familiar with this 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:42.280 art form. Oh you're not. Oh it was Big Medicine 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:46.600 on like Sesame Street and and um Mr Rogers neighborhood 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:48.599 and back in the day, I completely lost touch with 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.480 my inner child. Well, blowing big bubbles is a lot 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.520 of fun, but blowing small bubbles too, because you can 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:56.880 join them together, and if you really know what you're doing, 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.199 you can form geometric shapes at the center where these 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:04.120 bubbles bubbles border other bubbles and kind of force different 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:06.679 shapes towards the center. Oh yeah, okay, I think I 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:08.719 know what you're talking about. So I try to think 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.920 of that when I think of this particular scenario to 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:17.480 try and remind myself that yes, uh, non spherical shapes 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:23.240 are possible within nature given the right circumstances. Now, another 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.600 quick fact about Saturn. Here a day last ten hours 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:28.679 and a year. The time it takes through the body 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:31.920 to orbit its central star last twenty nine earth years, 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:36.360 and the planet's a magnetic field is smaller than Jupiter's, 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.600 but still five seventy eight times as powerful as Earth's, 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.320 shielding Saturn and many of its moons from the solar wind. Okay, 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:45.640 well that's going to be important if we're talking about 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:48.760 I don't know, putting a colony there, yea very important. 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.199 So on that note, let's start talking about the discovery 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.280 of Saturn, the discovery of Saturn's moons. Saturn, of course, 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:57.439 is a very We've known about Saturn for a very 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.559 long time. Right, nobody knows who discovered sat turned because 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.199 the ancients knew about Saturn. We've known about Saturn as 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.079 long as we've had history. You know, naked eye astronomers 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:09.400 could peer up into the night sky and see Saturn. 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.640 So uh so, what we're really going to be talking 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:15.920 about is the first telescopic studies of Saturn. And you 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.800 might recall from the last episode that the person usually 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.040 credited with discovering the largest moons of Jupiter, the four 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:27.760 Galilean Moons, was the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, and Galileos 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.040 also given credit for discovering the rings of Saturn, though 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.520 he didn't really understand what he was looking at. Now, 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:36.840 like we said, everybody already knew about Saturn, but they 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.439 knew it as a point of light in the sky. 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:43.400 And when Galileo looked at Saturn, he saw something very odd, 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:49.360 a triple star. It looked like one enormous star with 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.840 two tiny stars attached to it on either side, like 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:57.640 little side cars riding along with it. Now fun fact, 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.559 Galileo wanted to get credit for being the first person 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.360 to discover this triple star, but he wasn't ready to 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:06.199 publish his findings yet, so he used a method that 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:10.479 I thought was pretty clever. He instead disseminated an anagram. 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:13.160 And by the way, when this came up, I had 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.320 to look up anagrams of our names for fun. I 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.560 have no good ones, not really. My name is I've 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:21.680 got comic Jock rim and that's got it. But Robert, 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.400 You've got some awesome anagrams in case you've never looked 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.280 him up before. You've got Mr babel rot that's pretty good. 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:33.040 You've also got barrel tomb, barrel to m okay. But anyway, 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.760 uh So, anagram jumbled around letters, you know, jumbled up, 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:39.120 and then you can you can und jumble them to 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.839 spell the original message and show if it's a sufficiently 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:45.840 short number of letters, you know, you can show that 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:48.240 you had this idea all along, and that that was 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.760 Galileo's idea. So the anagram that Galileo spread around could 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.840 be unjumbled to read something along the lines of I've 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:59.640 discovered the triform planet, and if anybody tried to scoop him, 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:01.800 he could just unscrambled it and show that he had 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:05.640 seen it first. But we now know that Saturn is 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.240 not a triform planet. So who figured that out? Well? 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:14.359 In sixteen fifty five. Around sixteen fifty six, the Dutch astronomer, mathematician, 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.800 and all around science guy Christian Hygans made a study 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:21.320 of Saturn through a more powerful telescope, and he made 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:25.520 his own discoveries so by observing how the side stars 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:28.640 of Saturn could disappear and then reappear. And this is 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.600 something other observers had noticed too. Hygans realized that he 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.880 was actually looking at a planet surrounded by a flat 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:38.320 disc of rings. It could disappear because of what you 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:41.800 mentioned about how flat it is, right, so it could 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:43.640 be very bright when we're looking at it at an 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.040 angle where the rings are reflecting up toward us. But 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:49.800 when the rings suddenly turned to where they're pretty much 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.719 perpendicular with our view, they completely disappear. There's not enough 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:55.920 surface to reflect anything. It's like a It's like a 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.440 lady in a hat with a wide brim. Depending on 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.240 how she is hold in her head, the positioning of 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:03.880 her neck, you may or may not see the brim 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:05.599 of the hat, and you'll see at a very degree y. 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:07.880 So she tilts her head towards you, you see the brim, 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.320 she tilts her head flat relative to your perspective, you 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.640 don't really see much. And so Hyggan's observed that. But 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:16.679 Hygan's didn't know what the rings were made of. I 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.040 think he actually thought they might be some kind of 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:22.440 solid structure, maybe more like the bugs money example, And 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:26.600 just try to imagine that in reality. Again. I love 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.720 thinking about like when you had less information and and 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.040 we just we're trying to conceive of what the universe 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:36.040 was like solid rings around the planet. Yeah, I mean 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.040 they based on the information available at the time. Yeah, 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:44.400 why not fascinating. But of course subsequently we learned more 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.480 about the rings of Saturn. Now, of course, Hygan's discovered 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:51.640 something else while studying Saturn, a moon. Nobody had seen 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:53.520 any of the moons of Saturn up until this time, 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.600 and he discovered the largest moon of Saturn, which is Titan, 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.600 which is going to be a fascinating thing to explore 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.720 in the little little bit here. But then subsequently other 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.480 moons of Saturn were discovered by astronomers like Giovanni Cassini 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:10.359 and William Herschel. And we're still learning more about Saturn's 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.280 smaller satellites. Today, we don't know everything there is to 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:17.280 know about Saturn's moons and especially it's smallest moons. Yeah. Again, 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:21.080 like I mentioned earlier, fifty three known moons, nine currently 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:25.080 awaiting confirmation, so we're still figuring it all out. Now. 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.880 We have actually sent exploration missions to Saturn. So there 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:32.080 were several fly bys Pioneer eleven, Voyager one, and two 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.080 that they did fly bys of Saturn, did a little 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:37.080 bit of observation, but the big one, the real hero 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.720 for for planetary science and discovery and the Saturn sphere 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:46.800 is Cassini, the Cassini Hoygien's mission. So the Cassini orbiter 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.560 entered Saturn's orbit in two thousand four during Saturn's northern winter, 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.520 and it's been conducting research on Saturn and its moons 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.560 ever since, and it has sent back some awesome photos. 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:01.000 One of the coolest thing about the Seni photos I've 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:05.640 always thought is how real photos that are taken by Cassini. Now, 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:08.880 of course they're usually like color enhanced or enhanced in 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.000 some way, but real photos taken by this probe look 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:16.040 like illustrations. They often they just don't look like a 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.200 picture that somebody took with a real camera. But they 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:23.080 are with of course some enhancements. I don't know. I 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:27.680 love that. I love it when reality can't pass for real. Yeah, 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:32.760 because the thing that you're photographing is so utterly unreal. Yeah, 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:37.920 to our earthling conceptions, to everything that we have evolved 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.600 a view here on this world. Yeah. And of course, 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:43.560 another part of the Cassini mission was the Huygens probe, 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:46.800 which went down landed on Titan in two thousand five 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:50.360 after Cassini reached Saturn in two thousand four, and that 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.480 also sent back some amazing imagery and made some fascinating 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.440 discoveries that we will talk about in a bit when 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.440 it's time to speak of Titan. So now it's time 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:01.760 to take a quick break. But when we come back, 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:05.280 we will be spiraling in towards Saturn, beginning with the 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:15.760 outermost moons and working our way in. All right, we're back, Robert. 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.159 It it seems like we're coming up on a on 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.640 a strange outer moon. Yes, we in fact, we're coming 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:26.240 up on the largest of the outer moons. Iapus APUs, Yes, 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:29.840 it didn't that sound Lovecraft. I in like something they 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:33.159 would worship. A chanted name appatus. You just want to 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:37.240 invoke it. Yeah, named, by the way for a Tartarus 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.280 bound Titan. So it's nice and it has a nice 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:45.280 gloomy feel to it. Ioppotus is not unlike the yenyang 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.520 of Chinese philosophy, to to prepare everyone for what you're 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:52.360 gonna see here. Uh, it's leading hemisphere is dark while 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.919 it's trailing himisphere is significantly brighter. It's a tidally locked 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:58.840 world like a number of moons, meaning that one side 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.959 always faces Saturn and the other side always faces the void. 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:06.120 It essentially looks like the en Yang. It essentially looks 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:08.800 like the black and white cookie from that episode of Seinfeld. 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:14.440 It's like the two face of Saturn's moons, and it's 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.800 it's crazy to behold, and it's been crazy for scientists 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:20.639 to try and figure out exactly why this is getting 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.680 too shortly. Mentioning two face, It's it's monstrous in more 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.640 than one way in appearance. Yeah, that's right. It also 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:30.080 has an equatorial ridge, which is a chain of six 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:34.280 mile or ten kilometer high mountains, and this is wonderful. 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.560 It it might have formed during a high speed rotation 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.360 period or most exciting at all of all, it might 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.560 be a collapsed ring. No, you're making that up. No, 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.199 that's one of the theories, collapsed ring. Yeah. These are 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.679 essentially like the collapsed ring mountains, which sounds like a 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.280 perfect It sounds like something out of a Jack Vance novel, 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:54.359 you know. So it could have had a ring that 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.840 was drawn into the planet by gravity, collapse into it 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:02.520 and became this planet wide ridge of mountains that looks 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:06.240 like a horror movie monster backbones sticking up out of 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:11.479 the planet's flesh. It's crazy, a killer now it it 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:16.560 orbits at a little over two million miles or three 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:20.600 million kilometers away from Saturn, and it has probably and 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.480 this has probably protected it from tidal forces and melting 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.200 episodes that would have resurfaced it. So it's far enough 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:30.400 away from Saturn that that Saturn's gravity is not warping 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:32.760 it too much. It's not heating it and causing the 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:37.560 geological activity exactly. But you do have the strange dark 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.680 and white side, and um there have been three major 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:43.920 theories over the years as to why one side is 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.239 black and the other is white. Hit me all right. 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:50.240 So one theory is that i Appetus maybe sweeping up 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:54.680 particles from the more distant dark moon phobe and steadily 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.280 renewing this dusting to cover up all but the newest craters. Okay, 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:03.760 it's one sability. Another one is that I saw volcanism 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.840 may be distributing the dark materials. We're talking of volcano 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.720 like eruptions of hydrocarbons, perhaps to due to chemical reactions 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.160 that are in turn caused by solar radiation. So you've 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.880 got a planet that's half covered in soot sort of. Yeah. 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:21.879 Now the third theory then, this is the one that's 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:24.280 that is backed up by a lot of data from 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.920 two thousand seven's uh Cassini fly by, and that is 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:33.080 that thermal segregation is going on. So what is that? So, yeah, 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.360 the salad works. It takes the Moon as long as 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:39.000 seventy nine days to rotate around Saturn, and it's some 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.800 dark material made its way to the Moon at some 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.320 point in the past, perhaps dude tying into one and 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:49.040 to the first theory, Um, then the long periods of 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:51.840 solar exposure on the dark side would have caused the 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.960 dark material to heat up and volatile icy materials within 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.400 the dark to sublime out and retreat to colder regions. 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:04.000 The bright regions become brighter and the dark regions get darker. Okay, 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.879 so sort of a slow attrition. Yeah, okay. So Yeapitus 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:10.560 is a fairly small world, right, it's about one seven 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:14.440 the mass of Pluto, about the width of Earth's moon. 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.439 But what is the life potential? I want to know. 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:20.520 That's our main question with all these right, Yeah, yeah, 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.080 that's certainly that's the one thing we want to know 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:25.040 on each of these, is it possible that there's some 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:28.000 sort of life clinging to this little moon. Now we 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.040 know that the planet itself is probably alive, and it's 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:33.960 a curled up movie monster that's going to unfurled with 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:37.520 its backbone finally sinking in as it stretches its back 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:41.280 out and raises its claws. But assuming that's not the case, 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.200 and it's just a rock in space, what we Yeah, 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:46.520 what's the hope that there's life on it? A very 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.760 very little, very little hope for life here. Despite the 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:53.560 insistence by various UFO groups that there are domed cities 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:56.360 or other such constructions here. But well, if you look 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:58.720 closely enough and you want it enough, you can find 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.320 dumb cities and just about any world. Ain't that always 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.800 the case? Uh? Could we put a colony there though, 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.520 if it were entirely self contained and we had the 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:12.359 you know, the necessary technology, of course, possibly, But you 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:14.239 get down to the fact that there are worse and 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:17.919 better places to consider in the neighborhood. But it wouldn't 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:20.240 be like trying to put a colony on Io or something. 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:22.640 No items like you could do it, but they're better 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:27.080 places Interestingly enough, this world is the location of the 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:30.600 monolith in the original novel two thousand one of Space Odyssey. 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:34.520 Oh so not wait, hold on the modelith the monolith 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:37.960 on Earth's moon or the monolith on Jupiter in orbit 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:40.560 around Jupiter. Right in the movie that it's in orbit 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:43.359 around Jupiter, but in the book it was Saturn. But 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:46.480 in making two dozen one Space odyestly they couldn't get 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:50.199 the models to look right for Saturn's rings, so they 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:55.240 changed it to Jupiter. Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Uh, 0:22:55.520 --> 0:22:58.919 it's interesting to look at the the media, the fictional 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.280