1
00:00:08,680 --> 00:00:13,440
Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, are you a fan of astronomy humor? It

2
00:00:13,480 --> 00:00:17,400
Speaker 1: depends as long as we're not making jokes about urinus. Well,

3
00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:20,079
Speaker 1: we'll have to try to avoid falling into that particular hole.

4
00:00:20,200 --> 00:00:24,079
Speaker 1: But personally, I love a good astronomy pun. I have

5
00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:28,760
Speaker 1: more of a plutonic relationship. Oh no, did you just

6
00:00:28,840 --> 00:00:32,640
Speaker 1: make that joke up or did you have to plan it? Okay,

7
00:00:32,680 --> 00:00:36,360
Speaker 1: I've got one for you. Alright. Why don't stars go

8
00:00:36,440 --> 00:00:41,040
Speaker 1: to university? Alright? Why? Because they've already got millions of degrees.

9
00:00:44,880 --> 00:01:03,600
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and

10
00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:07,160
Speaker 1: a professor at UC Irvine, and I will always laugh

11
00:01:07,240 --> 00:01:10,800
Speaker 1: at astronomy puns. Hi, I'm Kelly Weener Smith. I'm a

12
00:01:10,800 --> 00:01:14,200
Speaker 1: parasitologist at Rice University, and I think my last name

13
00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:17,280
Speaker 1: is hilarious. So I will always laugh at both parasitology

14
00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:20,600
Speaker 1: puns and scatological humor. There's gotta be a lot of

15
00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:23,080
Speaker 1: good puns when you're talking about worms and bugs and

16
00:01:23,120 --> 00:01:26,880
Speaker 1: things that crawling inside other things. So and they get,

17
00:01:27,200 --> 00:01:29,720
Speaker 1: but we try to keep this podcast family friendly, and

18
00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:32,720
Speaker 1: so we will spare you most of those and so

19
00:01:32,840 --> 00:01:36,520
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorgey explain the Universe,

20
00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:39,400
Speaker 1: in which we talk about all the incredible and amazing

21
00:01:39,480 --> 00:01:42,480
Speaker 1: things out there in the universe. We crack jokes about

22
00:01:42,480 --> 00:01:44,640
Speaker 1: the silly names they get, but we have a deep,

23
00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:47,640
Speaker 1: deep love for the mysteries of the universe and we

24
00:01:47,680 --> 00:01:49,720
Speaker 1: want to explore all of them with you. We think

25
00:01:49,800 --> 00:01:53,520
Speaker 1: it's incredible. It's amazing that this universe is understandable at

26
00:01:53,520 --> 00:01:56,120
Speaker 1: all to our tiny human brains. We want to push

27
00:01:56,160 --> 00:01:58,960
Speaker 1: forward this effort and bring this understanding of the universe

28
00:01:59,040 --> 00:02:02,040
Speaker 1: into all of our minds because everybody out there has

29
00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:05,120
Speaker 1: questions about how the universe works and wants to know

30
00:02:05,160 --> 00:02:06,880
Speaker 1: where it came from and where it's going to go

31
00:02:06,960 --> 00:02:09,560
Speaker 1: and how it all fits together. So thanks very much

32
00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:13,200
Speaker 1: for joining us on our journey of curiosity. My typical

33
00:02:13,240 --> 00:02:15,800
Speaker 1: co host Orge isn't with us today, and so we

34
00:02:15,880 --> 00:02:20,480
Speaker 1: have are wonderful and hilarious and very punny co host Kelly.

35
00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:23,560
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Kelly, thanks for having me. I'm

36
00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:27,520
Speaker 1: super excited about today's question. Awesome, And you know, on

37
00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:30,320
Speaker 1: this podcast we often talk about things that are very

38
00:02:30,360 --> 00:02:34,200
Speaker 1: far away. We're very distant in space and time, but

39
00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:37,519
Speaker 1: we also have questions about things that happen in our backyard.

40
00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:40,960
Speaker 1: We're very curious about the nature of our environment, how

41
00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:43,280
Speaker 1: the Earth formed, how the Solar system formed, how it

42
00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:46,360
Speaker 1: all came together. You have a very broad definition of

43
00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:51,400
Speaker 1: in our backyard. That's true, I guess, parasitologist, when you

44
00:02:51,400 --> 00:02:56,040
Speaker 1: talk about backyard, you mean literally like what's inside my fence, right,

45
00:02:56,160 --> 00:03:00,720
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I mean. Cosmologically speaking, though, our backyard

46
00:03:00,760 --> 00:03:03,400
Speaker 1: to me is like the stuff that formed with us,

47
00:03:03,400 --> 00:03:05,760
Speaker 1: that has like a common history that we could like

48
00:03:05,800 --> 00:03:07,800
Speaker 1: go and visit it and dig up something on an

49
00:03:07,840 --> 00:03:10,680
Speaker 1: asteroid and from that learned something about the Earth. We

50
00:03:10,720 --> 00:03:13,359
Speaker 1: have like answers in common, and actually later on in

51
00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:15,600
Speaker 1: the episode, we're gonna hear a really cool story about

52
00:03:15,639 --> 00:03:19,000
Speaker 1: how asteroids told us something about the history of our

53
00:03:19,040 --> 00:03:22,160
Speaker 1: planet and how uranium was involved. But you might look

54
00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:24,280
Speaker 1: at our planet and think, like, m it looks kind

55
00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:26,360
Speaker 1: of different from the other planets. I mean, like, we have,

56
00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:29,080
Speaker 1: for example, a nice surface, and we have water, and

57
00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:31,440
Speaker 1: we have an atmosphere, and you know the Moon doesn't

58
00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:34,960
Speaker 1: have that, and Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune and Urine

59
00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:37,480
Speaker 1: is these planets all look very different from ours, and

60
00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:40,000
Speaker 1: so you might wonder like did they form differently? Are

61
00:03:40,040 --> 00:03:42,080
Speaker 1: they made of the same stuff? What do we really

62
00:03:42,120 --> 00:03:43,840
Speaker 1: know about what's going on in the rest of the

63
00:03:43,840 --> 00:03:47,160
Speaker 1: Solar System and how is it all connected? And so

64
00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:49,240
Speaker 1: we thought a fun question to dig into would be

65
00:03:49,280 --> 00:03:52,320
Speaker 1: to ask questions about what's going on inside these other

66
00:03:52,360 --> 00:03:54,920
Speaker 1: big planets. That's a great question. I've been reading a

67
00:03:54,920 --> 00:03:57,080
Speaker 1: bit about what is on the various different planets that

68
00:03:57,120 --> 00:04:00,400
Speaker 1: I'm always surprised by, well by how much for lap

69
00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:02,640
Speaker 1: there tends to be, but also the important things that

70
00:04:02,680 --> 00:04:05,160
Speaker 1: seem to be missing, like carbon on the Moon. It's

71
00:04:05,160 --> 00:04:07,240
Speaker 1: gonna be really hard to grow plants on the Moon

72
00:04:07,240 --> 00:04:10,640
Speaker 1: with no carbon. Do you have plans to go plants

73
00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:13,040
Speaker 1: on the Moon? I do not, but plenty of people do.

74
00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:17,040
Speaker 1: Fun fact, the most concentrated carbon in the Moon is

75
00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:20,480
Speaker 1: probably the bags of feces that the Apollo astronauts left behind.

76
00:04:21,160 --> 00:04:23,440
Speaker 1: And this is why I don't get invited to parties.

77
00:04:25,720 --> 00:04:29,279
Speaker 1: Are those frozen remains from the astronauts also useful because

78
00:04:29,320 --> 00:04:32,760
Speaker 1: they contain like the microbiome of those astronauts from what

79
00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:35,400
Speaker 1: they were eating like forty years ago. I don't think

80
00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:38,279
Speaker 1: that microbiome is going to be useful for much anymore.

81
00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:41,480
Speaker 1: But I also think that according to the Outer Space Treaty,

82
00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:45,480
Speaker 1: those bags of feces technically still belong to NASA, So

83
00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:47,800
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on what NASA wants to do

84
00:04:47,839 --> 00:04:50,159
Speaker 1: with them. Well, if they've become an important resource, we

85
00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:54,520
Speaker 1: could end up with an international or interstellar war sparked

86
00:04:54,520 --> 00:04:59,640
Speaker 1: by astronaut remains. So why hasn't someone written about that

87
00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:04,359
Speaker 1: massive lost opportunity? Contact us if you need book ideas, Guys,

88
00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:07,880
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody out there has written that science fiction

89
00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:11,599
Speaker 1: story already. But we're not so interested in where astronauts

90
00:05:11,640 --> 00:05:14,800
Speaker 1: have left their remains. Were interested in whether there are

91
00:05:14,920 --> 00:05:18,080
Speaker 1: really big, heavy materials on other planets. Some of the

92
00:05:18,080 --> 00:05:20,240
Speaker 1: most exotic, some of the most amazing, some of the

93
00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:23,320
Speaker 1: weirdest things we find on Earth. We are wondering if

94
00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:26,719
Speaker 1: they also exist on other planets. And so today we

95
00:05:26,760 --> 00:05:36,240
Speaker 1: will be asking is there uranium on Uranus? Now? I

96
00:05:36,279 --> 00:05:40,000
Speaker 1: notice you very carefully pronouncing the title of the planet Uranus. Yes,

97
00:05:40,160 --> 00:05:42,800
Speaker 1: very carefully. I have a seven year old at home,

98
00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:45,440
Speaker 1: and so I have to be careful to not edge

99
00:05:45,480 --> 00:05:49,000
Speaker 1: anywhere near that word, otherwise I can't talk to her

100
00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:52,120
Speaker 1: for about three hours because she's laughing too hard and

101
00:05:52,200 --> 00:05:54,400
Speaker 1: me as well. But is there an option to pronounce

102
00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:58,000
Speaker 1: uranium with the same rhythm, like could you say uranium

103
00:05:58,360 --> 00:06:02,880
Speaker 1: your how you even say that uranium? Uran question? I've

104
00:06:02,960 --> 00:06:05,719
Speaker 1: never thought about it. I don't know. Is there uranium

105
00:06:05,800 --> 00:06:09,000
Speaker 1: on Uranus? Sorry, no, we got it backwards. Is there

106
00:06:11,160 --> 00:06:15,039
Speaker 1: is there urinium? Is there uranium on Uranus? There we go,

107
00:06:17,200 --> 00:06:19,360
Speaker 1: and the rest of the podcast would just be us giggling.

108
00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:28,320
Speaker 1: Control yourself. But it is a serious scientific question whether

109
00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:32,080
Speaker 1: uranium only exists on Earth, because you can imagine in

110
00:06:32,080 --> 00:06:34,320
Speaker 1: the future, as we're exploring the Solar System, we might

111
00:06:34,440 --> 00:06:38,240
Speaker 1: want to mind other planets for useful minerals as we're

112
00:06:38,279 --> 00:06:41,279
Speaker 1: powering our spaceships out of the Solar System or even

113
00:06:41,320 --> 00:06:43,560
Speaker 1: around the Solar System. And also to me, it's just

114
00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:45,880
Speaker 1: a fun question to think about, first of all, how

115
00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:47,720
Speaker 1: it was made in the universe and how it is

116
00:06:47,760 --> 00:06:49,960
Speaker 1: distributed and where it ended up. You know, is the

117
00:06:49,960 --> 00:06:52,640
Speaker 1: Earth unique in its collection of heavy metals or is

118
00:06:52,720 --> 00:06:56,240
Speaker 1: maybe uranium like very common on Urinus and other planets.

119
00:06:56,440 --> 00:06:58,760
Speaker 1: So I think the more than just a giggle factor.

120
00:06:58,880 --> 00:07:03,040
Speaker 1: This is a serious sign diffic question, very serious, very serious. Yes,

121
00:07:03,080 --> 00:07:05,320
Speaker 1: so putting on our serious faces. I went out there

122
00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:08,120
Speaker 1: and I asked folks on the internet listeners to this

123
00:07:08,200 --> 00:07:12,040
Speaker 1: show whether they thought there was uranium on Uranus. So,

124
00:07:12,080 --> 00:07:14,360
Speaker 1: if you would like to participate for future rounds the

125
00:07:14,360 --> 00:07:17,640
Speaker 1: podcast and like to play along at home, please write

126
00:07:17,680 --> 00:07:20,640
Speaker 1: to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.

127
00:07:20,720 --> 00:07:23,400
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your answers. I know you're out there.

128
00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:25,720
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the podcast for years and they've

129
00:07:25,760 --> 00:07:28,760
Speaker 1: never written in. Today is the day you right in.

130
00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:30,720
Speaker 1: So think about it for a minute before you listen

131
00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:34,960
Speaker 1: to these answers. Do you think there's uranium on Uranus?

132
00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:39,560
Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. Earth has it, and

133
00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:48,840
Speaker 1: all the other planets like Mercury, Mars, Asteroids and all

134
00:07:48,960 --> 00:07:55,280
Speaker 1: that have uranium, Uranus being in our Solar system should

135
00:07:55,320 --> 00:07:57,920
Speaker 1: have it too. I would say that, yes, there definitely

136
00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:02,080
Speaker 1: has to be at least one atom of uranium on Uranus,

137
00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:06,560
Speaker 1: seeing that uranium is distributed throughout the universe and um

138
00:08:06,760 --> 00:08:10,440
Speaker 1: maybe concentrated more on rocky planets. But my guess is

139
00:08:10,480 --> 00:08:13,840
Speaker 1: if we look really, really hard, we'd find that one atom. Yeah,

140
00:08:13,880 --> 00:08:17,000
Speaker 1: why not? I guess that's it's a pretty big planet

141
00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:22,480
Speaker 1: and it's mostly gas, but I don't think why there

142
00:08:22,520 --> 00:08:29,480
Speaker 1: shouldn't be any other stuff than what it's made out of,

143
00:08:30,920 --> 00:08:37,600
Speaker 1: because meteors and other things are constantly falling into it,

144
00:08:37,679 --> 00:08:42,200
Speaker 1: and I guess they're bound to be some that consists

145
00:08:42,280 --> 00:08:48,240
Speaker 1: of or have some uranium in them. So yeah, I'm

146
00:08:48,280 --> 00:08:51,959
Speaker 1: pretty confident about that. I would guess yes, because you're

147
00:08:51,960 --> 00:08:54,560
Speaker 1: asking it, but I'm not very confident in that answer.

148
00:08:54,920 --> 00:08:58,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess no. Uranus was named by people who

149
00:08:58,640 --> 00:09:01,840
Speaker 1: did not know what uranium is, but they named it

150
00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:06,240
Speaker 1: after a Greek god in Greek mythology. But what do

151
00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:10,520
Speaker 1: I know? Yeah, I would think so because if I'm

152
00:09:10,600 --> 00:09:16,120
Speaker 1: not mistaken, it's a high pressure environment, and I would

153
00:09:16,200 --> 00:09:20,480
Speaker 1: guess that, you know, heavier elements and radioactive elements like

154
00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:24,800
Speaker 1: uranium would develop in a higher pressure environment like Uranus,

155
00:09:24,800 --> 00:09:31,000
Speaker 1: possibly closer towards the core. If there is any uranium

156
00:09:31,360 --> 00:09:34,360
Speaker 1: on ur I don't think that there would be very

157
00:09:34,440 --> 00:09:38,760
Speaker 1: much of it. There is probably a small amount scattered

158
00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:46,120
Speaker 1: to me amongst the war particles from meteorites or just stardust,

159
00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:50,120
Speaker 1: or maybe it has a rocky core, knows. I think

160
00:09:50,160 --> 00:09:56,480
Speaker 1: it's mostly ice of light liquids, small molecules frozen, so

161
00:09:56,840 --> 00:09:59,720
Speaker 1: it probably has a little. But you know, I think

162
00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:02,680
Speaker 1: that two might be related in namesake only, I would

163
00:10:02,760 --> 00:10:07,840
Speaker 1: say yes, definitely, at least one particle. I don't know.

164
00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:10,040
Speaker 1: I don't think that's what the plan is named for,

165
00:10:10,640 --> 00:10:13,840
Speaker 1: but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't have

166
00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:16,839
Speaker 1: some uranium. Thanks so much for those answers. There were

167
00:10:16,840 --> 00:10:20,640
Speaker 1: some really insightful answers in there. And actually, when Daniel

168
00:10:20,679 --> 00:10:23,400
Speaker 1: proposed this question to me, initially, it made me realize

169
00:10:23,640 --> 00:10:26,719
Speaker 1: that I didn't know how uranus got its name and

170
00:10:26,760 --> 00:10:29,360
Speaker 1: I didn't know the answer to this question. And I

171
00:10:29,400 --> 00:10:32,559
Speaker 1: agreed with some of the listeners. I thought, probably there's

172
00:10:32,640 --> 00:10:36,160
Speaker 1: there's at least some uranium and uranus, because it seems

173
00:10:36,160 --> 00:10:37,680
Speaker 1: like they would sort of have to be like maybe

174
00:10:37,679 --> 00:10:39,240
Speaker 1: if it was in a comment or an asteroid that

175
00:10:39,320 --> 00:10:41,840
Speaker 1: slammed into uranus, even if it wasn't made in there,

176
00:10:41,880 --> 00:10:44,880
Speaker 1: it might show up there. But I actually didn't know

177
00:10:44,960 --> 00:10:46,439
Speaker 1: the answer for sure, So I think I was in

178
00:10:46,480 --> 00:10:48,920
Speaker 1: the same boat as a bunch of these listeners. But

179
00:10:49,040 --> 00:10:51,080
Speaker 1: it turns out that I don't know too much about

180
00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:54,160
Speaker 1: uranus and where it got its name. So can you

181
00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:56,120
Speaker 1: tell us a bit about that, Daniel, Yeah, I love

182
00:10:56,160 --> 00:10:59,040
Speaker 1: this question because it has two really fun science stories,

183
00:10:59,080 --> 00:11:01,880
Speaker 1: the story of Uranus and the story of uranium, and

184
00:11:01,920 --> 00:11:04,000
Speaker 1: then it ties them together. So Urin this is a

185
00:11:04,080 --> 00:11:08,679
Speaker 1: really funny planet because it's history is hilarious, honestly, first

186
00:11:08,679 --> 00:11:12,120
Speaker 1: of all, because it was seen many many times before

187
00:11:12,200 --> 00:11:15,400
Speaker 1: anybody even understood that it was a planet. There's like

188
00:11:15,520 --> 00:11:19,960
Speaker 1: so many missed opportunities to make like a cosmic scale discovery,

189
00:11:20,040 --> 00:11:23,360
Speaker 1: leave your mark on humanity. Even back in like one

190
00:11:24,240 --> 00:11:27,839
Speaker 1: b C. Hipparcos saw it, and there's like recordings of

191
00:11:27,920 --> 00:11:30,840
Speaker 1: people seeing this thing in the sky going back to

192
00:11:30,880 --> 00:11:34,640
Speaker 1: like sixteen ninety or seventeen fifty. People like saw it

193
00:11:34,920 --> 00:11:38,000
Speaker 1: and noted it in their journals, but they didn't realize

194
00:11:38,040 --> 00:11:40,320
Speaker 1: it was a planet for a long time. It still

195
00:11:40,360 --> 00:11:43,800
Speaker 1: blows my mind that people in like the BC era,

196
00:11:43,960 --> 00:11:46,520
Speaker 1: we're looking up at space and had enough of a

197
00:11:46,679 --> 00:11:49,360
Speaker 1: knowledge about like what belonged where that they could notice

198
00:11:49,400 --> 00:11:52,000
Speaker 1: that something new had moved in that like needed to

199
00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:54,079
Speaker 1: be identified or something, Because you know, I still look

200
00:11:54,160 --> 00:11:55,560
Speaker 1: up the night sky and I'm like, oh, that's a

201
00:11:55,559 --> 00:12:00,120
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff up there. Even back then, they were

202
00:12:00,120 --> 00:12:02,319
Speaker 1: doing a much better job than I do at cataloguing

203
00:12:02,400 --> 00:12:04,800
Speaker 1: these things, and I find that very impressive. So what

204
00:12:04,880 --> 00:12:06,640
Speaker 1: did they think that it was? Well, a lot of

205
00:12:06,640 --> 00:12:08,600
Speaker 1: people just thought that it was a star. It's sort

206
00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:11,760
Speaker 1: of dim and slowly moving because it's really far out

207
00:12:11,840 --> 00:12:14,320
Speaker 1: there in the Solar System, and you know, the further

208
00:12:14,440 --> 00:12:17,360
Speaker 1: out you are in the Solar System, the slower you orbit,

209
00:12:17,559 --> 00:12:20,680
Speaker 1: like the actual linear speed is slower because the gravitational

210
00:12:20,760 --> 00:12:23,640
Speaker 1: pull on the planet is less, so you move less rapidly.

211
00:12:23,760 --> 00:12:26,680
Speaker 1: So in our sky urine, this doesn't move very fast.

212
00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:28,679
Speaker 1: So some people just thought it was a star that

213
00:12:28,720 --> 00:12:30,959
Speaker 1: like wandered a little bit because you know, it's sort

214
00:12:30,960 --> 00:12:33,920
Speaker 1: of hard to keep track back in the day about

215
00:12:33,920 --> 00:12:36,240
Speaker 1: what was moving in the sky and what was induced

216
00:12:36,280 --> 00:12:39,080
Speaker 1: by the Earth rotation, etcetera, etcetera, And so for a

217
00:12:39,080 --> 00:12:41,120
Speaker 1: long time people just thought it was a star. And

218
00:12:41,160 --> 00:12:43,840
Speaker 1: then the guy who actually discovered it, a guy named Herschel,

219
00:12:43,960 --> 00:12:45,520
Speaker 1: he saw it in the sky and he thought it

220
00:12:45,559 --> 00:12:48,360
Speaker 1: was a comment at first, so he didn't even realize

221
00:12:48,559 --> 00:12:50,800
Speaker 1: it was a planet. So the guy we give credit

222
00:12:50,840 --> 00:12:53,240
Speaker 1: to for discovering it actually thought it was a comment

223
00:12:53,320 --> 00:12:55,880
Speaker 1: when he saw it and recorded it. Don't comments tend

224
00:12:55,880 --> 00:12:58,360
Speaker 1: to move faster than planets. I guess it's like more

225
00:12:58,360 --> 00:13:00,920
Speaker 1: than two years ago. So calculating this stuff was tough.

226
00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:02,960
Speaker 1: But why did you think it was a commet? Well

227
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:06,679
Speaker 1: because he did the calculation very carefully, because other people

228
00:13:06,760 --> 00:13:09,400
Speaker 1: looked at his results and his data and they calculated

229
00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:12,120
Speaker 1: the orbit from his data and they're like, no, that's

230
00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:14,840
Speaker 1: not the orbit of a comet. That must be a planet.

231
00:13:14,880 --> 00:13:16,760
Speaker 1: You know what's the difference. The difference is that the

232
00:13:16,760 --> 00:13:19,199
Speaker 1: comet is like very eccentric orbit. A lot of these

233
00:13:19,240 --> 00:13:22,000
Speaker 1: things come from like the Ort cloud, like really far

234
00:13:22,120 --> 00:13:24,600
Speaker 1: out there in the Solar System, and then they exume

235
00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:27,840
Speaker 1: in very close to the Sun before zooming out, whereas

236
00:13:27,840 --> 00:13:30,600
Speaker 1: the planet is like a much larger object that's obviously

237
00:13:30,800 --> 00:13:34,560
Speaker 1: cleared its field and orbits with a much more circular orbit.

238
00:13:34,600 --> 00:13:37,680
Speaker 1: Not perfectly circular, but much more circular. And so it

239
00:13:37,760 --> 00:13:40,760
Speaker 1: was other people who looked at Herschel's data and they

240
00:13:40,880 --> 00:13:43,120
Speaker 1: decided it was a planet, and it was only Herschel

241
00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:45,719
Speaker 1: later being like, oh, okay, yeah, I agree with you.

242
00:13:46,040 --> 00:13:48,319
Speaker 1: What I saw was a planet. So like, I don't

243
00:13:48,360 --> 00:13:51,800
Speaker 1: even know why he gets credit for this? There did

244
00:13:51,800 --> 00:13:53,480
Speaker 1: he get to name it? And so then there was

245
00:13:53,520 --> 00:13:56,719
Speaker 1: like a seventy year argument about how to name it.

246
00:13:56,760 --> 00:14:00,040
Speaker 1: So Herschel wanted to name it George's Star, which is

247
00:14:00,080 --> 00:14:02,840
Speaker 1: like a terrible name because it's not a star, so

248
00:14:02,880 --> 00:14:04,400
Speaker 1: he thought he was a comment. He wanted to name

249
00:14:04,440 --> 00:14:07,080
Speaker 1: it after a star, which makes those sense. Other people

250
00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:10,560
Speaker 1: wanted to name it Neptune because we didn't have Neptune yet,

251
00:14:10,679 --> 00:14:14,040
Speaker 1: or Neptune Great Britain, like even more awkward name if

252
00:14:14,040 --> 00:14:18,439
Speaker 1: you can imagine. And finally somebody else suggested naming Uranus

253
00:14:18,480 --> 00:14:21,200
Speaker 1: after the god of the sky, you know, to follow

254
00:14:21,240 --> 00:14:24,120
Speaker 1: this pattern that were naming the planets after these Greek

255
00:14:24,160 --> 00:14:26,400
Speaker 1: and Roman gods. And so there was a long, like

256
00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:29,600
Speaker 1: seventy year battle about what to call this thing. One

257
00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:32,160
Speaker 1: group of people calling it Uranus, another group of people

258
00:14:32,400 --> 00:14:36,040
Speaker 1: calling it George's Star. And it wasn't until eighteen fifty

259
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:39,400
Speaker 1: when the British Navy the bureaucracy finally accepted the name

260
00:14:39,520 --> 00:14:42,680
Speaker 1: Uranus that it like formally became Uranus. So it was

261
00:14:42,720 --> 00:14:45,560
Speaker 1: like seventy years when people are arguing about like just

262
00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:48,040
Speaker 1: what to call this thing, So like did they know

263
00:14:48,160 --> 00:14:50,800
Speaker 1: what they were doing at the time, because anatomy was

264
00:14:50,840 --> 00:14:53,680
Speaker 1: pretty far along at that point. Did they realize school

265
00:14:53,760 --> 00:14:57,720
Speaker 1: children would be laughing for generations to come, or had

266
00:14:57,800 --> 00:15:00,120
Speaker 1: had all the body parts not been quite named at

267
00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:02,720
Speaker 1: at that point. That is a great question, and it

268
00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:05,080
Speaker 1: might also have to do with like the evolution of

269
00:15:05,120 --> 00:15:07,800
Speaker 1: the British accent. Right, I don't know what that word

270
00:15:07,920 --> 00:15:10,200
Speaker 1: sounded like a hundred and fifty years ago, or what

271
00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:12,960
Speaker 1: those two words that you have in mind sounded like,

272
00:15:13,040 --> 00:15:15,120
Speaker 1: and if they sounded more or less similar, that's a

273
00:15:15,120 --> 00:15:18,360
Speaker 1: great question. Linguists out there or historians of the British

274
00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:20,600
Speaker 1: accent please write to us and let us know how

275
00:15:20,640 --> 00:15:23,680
Speaker 1: similar those two words sounded over the years. We asked

276
00:15:23,680 --> 00:15:26,920
Speaker 1: the big questions we do. We go all the way

277
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:29,600
Speaker 1: up there and ask all the big questions. But you know,

278
00:15:29,640 --> 00:15:32,920
Speaker 1: it turns out to be scientifically, are really fascinating planet

279
00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:35,000
Speaker 1: for lots of reasons. One reason is that it's a

280
00:15:35,040 --> 00:15:39,400
Speaker 1: great example of a giant planet that's not a gas giant,

281
00:15:39,800 --> 00:15:42,600
Speaker 1: right like Jupiter and Saturn. We call these planets gas

282
00:15:42,640 --> 00:15:46,680
Speaker 1: giants because they're mostly hydrogen, but Neptune and Uranus we

283
00:15:46,720 --> 00:15:50,520
Speaker 1: call them ice giants because they really are a different composition.

284
00:15:50,680 --> 00:15:52,640
Speaker 1: And is that water ice or is that some other

285
00:15:52,720 --> 00:15:55,400
Speaker 1: kind of ice? So there's a mixture of water, ice

286
00:15:55,560 --> 00:15:59,480
Speaker 1: and ammonia and also methane, and the difference is really

287
00:15:59,520 --> 00:16:01,960
Speaker 1: that sort of like a race to get the gas.

288
00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:04,760
Speaker 1: Like in the formation of the Solar System, you start

289
00:16:04,800 --> 00:16:07,880
Speaker 1: out with a huge blob of stuff which is mostly hydrogen,

290
00:16:08,120 --> 00:16:09,920
Speaker 1: and then you know there's some rock and some water

291
00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:12,520
Speaker 1: and some other stuff, but really by mass, it's almost

292
00:16:12,520 --> 00:16:15,960
Speaker 1: all hydrogen, and almost all of it grabbed by the Sun.

293
00:16:16,160 --> 00:16:18,600
Speaker 1: Right the whole Solar system is formed, because the Sun

294
00:16:18,680 --> 00:16:22,480
Speaker 1: begins this gravitational collapse and because it becomes very quickly

295
00:16:22,520 --> 00:16:25,280
Speaker 1: the densest thing, the heaviest thing, then it grabs all

296
00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:27,920
Speaker 1: the gas. Like hydrogen, gas is very light and so

297
00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:30,520
Speaker 1: gravity pulls on it very effectively. So then to have

298
00:16:30,640 --> 00:16:33,000
Speaker 1: any gas, to accumulate any gas, you have to build

299
00:16:33,080 --> 00:16:35,960
Speaker 1: up enough mass to steal some from the forming Sun,

300
00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:38,880
Speaker 1: and so if you don't get big enough fast enough,

301
00:16:38,960 --> 00:16:42,040
Speaker 1: then you don't really get very much gas. So Jupiter

302
00:16:42,120 --> 00:16:44,600
Speaker 1: and Saturn like past this point where they can sort

303
00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:46,960
Speaker 1: of have a runaway effect and grab some of the

304
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:49,200
Speaker 1: gas before the Sun got almost all of it. But

305
00:16:49,360 --> 00:16:52,760
Speaker 1: Neptune and Uriness didn't get big enough fast enough, so

306
00:16:52,800 --> 00:16:55,400
Speaker 1: they just ended up like a blob of ice and rock.

307
00:16:55,640 --> 00:16:57,760
Speaker 1: So like the Moon and Mars didn't get most of

308
00:16:57,800 --> 00:17:01,080
Speaker 1: those gas either, and then Earth got theres from getting

309
00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:03,640
Speaker 1: collided with stuff. Yeah, and we have a whole fun

310
00:17:03,640 --> 00:17:06,080
Speaker 1: episode about how the Earth got its atmosphere. It had

311
00:17:06,119 --> 00:17:08,240
Speaker 1: a little bit of gas in the beginning, but then

312
00:17:08,280 --> 00:17:11,120
Speaker 1: it was mostly stolen away by the Sun and blown off,

313
00:17:11,160 --> 00:17:14,520
Speaker 1: and then it later recreated its atmosphere from volcanoes and

314
00:17:14,560 --> 00:17:17,320
Speaker 1: commentary collisions. It's an incredible story. And that's one of

315
00:17:17,359 --> 00:17:19,399
Speaker 1: the things I love about these questions is that it

316
00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:22,520
Speaker 1: tells you the rich, rich history of the Solar System.

317
00:17:22,720 --> 00:17:25,159
Speaker 1: It's not just like, oh, the planets formed and then

318
00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:27,520
Speaker 1: they were zooming around for four and a half billion years.

319
00:17:27,560 --> 00:17:31,479
Speaker 1: Like there are twists and turns and new characters and

320
00:17:31,520 --> 00:17:34,639
Speaker 1: like lost characters, and probably planets that existed in the

321
00:17:34,640 --> 00:17:36,920
Speaker 1: Solar System for millions or billions of years which are

322
00:17:36,920 --> 00:17:39,840
Speaker 1: now lost because they've been thrown out when Jupiter went

323
00:17:39,920 --> 00:17:43,159
Speaker 1: like in and then out again. It's a crazy story.

324
00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:45,560
Speaker 1: It's like a soap opera, and it's amazing we've figured

325
00:17:45,600 --> 00:17:49,320
Speaker 1: any of it out. So Urinest didn't managed to grab

326
00:17:49,359 --> 00:17:51,600
Speaker 1: this stuff and then it didn't have the like help

327
00:17:51,720 --> 00:17:54,399
Speaker 1: that Earth had to get it with all of that

328
00:17:54,440 --> 00:17:56,000
Speaker 1: other stuff, and so that's how it ended up with

329
00:17:56,040 --> 00:17:58,080
Speaker 1: not a lot of gas, that's right, And so we

330
00:17:58,119 --> 00:18:01,280
Speaker 1: don't actually know that much about what's in Urinus. We

331
00:18:01,320 --> 00:18:04,760
Speaker 1: have a model roughly for what it looks like, but

332
00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:07,320
Speaker 1: it's important to realize that we haven't really studied it

333
00:18:07,440 --> 00:18:09,720
Speaker 1: very much. We've looked at it with telescopes. We sent

334
00:18:09,920 --> 00:18:12,480
Speaker 1: one probe by it voyage or two, but that's really

335
00:18:12,560 --> 00:18:16,199
Speaker 1: the only close flyby of Uranus we've ever had. And

336
00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:18,480
Speaker 1: so we have a model for what's going on inside it,

337
00:18:18,520 --> 00:18:22,160
Speaker 1: which comes mostly from these models of solar system formation,

338
00:18:22,240 --> 00:18:24,480
Speaker 1: like what do we think had time to get in there?

339
00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:27,879
Speaker 1: And that model looks like a rocky core, so like

340
00:18:28,040 --> 00:18:31,320
Speaker 1: basically a huge rock about like half of the mass

341
00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:33,439
Speaker 1: of the Earth, and that's at the very center of it,

342
00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:36,160
Speaker 1: and then it's surrounded most of the mass of urine.

343
00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:39,200
Speaker 1: Is is this icy mantle and you know, we say ice,

344
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:43,360
Speaker 1: but it's mostly like a big water ammonia ocean. It's

345
00:18:43,400 --> 00:18:45,920
Speaker 1: like liquid or it's or it's fluid. At least it's

346
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:48,520
Speaker 1: under a lot of pressure, so it can still move

347
00:18:48,600 --> 00:18:51,280
Speaker 1: and flow. So do the way the Earth's mantle can,

348
00:18:51,400 --> 00:18:54,000
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't say necessarily that it's liquid. So I

349
00:18:54,040 --> 00:18:55,960
Speaker 1: think I'm getting confused yet. So so we you know,

350
00:18:55,960 --> 00:18:57,960
Speaker 1: when we were talking about it not picking up a

351
00:18:57,960 --> 00:18:59,919
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff, where did all this water in them

352
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:01,680
Speaker 1: when you come from? Was? Was that just stuff it

353
00:19:01,720 --> 00:19:04,359
Speaker 1: got lucky to grab initially or did it come somewhere

354
00:19:04,359 --> 00:19:06,240
Speaker 1: else from Earth? I feel like I already asked this question,

355
00:19:06,320 --> 00:19:08,919
Speaker 1: but now I'm confused about where all this water came from. Right,

356
00:19:08,920 --> 00:19:11,639
Speaker 1: So there's a huge amount of water and ice and

357
00:19:11,680 --> 00:19:14,800
Speaker 1: ammonia in the Solar system. So the initial formation of

358
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:17,400
Speaker 1: the Solar system, you have this cloud of hydrogen. Most

359
00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:20,159
Speaker 1: of the hydrogen went to the gas giants, but the

360
00:19:20,240 --> 00:19:22,360
Speaker 1: other stuff is heavier, it's slower, and so it's sort

361
00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:25,600
Speaker 1: of more likely to accumulate where it was initially. And

362
00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:27,840
Speaker 1: this stuff is far enough out from the Sun that

363
00:19:27,920 --> 00:19:30,880
Speaker 1: it stays frozen, so like the water is an ice

364
00:19:30,960 --> 00:19:33,480
Speaker 1: form and the ammonia is frozen. And so all of

365
00:19:33,480 --> 00:19:36,080
Speaker 1: this stuff that formed Urineus and Neptune and that was

366
00:19:36,119 --> 00:19:37,919
Speaker 1: the stuff that was sort of in the outskirts of

367
00:19:37,960 --> 00:19:41,119
Speaker 1: the Solar system originally, and then just sort of like coalesced. Like.

368
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:44,040
Speaker 1: Even further out in the Solar System is the Earth Cloud,

369
00:19:44,080 --> 00:19:47,760
Speaker 1: which is a bunch more frozen objects that become comets,

370
00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:50,639
Speaker 1: and those are also just balls of ice. So everything

371
00:19:50,640 --> 00:19:53,000
Speaker 1: that's really really far out in the Solar System is

372
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,359
Speaker 1: basically just rock and ice at this point, and it

373
00:19:55,400 --> 00:19:58,840
Speaker 1: pulls together to form these ice giant planets. I'm with

374
00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:00,880
Speaker 1: you now. So the core of it is this big rock,

375
00:20:01,080 --> 00:20:04,719
Speaker 1: and then outside of that, like thirteen masses of the Earth,

376
00:20:05,280 --> 00:20:08,560
Speaker 1: is this hot, dense fluid. It's not frozen, right, It's

377
00:20:08,600 --> 00:20:11,600
Speaker 1: called ice, but it's not frozen. It's it's very confusing,

378
00:20:11,760 --> 00:20:14,680
Speaker 1: so it's sort of like an ocean. It's more like liquid,

379
00:20:14,760 --> 00:20:17,920
Speaker 1: but it's not technically in that phase. So chemists out

380
00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:20,080
Speaker 1: there would be particular about how this is referred to,

381
00:20:20,280 --> 00:20:23,000
Speaker 1: but they do definitely call it an ice, and that's

382
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:26,040
Speaker 1: what most of Urinus is. And then outside of that,

383
00:20:26,080 --> 00:20:29,000
Speaker 1: there's like an envelope. There's an atmosphere that's like another

384
00:20:29,080 --> 00:20:31,160
Speaker 1: half the mass of the Earth, and that has some

385
00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:33,639
Speaker 1: hydrogen and some other gases in it. That's sort of

386
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:36,560
Speaker 1: like the triple layers of Uranus. So I watch a

387
00:20:36,600 --> 00:20:39,040
Speaker 1: bunch of kids shows with my kids, and I feel

388
00:20:39,040 --> 00:20:41,400
Speaker 1: like the one fact about Urinus that we always hear

389
00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:44,080
Speaker 1: is that it rotates on its side. Do we know

390
00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:47,960
Speaker 1: why it's rotated? Why all those layers are rotating the

391
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:50,520
Speaker 1: wrong way? Did it get hit by something and sort

392
00:20:50,560 --> 00:20:54,520
Speaker 1: of knocked off kilter. It's super cool that it's doing that, because,

393
00:20:54,560 --> 00:20:57,720
Speaker 1: as you say, it's evidence that something happened, And the

394
00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:00,399
Speaker 1: reason it has to be evidence that something happened is

395
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:03,600
Speaker 1: that we're pretty sure a planet can't just naturally form

396
00:21:03,680 --> 00:21:06,560
Speaker 1: that way. You notice that, like all the planets are

397
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:08,600
Speaker 1: sort of in the same plane. That's the plane we

398
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:11,879
Speaker 1: call the ecliptic, and it's also very well aligned with

399
00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:15,199
Speaker 1: how the Sun rotates, So the Sun is spinning as well. Right,

400
00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:16,800
Speaker 1: it's not just sitting there in the center of the

401
00:21:16,840 --> 00:21:19,879
Speaker 1: Solar System. It spins and the planets spin around it,

402
00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:22,560
Speaker 1: and each of the planets then spin around their axes,

403
00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:25,640
Speaker 1: and almost all of this spin is in the same direction,

404
00:21:26,040 --> 00:21:27,919
Speaker 1: Like if you drew a line between the north and

405
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:29,919
Speaker 1: the south pole of the Sun, that would give you

406
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:33,000
Speaker 1: an axis, and most of the Solar System is on

407
00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:36,000
Speaker 1: a plane perpendicular to that, and most of the planets

408
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:39,040
Speaker 1: rotate around their own axis that's parallel to the Sun's axis.

409
00:21:39,040 --> 00:21:41,840
Speaker 1: So for most of the Solar System it's very well organized.

410
00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:44,000
Speaker 1: And that's not like a coincidence. It's not like it

411
00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:46,200
Speaker 1: just happened to end up that way, like we could

412
00:21:46,200 --> 00:21:48,960
Speaker 1: have had planets in any random direction. It comes from

413
00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:52,440
Speaker 1: angular momentum conservation. Like when something is spinning, it has

414
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:54,399
Speaker 1: to keep spinning. There's no way like for it to

415
00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:57,480
Speaker 1: stop spinning unless you come in with something from the outside,

416
00:21:57,640 --> 00:21:59,920
Speaker 1: like if you start a top spinning in space is

417
00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:02,440
Speaker 1: just going to keep going forever. And that's what happened

418
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:05,879
Speaker 1: with the Solar system, is that it collapses gravitationally but

419
00:22:06,040 --> 00:22:08,120
Speaker 1: has to keep spinning, and so it has to keep

420
00:22:08,119 --> 00:22:11,439
Speaker 1: spinning around that original axis. It can collapse sort of

421
00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:13,760
Speaker 1: parallel to that axis, which is why you get a

422
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:17,359
Speaker 1: flat disc, but the disc itself can't collapse much further

423
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:20,240
Speaker 1: because it has to keep spinning. So everything spinning sort

424
00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:24,040
Speaker 1: along the same axis. So to get urinous knocked over

425
00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:27,280
Speaker 1: on its side requires, as you said, like some huge

426
00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:31,480
Speaker 1: rock like a lost moon or another planet somehow that

427
00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:34,119
Speaker 1: banged into it and knocked it over. So it's really

428
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:37,120
Speaker 1: is evidence of like an incredible cosmic collision. I feel

429
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:38,840
Speaker 1: like I'm just going to go ahead and blame Jupiter

430
00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:41,959
Speaker 1: because it seems like the answer for so many things is, well,

431
00:22:42,080 --> 00:22:44,919
Speaker 1: Jupiter did something weird and that might not be consistent,

432
00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:47,080
Speaker 1: but I'm going to go ahead and blame Jupiter anyway,

433
00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 1: because is that your parenting strategy? You like, you pick

434
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:52,280
Speaker 1: one kid who's always to blame. You're like, look, I

435
00:22:52,320 --> 00:22:55,160
Speaker 1: didn't see it, but it's usually you. But I pretty

436
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:57,679
Speaker 1: much know the Actually it's the dog that I usually

437
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:01,280
Speaker 1: There you go. The dog is the source of chaos. Yes,

438
00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:04,440
Speaker 1: you know. I think that's an underappreciated role of dogs

439
00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:06,760
Speaker 1: in human history. You know, it's just taken the blame

440
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:10,680
Speaker 1: for other people's misdeeds or farts around the campfire or

441
00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:14,760
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. She is the scapegoat, but she's

442
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: a good sport about it, all right. Well, so now

443
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:21,280
Speaker 1: we're all on board about what urineus is like, so

444
00:23:21,359 --> 00:23:23,280
Speaker 1: I think it's time that we take a little break

445
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:39,160
Speaker 1: and then we'll get to uranium. Okay, so now we've

446
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:43,359
Speaker 1: talked about what we know about uranus, and uranus and

447
00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:48,399
Speaker 1: uranium sound really similar. So let's learn about uranium and

448
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:50,800
Speaker 1: see if there's any connection. There, So there actually is

449
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: some connection in the name. I mentioned earlier that when

450
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:56,280
Speaker 1: they discovered the planet there was a bit of an

451
00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:59,440
Speaker 1: argument about what to name it, And so Uranium was

452
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:03,560
Speaker 1: discovered about eight years after Uranus, and the guy who

453
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: named uranium uranium did so sort of to vote for

454
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: Uranus as the name of the planet. He was like,

455
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:14,199
Speaker 1: naming uranium after this newly discovered planet. He wanted to

456
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:19,000
Speaker 1: influence the astronomy community towards the name Uranus. WHOA, So

457
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: did he have any influence? Like he did it? But

458
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:22,800
Speaker 1: did it matter? Do we know? I don't know. We

459
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:25,119
Speaker 1: have to run the counter experiment or we see what

460
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 1: would have happened if he hadn't done that. I'm not sure,

461
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:30,119
Speaker 1: but I think it was always going to be Uranus.

462
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:31,480
Speaker 1: It was just, you know, it's going to be a

463
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 1: matter of time before the British bureaucracy gave it up.

464
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,399
Speaker 1: What a kind of crumby reason for naming an element, though, like,

465
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: unless there's some astronomy connection there to just be like no, no,

466
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:43,880
Speaker 1: I really want you to do this naming thing. But anyway,

467
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,359
Speaker 1: I guess you know, we're all humans. Our logic is

468
00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 1: sometimes convoluted. Yeah, And you know, you discover something, you

469
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: get to name it. You don't always have a good reason.

470
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 1: As we talked about a lot on this podcast, some

471
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 1: of these names are pretty whimsical and pretty ridiculous. I mean,

472
00:24:56,000 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: there's like Berkeley m and California UM and Americum, and

473
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 1: the names the elements are pretty silly, fair enough, some

474
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:04,439
Speaker 1: of them are fun to say, like you SI, But

475
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 1: as we talked about earlier, the planets each have a

476
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,399
Speaker 1: really cool story. Each of the elements also has a

477
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:13,159
Speaker 1: really really cool story that goes back much much further

478
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 1: than the story of our particular solar system. So tell

479
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:18,800
Speaker 1: us about how this one was found. So the important

480
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,680
Speaker 1: thing to understand about uranium is that it's not made primordially,

481
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 1: like the very beginning of the universe, when things are

482
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:28,640
Speaker 1: super hot and dance in these particles whizzing around everywhere,

483
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 1: and then things are cooling down. Just after the Big Bang,

484
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:35,400
Speaker 1: we get atoms formed, but mostly we just made hydrogen

485
00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: and a very small amount of helium. So the very

486
00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: early universe is basically just like a huge hydrogen cloud,

487
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: definitely no uranium. So uranium does not date back to

488
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Big Bang like the electrons in

489
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:51,360
Speaker 1: your body, and the protons in your body are probably

490
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:56,560
Speaker 1: older than every uranium nucleus out there, so uranium came later, Right,

491
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 1: It took a while to make uranium in our universe.

492
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: It's really cool, and we're gonna do a whole podcast

493
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:04,199
Speaker 1: episode focused just on like what is out there in

494
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:06,640
Speaker 1: the universe and how is made in the relative population

495
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: of all these materials, because they all tell such cool stories,

496
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: and it took a while for people to figure out, like, well,

497
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:14,199
Speaker 1: where did all the rest of this stuff come from? Like,

498
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:17,960
Speaker 1: once they realized that you couldn't make anything heavier than

499
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 1: helium or a little bit of lithium in the Big Bang,

500
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: they had to look around to find a place in

501
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: the universe to make these heavier elements, and it took

502
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:27,919
Speaker 1: people a while, but they figured out that some of

503
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: the elements could be made, of course, inside stars, and

504
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: it's the intense heat and pressure that allows you to

505
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 1: make these things. Yes, stars operate by fusion, right, so

506
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: they are glowing and super hot, and they're this exciting

507
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:43,440
Speaker 1: balance between gravity which is compressing all of this stuff.

508
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: It's like a runaway effect where you got this huge

509
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: compression of all this hydrogen gas, and then fusion. If

510
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:52,960
Speaker 1: you get all these protons close enough together, you squeeze

511
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 1: them together, you overcome the fact that they like to

512
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:58,480
Speaker 1: repel each other because they're both too positive charges, and

513
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: eventually they form heavier off So two hydrogen atoms confused

514
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:05,640
Speaker 1: together to form helium and helium confused together to form

515
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: heavier stuff. And if you have a big enough star,

516
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,920
Speaker 1: then the products of one fusion cycle, like the helium

517
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: from fusing hydrogen, can become the fuel for the next one,

518
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: and then the fuel for the next one, and really

519
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:19,159
Speaker 1: big stars they develop these incredible layers we have like

520
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 1: hydrogen on the outside, and then a layer of helium,

521
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: and then a layer of something heavier and a layer

522
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: of something heavy go calcium and oxygen, and all the

523
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: way up, and the biggest stars they confuse stuff all

524
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 1: the way up to iron. So iron is element fifty six,

525
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: and it means that at the core something is fusing

526
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:40,520
Speaker 1: two elements together and producing iron. And that's where a

527
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: lot of these elements that are too heavy to have

528
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: been made in the Big Bang are made. But stars

529
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: can only fuse up to iron, like before iron. Anything

530
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: lighter than iron. If you fuse it, you get a

531
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:53,919
Speaker 1: byproduct and you get energy out, and that's how the

532
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:57,479
Speaker 1: star glows. But iron, if you try to fuse iron together,

533
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 1: it actually costs you energy. So if you fuse iron together,

534
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 1: you'll cool down the star. You will kill the star

535
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,439
Speaker 1: if you try to fuse iron together. But we have

536
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:10,120
Speaker 1: stuff higher than iron, and so is stuff higher than

537
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 1: iron made in dying stars. So for a long time

538
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 1: people really didn't understand this. They're like, well, stars can't

539
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 1: make higher than iron. But as you say, obviously we

540
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: have like gold and platinum and plutonium and uranium. Where

541
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: do all these things come from? And so people thought

542
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 1: for a while, as you said, that maybe they come

543
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:29,640
Speaker 1: from supernova, that maybe the special conditions when a star

544
00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: explodes might be enough to trigger, you know, this kind

545
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: of heavier element fusion. But the story didn't really hang together,

546
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 1: like it's potentially possible for this to happen, but they

547
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: didn't really see evidence for it around supernova. And the

548
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 1: problem is that this process is very delicate. Like above iron,

549
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: in order to make something heavier, you need to absorb

550
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: like multiple neutrons at the same time. Like if you

551
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 1: absorb one neutron, you become very unstable and just break up.

552
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: If you absorb two neutrons, then boom, you can transmute

553
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: into this heavier thing. So you have to like absorb

554
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: to neutrons almost simultaneously. It's called this our process for

555
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 1: rapid process. And to do that you need like a

556
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 1: lot of neutrons around you so that you have like

557
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 1: enough that sometimes you'll get two of them coming in

558
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: at the same time. And that's very difficult to do

559
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: in the environment of a supernova because supernova is expanding,

560
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: it's exploding. And the other problem with supernovas is that

561
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: while they might make some of this stuff, they don't

562
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: really like ejected out there into the Solar system. We

563
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 1: don't just want to make uranium. We need to make

564
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: uranium and then have it be the seeds for a

565
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: future solar system. If it's just made inside a star

566
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:35,680
Speaker 1: and then like kept inside the remnant of that star,

567
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: it's not going to end up here on Earth or

568
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: as part of our Solar system. So recently people found

569
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: another way to make these super duper heavy elements that

570
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:47,880
Speaker 1: wasn't just supernova's suspense is killing me? What is it?

571
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 1: So the answer to how to get a bunch of

572
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: neutrons together, like a really high density of neutrons, so

573
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 1: you can do this kind of thing is neutron stars.

574
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 1: Neutron stars are these remnants of old dead stars, right,

575
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: they've already blown up up and collapse, and they have

576
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:05,280
Speaker 1: this leftover core that's super incredibly dense. Now, when two

577
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:07,920
Speaker 1: of these things collide, like two neutron stars in a

578
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 1: binary system for example, spiral into each other and collide,

579
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: then you get this incredible cataclysmic event of really unparalleled density,

580
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: not enough to become a black hole, but to form

581
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: maybe a larger neutron star or to blow some of

582
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 1: this stuff out. And so recently, because of gravitational wave observatories,

583
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:28,680
Speaker 1: we've been able to see these neutron star collisions happen,

584
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 1: and they're really cool things that you can see the

585
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:34,960
Speaker 1: gravitational waves that they make like actual shaking of space

586
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,080
Speaker 1: because they're so dense, and you can also look at

587
00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: them with telescopes and you can see the light that

588
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: comes from them, so like you can see it in

589
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 1: two totally different ways, the gravitational waves and in the optical.

590
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 1: And when they look in the optical they see light

591
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 1: coming from these and they can see light from like

592
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 1: excited gold or excited uranium is like gases of golden

593
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:59,120
Speaker 1: uranium get thrown out into the universe and because they're hot,

594
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: they emit light and it has a particular fingerprint and

595
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 1: we can see it here on Earth. So we have

596
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 1: seen the birth of these super heavy elements in neutron

597
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 1: star collisions. So that's totally wild. So that seems like

598
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: two super rare conditions that need to come together, and

599
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 1: that has produced everything above iron. So many of those

600
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: things are things that we depend on. And so like,

601
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: did any of that happen in our solar system? How

602
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: did how did it get here? Absolutely none of that

603
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: could happen in our solar system. There's nowhere in our

604
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 1: solar system that is capable of making these things. Like

605
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 1: even at the heart of our star, all they can

606
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 1: do is burn helium or hydrogen. Right, our star is

607
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:40,360
Speaker 1: not going to be big enough to even make iron.

608
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: And so that means that every heavy metal that you

609
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 1: see if you're wearing a gold wedding ring right now,

610
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 1: that gold was made probably in a neutron star collision

611
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:53,120
Speaker 1: before our solar system was even formed. Right, So all

612
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: of the uranium, all the gold, all the heavy elements

613
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: in our solar system predate our solar system completely, and

614
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: our solar system comes from gathering together the remnants of

615
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,560
Speaker 1: a previous solar system. Some stars died and became neutron

616
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,400
Speaker 1: stars and then collided together and made these heavy elements

617
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 1: and spewed them out into some gas cloud which then

618
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 1: coalesced into our solar system, still mostly hydrogen, but with

619
00:32:17,560 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 1: a few nuggets of these heavier interesting things to like

620
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: spice it up a little bit. Science is so beautiful,

621
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: you know. You you walk around and now you know

622
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: the stuff and you see the whole world differently. Like anyway,

623
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: the next time I'm walking through a jewelry store, maybe

624
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: I'll appreciate it. It It is really incredible, especially these heavy

625
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 1: with things like gold and platinum and plutonium and uranium.

626
00:32:36,320 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: They're so difficult to make, and so that tells you

627
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: that something crazy must have happened really far away, a

628
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: really long time ago. And so yeah, these elements on

629
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: your fingers are much older than the Earth itself, right,

630
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 1: Like that gold has been hanging out before the Earth

631
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 1: was even formed, and it's it's super amazing. Yeah, so

632
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 1: this stuff got made and not in our solar system

633
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: but it ended up in our solar system, and so

634
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: because it was made before our solar system, is it

635
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:07,960
Speaker 1: sort of evenly distributed between the stuff that we have

636
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: in our solar system or did it sort of get

637
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 1: clumpy and sucked into certain bodies and not others. That

638
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: is a great question, and that is really the heart

639
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 1: of the question. We haven't been able to study that

640
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: in great detail because the only example we really can

641
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 1: study is the Earth and then the few things that

642
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: fall to the Earth from space. You know, like you

643
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:29,040
Speaker 1: could ask the question, do asteroids have the same composition

644
00:33:29,080 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: of stuff as the Earth? And do things further out

645
00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: have the same composition of stuff? So the short answers

646
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly. We know that there are variations

647
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 1: because of where you are in the Solar system, like

648
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: the further out you are there tend to be different

649
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: things than closer in. But one clue is that uranium

650
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 1: is very very abundant. It's very very widespread. It's like

651
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: actually the fifty one most common element on the Earth,

652
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: which you know, it doesn't sound it's not in the

653
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 1: top ten or anything, but for us, such a big

654
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: heavy element, and there's you know, more than a hundred elements.

655
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 1: It's pretty far up there. And is it about that

656
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 1: common in asteroids and comments and stuff as well, or

657
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 1: we really only know that ranking forth. We know that

658
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:13,880
Speaker 1: ranking well for Earth and a lot of the asteroids

659
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 1: are different. But when we study asteroids, we also do

660
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: see these things in asteroids. And you know, something else

661
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:22,759
Speaker 1: that's I think not widely understood is that uranium is everywhere.

662
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: It's basically in all of the sands, in every rock.

663
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 1: The biggest supply of uranium we have on Earth is

664
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:32,239
Speaker 1: actually in the Earth's oceans. There's an incredible amount of

665
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,319
Speaker 1: uranium just dissolved into the oceans. And these days people

666
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: are thinking about trying to get uranium out of the

667
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: water because it might be cheaper than digging it out

668
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 1: of the ground. So uranium is everywhere all over the planet,

669
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 1: but it must be in very low levels because none

670
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 1: of us are worried about getting cancer from swimming in

671
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: the ocean, Is that right? That's right. Uranium is sort

672
00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: of just part of this radioactive background that exists from

673
00:34:57,239 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 1: living on Earth. You know, the Earth is slightly radio active. Also,

674
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 1: we get radiation from the sky, you know, from cosmic rays,

675
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: and so yeah, there is some effect on our DNA

676
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 1: from naturally present uranium in the soil, just like there's

677
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,479
Speaker 1: effect on our DNA from muns coming from the sky

678
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: that occasionally like change something or you know, create an error.

679
00:35:19,120 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: And that's I think an important part of evolution. I

680
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: think evolution. It would have happened differently if we had

681
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: no radioactive elements on Earth. It would have lowered the

682
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:30,200
Speaker 1: number of mutations that occur. Right, it's not something necessarily

683
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: to be worried about. So you shouldn't, you know, isolate

684
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:34,880
Speaker 1: uranium and eat a lot of it or anything. But

685
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 1: it is definitely present all around us. Interesting, and how

686
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:40,759
Speaker 1: how long have we known about uranium? So uranium was

687
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:45,760
Speaker 1: also discovered or just after uranus, right, and so only

688
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:48,520
Speaker 1: like more than a hundred years. And it was discovered

689
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 1: sort of accidentally by a chemist who was just playing

690
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:54,560
Speaker 1: around with something called pitch blend and dissolving it with stuff,

691
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:56,560
Speaker 1: and he came up with something that felt to him

692
00:35:56,600 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 1: like a new undiscovered element. And it was like hundred

693
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: years later the people realized that it was radioactive. So

694
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: they had been like studying it without knowing they should

695
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: be careful. I guess we didn't understand radio activity until

696
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: much later. Exactly this was the discovery of radioactivity. So

697
00:36:15,080 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: uranium is a really important role in science itself. It's

698
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds when Beckerel sort of left a

699
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 1: bunch of uranium on a photography plate in a drawer

700
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: and he came back to found that it had like

701
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,279
Speaker 1: imprinted itself on the plate. It was like in a

702
00:36:29,360 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 1: darkened drawer, no light in there, but somehow these blobs

703
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: of uranium left an imprint of fog on this plate,

704
00:36:36,640 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: and so he realized, hold on a second, there's something

705
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,320
Speaker 1: going on here. And that was the discovery of radiation

706
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: that some materials like shoot out these particles that can

707
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 1: fog a plate, and you know, that stimulated the curies

708
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 1: and they discovered radium, and that, you know, really triggered

709
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 1: much of nuclear physics and modern physics. So it was

710
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:56,880
Speaker 1: a real turning point sort in science, this discovery of

711
00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:00,360
Speaker 1: uranium as a radioactive element. I love these exam couples

712
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 1: of dumb luck, you know, like whoops, I put my

713
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:06,479
Speaker 1: uranium down on a photography plate. And now the whole

714
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:10,960
Speaker 1: direction of sciences is shifting rapidly to understand what radioactivity means.

715
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: And it's pretty cool. Would you rather make a like

716
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:17,239
Speaker 1: historic discovery through dumb luck so you have a nice anecdote,

717
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: or through like the sheer force of your brilliance. I mean,

718
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 1: I think I'd probably feel my ego would feel better

719
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 1: if I did it through the sheer force of my brilliance.

720
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 1: But I'll take it anyway it comes. So randomness is

721
00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: good too. Yeah. I love these stories of people like

722
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: looking for one thing and then accidentally discovering something else

723
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:37,280
Speaker 1: because it reminds me to keep in my mind open

724
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: and to keep my eyes wide because you never know

725
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: in what experiment is going to be the hints of

726
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:45,319
Speaker 1: something like a crazy discovery. And usually once you've made

727
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: a discovery, people can go back through history and find

728
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: evidence for it beforehand, just like now we know ur

729
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 1: in this is a planet. We can see in data

730
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: collected hundreds of years earlier and people's log notebooks like, oh,

731
00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:58,759
Speaker 1: you could have discovered this, you have the data right here.

732
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: People have missed opportunities to make incredible discoveries because they

733
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:05,239
Speaker 1: weren't looking for them or they didn't think about that,

734
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 1: And so it's a message there's like keep your mind

735
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: open because you never know you know what the universe

736
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:12,879
Speaker 1: is telling you right now. You never know when you're

737
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:17,399
Speaker 1: fumbling towards a discovery. And the uranium we have here

738
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: on Earth is a really interesting story because it comes

739
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:22,919
Speaker 1: in two different flavors. It's two isotopes of uranium. Most

740
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:24,800
Speaker 1: of the uranium we have here on Earth is two

741
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: thirty eight, which is pretty stable as a half life

742
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:29,799
Speaker 1: of like four and a half billion years, but it's

743
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:32,600
Speaker 1: not as useful for things like fission if you want

744
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: to make weapons or reactors. The other kind is called

745
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five, and it's much better for making

746
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: things like reactors, but it's pretty rare. So like most

747
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:44,439
Speaker 1: of the stuff when you mind, it is uranium two

748
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: thirty eight. And then if you want to do reactors

749
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:50,600
Speaker 1: or build weapons, you have to isolate and enhance the

750
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 1: fraction of uranium two thirty five. So that's why you

751
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 1: hear about like centrifuges because they separate the different isotopes

752
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:59,080
Speaker 1: by weight so you can get more of the two

753
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:01,760
Speaker 1: thirty five that you need. Yeah, this is such a

754
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: weird element for humanity. Like in the one hand, I'm

755
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:08,279
Speaker 1: a huge fan of nuclear power plants because they put

756
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 1: out less carbon, and on the other hand, I just

757
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:12,919
Speaker 1: don't know if humanity can handle it, because you can

758
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:15,719
Speaker 1: also turn it into weapons, and it doesn't take too

759
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: many idiots to make trouble. And anyway, these things are complicated.

760
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 1: Thanks humanity, it is complicated. And it's also interesting that

761
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:26,279
Speaker 1: the uranium two thirty five, the stuff that's useful for this,

762
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: is sort of going away because it's half life is

763
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:32,320
Speaker 1: much shorter. It's only seven hundred million years, which sounds

764
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: like a long time, but what it means is that,

765
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 1: like the useful fraction of uranium over the history of

766
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: the Earth is dropping sort of steadily, like we have

767
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: a lot less of two thirty five than we did

768
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 1: a long time ago, and if you wait like another

769
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: few hundred million years, it's going to be even less.

770
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 1: We did a whole podcast episode once about a naturally

771
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 1: occurring fission reactor because like a billion or two years ago,

772
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: there was a uranium deposit in Africa that was rich

773
00:39:58,239 --> 00:39:59,840
Speaker 1: enough in you two thirty five that it was b

774
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:04,280
Speaker 1: ethically a nuclear reactor naturally created that burned for hundreds

775
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:06,200
Speaker 1: of thousands of years, and I'm like, heat it up

776
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:09,880
Speaker 1: this rock underground, but that can't happen anymore, because uranium

777
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 1: doesn't occur in enough density anymore for that kind of

778
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 1: stuff to happen. So we have to like dig it

779
00:40:15,640 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 1: out of the ground and use centrifuges to enhance the

780
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:21,440
Speaker 1: fraction of our uranium that has two thirty five. So

781
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:24,840
Speaker 1: note humanity the clock is taking up figuring out fusion.

782
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 1: On that note, let's take a break and we'll come

783
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: back and hear a little bit more about uranium. Okay,

784
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,800
Speaker 1: so we've talked a little bit about the way humanity

785
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 1: is helped are hurt by uranium two thirty five. Let's

786
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:53,359
Speaker 1: hear a little bit more about some of the other

787
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 1: properties about uranium. So you told us that it has

788
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: a high atomic weight because it's high or than iron.

789
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: So you need these very particular situations so that you

790
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:06,200
Speaker 1: can get it. If you had like a chunk of

791
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,840
Speaker 1: uranium sitting on your table, you'd probably be scared. But

792
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,359
Speaker 1: what would it look like? Yeah, that's a cool question. Well,

793
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:16,319
Speaker 1: it's actually malleable. It's like not that hard. It's it's

794
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: denser than lead, but it's it's soft and it's silvery white,

795
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: so it's actually kind of pretty, you know, I mean,

796
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:25,399
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend doing any art with it, but it's

797
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:27,480
Speaker 1: kind of a cool looking thing. And it's cool that

798
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: every element has its own like sort of feel to it, right,

799
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,719
Speaker 1: It's own like texture and color and look, and that

800
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: all of these properties, the difference between uranium and the

801
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: other things, just come out of the structure of the atom. Right,

802
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: We're talking about how the electrons fill their orbitals and

803
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. It's incredibly rich and interesting that

804
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 1: all of these elements have such different properties. I love

805
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: that about the universe that like a few very simple

806
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: things coming together in lots of different ways can make

807
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:59,080
Speaker 1: so many interesting different kinds of materials. That is totally epic.

808
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:00,960
Speaker 1: And I think it's interest thing that you mentioned art

809
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 1: because when we moved to our permanent house, what what

810
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: we hope is our permanent house. I wanted to go

811
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:10,799
Speaker 1: out and gets to wear dishwear because I think they

812
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 1: look really nice. And I was warned by someone that

813
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 1: I shouldn't get the red ones because the red ones

814
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 1: are radioactive because of uranium. Can you tell us more

815
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: about that uranium mix as well with lots of other

816
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:25,319
Speaker 1: things and forms all sorts of interesting uranium oxides and

817
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: some of these have a really spectacular color. Um. You know,

818
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 1: some of them are yellow, some of them are very red.

819
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 1: And you know, if you're trying to create colors like

820
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: these days, it's easy to do digitally, right, you just

821
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:37,799
Speaker 1: dial in whatever pixel you want. But if you're out

822
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:39,959
Speaker 1: there working with your hands and you want to create dyes,

823
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:42,759
Speaker 1: you need to find natural sources of color. And so

824
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: uranium made this really sort of bright, vivid red that

825
00:42:46,840 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: was hard to duplicate in other ways. And so before

826
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:53,760
Speaker 1: we understood like really the dangers of radiation and radioactivity,

827
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: uranium was used all sorts of places to make these

828
00:42:56,719 --> 00:42:58,399
Speaker 1: kind of things, and in your dinner wear, so you're

829
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 1: like sitting at the dinner table and you're play it

830
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:03,359
Speaker 1: is like shooting particles into your body. I guess that's

831
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:07,280
Speaker 1: okay because there hasn't been a strong correlation between Fiesta

832
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:09,919
Speaker 1: wear and cancer, I guess, or or was that bad?

833
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: I don't think it's okay. I don't think they're making

834
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 1: it anymore, you know, for the same reasons that like

835
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 1: they're no longer using glowing wrist watch faces. You know

836
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 1: that like glow with radiation. I think it's sort of

837
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:23,320
Speaker 1: like lead in the sense that more radiation is definitely

838
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 1: more bad for you, and you want to limit your exposure.

839
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:28,239
Speaker 1: You know, we used to like take X rays all

840
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:30,920
Speaker 1: the time, and the X rays would like be super powerful,

841
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: much stronger than we needed in order to see clearly,

842
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:35,759
Speaker 1: because we didn't understand the danger of X rays. So

843
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 1: now I think we work really hard to limit our

844
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: exposure to radiation. Yeah, but that sounds like a good plan.

845
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: And I didn't end up getting the Fiesta wear because

846
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:44,240
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I could get a good handle

847
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: on how dangerous it was. But uranium also tells us

848
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 1: a lot about the history of the Earth as well.

849
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 1: This is really fun story about a geologist trying to

850
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: understand the age of the Earth and trying to solve

851
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:58,280
Speaker 1: the puzzle by actually looking for an asteroid that crashed

852
00:43:58,360 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: onto the Earth. He wants to know if rocks on

853
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:03,920
Speaker 1: that he found in the Earth were actually the oldest

854
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,359
Speaker 1: things that one could find. He was looking to see

855
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,160
Speaker 1: if things in the Solar System might be even older

856
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:11,279
Speaker 1: than the rocks we find on the Earth, because you know,

857
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: if you're trying to date the Earth and you're just

858
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: like looking around for rocks, you wonder, like, well, it's

859
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 1: his rock, as old as the Earth itself. So he

860
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 1: actually went out to Meteor Crater, this huge crater in

861
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: Arizona that you should totally visit if you're ever in Arizona.

862
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:28,120
Speaker 1: It's incredible. It's just like a flat expanse and then

863
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:31,720
Speaker 1: this incredible scoop, just like dug out of the Earth

864
00:44:32,239 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 1: by this meteor that hit a long long time ago.

865
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:36,279
Speaker 1: He went down into the center of it and they

866
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 1: have like a chunk of the original meteor and they

867
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: let him sample it. And he looked at that rock

868
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 1: and he used uranium actually to date the age of

869
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 1: that asteroid. So did he get lucky because that asteroid

870
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,799
Speaker 1: has uranium. Well, uranium is almost everywhere, right, It's in

871
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 1: almost every single rock in the Solar System, it turns out.

872
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:57,640
Speaker 1: But a really interesting thing about uranium is that when

873
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: rocks form, they formed these little crystals called zircons, and

874
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: these crystals, for complicated reasons, they like to slurp in uranium,

875
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:08,280
Speaker 1: but they reject lead. So like no lead ever forms

876
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,480
Speaker 1: in the center of these zircon crystals. But uranium turns

877
00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: into lead at a very regular rate because it decays radioactively.

878
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: So if you have there Basically it's like a clock.

879
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 1: You have these crystals that start out with uranium and

880
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:22,839
Speaker 1: then they gradually get lead in them, and you know

881
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: that they had no lead when they were formed because

882
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:26,759
Speaker 1: the crystals like reject the lead. So if you look

883
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: at one of these crystals, you can tell how long

884
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:32,400
Speaker 1: it's been around just by counting the uranium and counting

885
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:34,520
Speaker 1: the lead, and you can figure out like, oh, this

886
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: crystal has been ticking for seven hundred million years or

887
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,439
Speaker 1: for four point two billion years. It's an incredible way

888
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: to date the age of a rock. That is incredible

889
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: and super useful. Thank you physics. Yeah, so this guy

890
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 1: dug out that crater and he discovered he's the first

891
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:52,800
Speaker 1: person to really nailed down the age of the Solar

892
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:56,200
Speaker 1: System to be about four and a half billion years old.

893
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 1: It's really important discovery, again connected to uranium, and it

894
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:02,640
Speaker 1: interesting side note is that when he was doing that study,

895
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: he was trying to measure the amount of lead in

896
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:07,200
Speaker 1: these crystals, and he discovered that his entire lab was

897
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 1: basically covered in lead. There was lead everywhere. There's lead

898
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: on the walls, it was lead in the air, there

899
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 1: was lead everywhere. Because of lead in gasoline, and he

900
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:17,760
Speaker 1: actually led the charge to help remove lead from gasoline

901
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: because he's the one who discovered that we were poisoning

902
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: our environment with lead. Whoa, So, what's this guy's name

903
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:27,479
Speaker 1: who dated the universe and led the charge against lead.

904
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: His name is Claire Patterson, and he's the one who

905
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:33,800
Speaker 1: discovered that we're basically poisoning all of our children with lead.

906
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: And he came to this discovery because he wanted to

907
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:37,759
Speaker 1: know the age of the universe and he was trying

908
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: to use uranium decaying into lead in order to do it.

909
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:45,040
Speaker 1: That is incredible. So we've talked about how uranium is

910
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 1: helpful in a lot of different ways, and we're all

911
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:51,879
Speaker 1: absolutely in awe of uranus. So now to finally put

912
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: it all together. So people have sat with us for

913
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: over fifty minutes and they are waiting for the answer.

914
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:05,240
Speaker 1: Is there uranium on uranus? What is the answer? As usual,

915
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:08,959
Speaker 1: the answer is we don't really know because we haven't

916
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,879
Speaker 1: been out there to uranus, so we don't know, but

917
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: we can fairly confidently say that yes, there is, because

918
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: uranium seems to be present in almost every piece of

919
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:21,880
Speaker 1: rock we find, like afterwards that fall to earth and

920
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:24,919
Speaker 1: things that we study. They have these heavy elements in them,

921
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 1: and not just uranium, the other heavy elements in varying mixtures,

922
00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 1: and you can tell something about where these things came

923
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:32,399
Speaker 1: from based on like how much iron or how much

924
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 1: nickel and various isotopes they have. But uranium is almost everywhere,

925
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 1: and so I'm very confident that there is uranium somewhere

926
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:44,080
Speaker 1: on Uranus in its rocky core, but we're not sure.

927
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: And you know, Uranus remains one of the planets that

928
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:49,839
Speaker 1: is not very well studied. We only passed it by

929
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:52,840
Speaker 1: with a probe once. We've never like dropped anything into

930
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:55,600
Speaker 1: it or tried to dive a probe down into it,

931
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: which I think would be super fun, and you know,

932
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,120
Speaker 1: maybe there's a big surprise down there. I think that

933
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,960
Speaker 1: funders should take note, and they should also consider all

934
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 1: of the amazing puns and jokes that could be made

935
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 1: if we invested in studying this question more. And surely

936
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: the money is going to come rolling in dow Yeah, exactly.

937
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:14,520
Speaker 1: And we have found uranium in other places in the

938
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:17,719
Speaker 1: galaxy as well. For example, there's a star nearby called

939
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: Krel's Star, and it glows and you can tell what's

940
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: in a star based on how it glows, because every

941
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: element gets excited by different energy levels and gives off

942
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: light at unique frequencies as their own fingerprint. So based

943
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:33,239
Speaker 1: on the spectrum of a star, you can tell what

944
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 1: it's burning. And they have found uranium glowing in this star.

945
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:38,880
Speaker 1: Like we haven't gone out to actually visit it in

946
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:40,960
Speaker 1: sample it, but we can tell from the light that's

947
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:44,399
Speaker 1: coming from this star what's in it. And not just that,

948
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: but based on the ratio of these various elements uranium

949
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: and thorium and our knowledge about how they decay, we

950
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 1: can use that to age these stars. So uranium is

951
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 1: all over the universe and it's telling us lots of

952
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 1: fascinating stories about all of the objects that it's hiding inside.

953
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 1: And we still have so much left to learning. So

954
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 1: thanks very much for coming on this journey with us

955
00:49:04,080 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 1: to learn about uranium and uranus, and thanks to Kelly

956
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:10,760
Speaker 1: for coming along and refraining from making that most obvious

957
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:14,400
Speaker 1: of jokes the entire hour. Well you're welcome. I've become

958
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: very mature in my late thirties. Thank you for inviting me.

959
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:21,760
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun, even though I didn't

960
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 1: make all the jokes I wanted to make, and everybody

961
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: out there don't forget to embrace your curiosity and don't

962
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:31,560
Speaker 1: lose that childlike wonder ed sense of puns about absurd jokes.

963
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 1: They go hand in hand. Thanks everyone, tune in next time.

964
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained.

965
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:48,279
Speaker 1: The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For

966
00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 1: more podcast for my heart Radio, visit the I heart

967
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:55,080
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

968
00:49:55,120 --> 00:50:01,440
Speaker 1: favorite shows. No