Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam. Here. The planet Saturn takes
Speaker 1: its name from a Roman god of agriculture, and of
Speaker 1: all the planets revolving around our Sun, it's cultivated, if
Speaker 1: you will, the greatest ring system by far. Shining rings
Speaker 1: filled with ice, dust and rock orbit it's equator. The
Speaker 1: widest one, called the Phoebe Ring, has an outer edge
Speaker 1: that's millions of miles away from Saturn itself. For comparison,
Speaker 1: the average distance between Earth and our Moon is a
Speaker 1: paltry two thirty nine thousand miles or four thousand kilometers.
Speaker 1: Once again, astronomy puts the human ego in check. Saturn's
Speaker 1: rings get all the attention, but we shouldn't ignore its
Speaker 1: other attributes. The sixth planet in our solar system, it's
Speaker 1: also the biggest after Jupiter. Those two are in a
Speaker 1: league of their own. If you mushed every planet from
Speaker 1: Mercury to Neptune together, Saturn and Jupiter would account for
Speaker 1: over night in d percent of the cumulative mass of
Speaker 1: that planetary mass. But despite its immense size, Saturn is
Speaker 1: the least dense planet in the Sun's orbit, and the
Speaker 1: least spherical too. We'll need to look at its physical
Speaker 1: makeup to understand why. Research published in twenty nineteen showed
Speaker 1: that a day on Saturn lasts just ten hours, thirty
Speaker 1: three minutes and thirty eight seconds. It's spin rate helps
Speaker 1: explain one of the ringed world's stranger qualities. You see,
Speaker 1: Saturn is ten percent wider than it is tall, a
Speaker 1: difference of over seven thousand miles or nearly twelve thousand kilometers.
Speaker 1: Astronomers call that kind of disparity and equatorial bulge. Every
Speaker 1: planet in the Solar System has one, but Saturn's is
Speaker 1: the most extreme. Saturn rotates around its axis at a
Speaker 1: very high speed, hence the brevity of its days. And
Speaker 1: here's where density comes into play. Like Jupiter, Saturn is
Speaker 1: a gas giant. Such worlds predominantly consist of hydrogen and helium,
Speaker 1: and whereas Earth is solid on the outside, gas giants
Speaker 1: are not. They may, however, have hard inner cores. Now,
Speaker 1: Saturn is downright huge in terms of volume. Some seven
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four Earth sized objects could fit inside
Speaker 1: of it, and the planet is ninety five times as
Speaker 1: massive as our home world, and yet relative to its size,
Speaker 1: Earth is eight times more dense in fact water, Yes,
Speaker 1: plain water is denser than Saturn, although that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: the planet would float. It's not cohesive enough, so thanks
Speaker 1: to its low, low density and zippy rotational speed, Saturn
Speaker 1: has been deformed into an oblong world that looks kind
Speaker 1: of squished in profile. Jupiter's southern hemisphere famously has an
Speaker 1: ongoing storm called the Great Red Spot. Saturn's answer to
Speaker 1: this is the Great White Spots, which are periodic tempests
Speaker 1: that arise every thirty earth years. First detected in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, these weather events are colossal in scale. NASA's
Speaker 1: Cassini spacecraft spent thirteen productive years hovering around Saturn. On December,
Speaker 1: it witnessed the most recent iteration of the Great White
Speaker 1: Spot phenomenon. The storm was about eight hundred miles by
Speaker 1: six hundred miles long when it first began that's about kilometers,
Speaker 1: But over the next six months, the spot expanded longitudinally
Speaker 1: until it had looped itself around the planet in a
Speaker 1: gigantic circle. Some researchers think the Great White Spots might
Speaker 1: be part of a cycle that sees the outer layer
Speaker 1: of Saturn's atmosphere slowly lose heat, allowing the warm air
Speaker 1: from lower levels to burst upward. Meanwhile, up at Saturn's
Speaker 1: north pole, there's a cloud pattern shaped like a giant hexagon.
Speaker 1: This pleasantly symmetrical jet stream spins counterclockwise, measures about twenty
Speaker 1: thousand miles or thirty kilometers across, and includes a hurricane
Speaker 1: that's been swirling right over the pole ever since it
Speaker 1: was discovered. Back. Of course, it's not the hexagon that
Speaker 1: earns Saturn a place on Chucky Finster's T shirt you
Speaker 1: know from Rugrats. Anyway, the gas giant is most famous
Speaker 1: for the spectacular ring system encircling it. Planetary rings aren't
Speaker 1: rare per se a Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have them
Speaker 1: as well, yet in terms of sheer scale, the network
Speaker 1: around Saturn is totally unrivaled. Most of the primary rings
Speaker 1: come with letter names of The closest one to Saturn
Speaker 1: is called the D ring, which has an inner radius
Speaker 1: of about forty two miles or sixty seven kilometers, so
Speaker 1: a lot closer than our moon. It's surrounded by the C, B, A, F, G,
Speaker 1: and E rings in that order. By the way, the
Speaker 1: rings aren't arranged alphabetically because the naming system reflects the
Speaker 1: dates of their discovery. A, B, and C were sited
Speaker 1: before the rest. When measured from its outside edge, the
Speaker 1: E ring showcases an impressive three hundred thousand mile radius
Speaker 1: or four d and eighty thousand kilometers, or at least
Speaker 1: that looks impressive until you get to know the big
Speaker 1: bad Phoebe ring that we mentioned earlier. First spotted in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, this one was named after one of
Speaker 1: Saturn's moons. Untold trillions of ice, rock, and dust particles
Speaker 1: make up these rings. Some bits are the size of
Speaker 1: a sugar grain, others could probably dwarf your house. In
Speaker 1: any case, the ring material is stretched remarkably thin. Saturn's
Speaker 1: rings may be as thick as two miles or three
Speaker 1: kilometers wide, down to just thirty two ft or ten
Speaker 1: ms wide, so proportionately, the gas giants iconic rings are
Speaker 1: thinner than a typical sheet of writing paper, as noted
Speaker 1: by astronomer phil Plate. Whereas Saturn itself is probably around
Speaker 1: four point five billion years old, the age of its
Speaker 1: rings isn't as clear. Some scientists think that they were
Speaker 1: formed ten million to a hundred million years ago when
Speaker 1: an icy comet or some ice covered moons came too
Speaker 1: close to the planet, the visitor or visitors would have
Speaker 1: met a grizzly end, getting ripped to pieces by Saturn's gravity.
Speaker 1: As those fragments collided, they grew smaller and multiplied, giving
Speaker 1: rise to the skinny but brilliant system we all know today.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, a twenty nineteen paper argued that
Speaker 1: the rings might have originated at an earlier stage in
Speaker 1: the history of our Solar System. We'll have to see
Speaker 1: how the debate unfolds as new evidence arises. There's lots
Speaker 1: about this planet that we're still learning. In October of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, the International Astronomical Union heralded the discovery of
Speaker 1: twenty newfound moons orbiting the gas giant. With these bodies
Speaker 1: added to the mix, there are now eighty two verified
Speaker 1: Saturn moons altogether. No other planet in the Solar System
Speaker 1: has that many natural satellites, not even Mighty Jupiter. You
Speaker 1: can find Saturn's moons in around and beyond the Ring system.
Speaker 1: Before Cassini was retired in ten it revealed that some
Speaker 1: of them gather clumps of ice and dust from the rings.
Speaker 1: Saturn's moon Titan is especially well named. It's our solar
Speaker 1: systems second biggest moon overall, and it's dotted with seas,
Speaker 1: lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane. There's only
Speaker 1: one other body within the Sun's orbit that has standing
Speaker 1: pools of liquid that we know about, and here's a hint.
Speaker 1: You're sitting on it right now. Titan is also noteworthy
Speaker 1: for having an atmosphere, and it's theorized that there could
Speaker 1: be ice volcanoes that spew water instead of lava like Earth.
Speaker 1: Saturn gets auroras at its poles. They're invisible to the
Speaker 1: unaided human eye, but the Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble
Speaker 1: space telescope have captured footage of them using infrared and
Speaker 1: ultra violet imaging. Today's episode was written by Mark Bancini
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other topics, is it how stuffworks dot com.
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