Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to this podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. Did I flub that line?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Am I going to retake it? No?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I am not welcome to the pod broadcast.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
This is stuff you should know, by the way, the
Far out edition.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
That's right, it's in stuff out there in space.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, and not just stuff in general. We're actually gonna
zero in on one specific piece of stuff that's out
there in space, a little planet called Saturn.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
That's right. The ring to beauty. That's they'd like to
say in the biz it is.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yet that's what the astrophysicists I'll call it. Uh huh
uh yeah. Or Saturn does have rings. It's not the
only planet with rings, as we'll see, or we can
see now. I think Jupiter and Uranus and is it
Mercury also that has rings, but they're just they don't
hold the candle the Saturn's rings.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Hey, get the candle away from Minis.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Saturn's also a really ancient planet in that, as far
as human experience goes, is for as long as we've
been looking up in the night sky, we've seen Saturn
because it is the sixth planet from the Sun. It's
also the furthest planet away that you can see with
the naked eye here on planet Earth.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You want to know something funny before we go any further. Yeah, always,
before we recorded, Emily was asking, as she sometimes does,
what we're recording, and I told her the two episodes
and she asked about Saturn and I was like, not
very interesting to me, and she said, so, what are
you gonna what do you do in those episodes? Just
like to commentary and make jokes. I went, well, there's
(01:55):
probably not gonna be a lot of jokes, and she said, well,
as long as you can make one about your and
I said, I don't think i'll be able to because
it's about Saturn and lo and behold a minute and
twenty end.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah. Wow, Now you have two more times to bring
it back and then you'll have completed the comedy try.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I think that's a wonner, as they say, But I'm
just excited to report back to Emily that that happened
unexpectedly and delight delightedly.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, way to go, Chuck, I thought you said it
was going to be funny though, huh.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Hey you laughed? Was that bitty?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Let's just move on all right?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Great?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So oh yeah, Like I said, people have known about
Saturn for a very very long time, and in fact,
I think twenty five hundred years ago the first people
to document it were the Sumerians, and not too long
after that or around that time, in India the world's
oldest astronomy book, the Suriya Siddanta. Obviously whoever wrote it
(02:56):
was like, I'm going to try to guess the diameter
of Saturn, and I don't think they guessed at it,
like you know how many jelly beans are in this jar?
Kind of guess like they used math and geometry and
all sorts of great stuff. Sure, but this is long
before they should have. So what makes it impressive is
that they were only off by one thousand miles. So
(03:18):
today we believe that the diameter of Saturn is about
seventy four thousand, five hundred and eighty miles. In the
Suria Sedanta they guessed seventy three thousand are estimated seventy
three thousand, five hundred and eighty. That, my friend, is remarkable.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, the regular Lewis and or Clark kind of weren't
they famous for like almost guessing the distance.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Oh yes, yeah, great, great analogy. Sorry it was lost
on me. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
First, so the name itself, Saturn is named after Saturnus,
which is the god of agriculture and harvest. So it
came from the Romans. And you know, Saturn goes pretty
slowly across the sky. So the day Saturday is named
for Saturn, which is the last day of the week. Yeah,
(04:10):
and now we're going to compare Saturn to Earth in
a lot of scintillating ways. And we could start with
just the massive size, because it makes Earth look like
just a pee and a pocket. Basically, it makes.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
It look like a nickel if Saturn was a volleyball.
NASA loves that one. If you ever look up Saturn,
NASA uses that every chance they get.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I wonder if when they got they got the nickel part.
And they were like, all right, well, we got to
find something laying around here that's as big as this distance.
And some guy was like, you know, there was one
sporty guy in the corner like practicing setting a volleyball spike.
He said, what about Jim over there is that.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Low hanging fruit Phil who is about.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
To do that oh Man pork bill. But you know,
you're right, nickel compared to a volleyball is pretty good.
But let's talk equator. The equator's close to ten times
larger than Earth at two hundred and twenty seven miles around,
compared to Earth badly little twenty five thousand miles.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, it's got an extra spare tire compared to Earth's,
you know, totally. One of the things about Saturn though,
if you were, if you aren't like an astronomy type,
the kind of planet that Saturn is is a gas giant,
which means that it's made largely of gas or gases.
So to be a gas giant, you don't have to
(05:42):
just be a big ball of gas, but you're made
of things that typically are considered gases on the periodic table.
Let's just get that straight right out of the gate. Okay, right,
But if you put the whole thing together, Saturn doesn't
have a surface to speak of. If you can go
far enough in toward the center, you might eventually hit
something you could stand on, but you would be under
(06:04):
so much heat and pressure that you wouldn't be thinking
about standing on the surface anymore. You'd have other problems.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, it's a very not dense planet, and some say
could even float in water if there was water that large.
A pool, yeah, or I don't know. A pond.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Sure, isn't that what they call lakes up in the Northeast.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
You know, I don't know the difference between a pond.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And a lake in Maine. There is no difference.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I would think a pond is human made, but there
are many human made lakes too, so I don't know.
I'll have to look that up.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I always assumed it was size like pond is smaller,
lake is larger. Well that's what That's how you remember
lake l large.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Large l and pond puny nice one. I mean that
seems obvious, but surely there's something else, but maybe not.
We'll look into that. More to come on, ponds and links.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Okay, I'll keep talking while you look at it.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, I was going to talk, So why don't you
look it up. Earth is the third planet out as
modest mouse will tell you. They're about ninety two million
miles away, or we are rather. Saturn is the sixth
planet away from the Sun, and things really pick up
after you after you get away from Earth about eight
hundred and eighty six million miles, which is going to
mean they're gonna be a very cold planet because they
(07:30):
get not nearly as much sun They get about one
point two percent of the sunlight that we get, which
means the average temperature in the upper atmosphere of Saturn
is a very chilly negative two hundred and twenty degree fahrenheit.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Or negative one hundred and forty celsius for our non
American liberian or can't remember the third one friends, that's right.
So there's some other interesting things that happen because it
gets such little sunlight. But one of the things that
astronomers were surprised by at first was Saturn's atmosphere that
is very cold, but it's not nearly as cold as
(08:05):
you would expect for how far away from the sun
it is and how little sunlight it gets. And they
finally figured out the reason why is because Saturn generates
its own internal heat. That's why it's not as cold
as it as it should be. That'sn't me yeah, exactly,
you could never be cold if you tried.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Man, I've been cold, but and when I get cold,
I have a very hard time warming up.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I meant, in like the figurative sense, you know, like.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Like a cold emotional individual. Yes, yes, oh well.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Thank you. So there's a couple other things about being
that far away from the Sun. I think it takes
eighty minutes for sunlight to get there. That's a long
time to stand around and wait for sunlight. We only
have to wait like eight minutes here on Earth.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, So when they flick that switch on, you just
got it. You got a huddle, hunker down, right.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
And then so in its orbit around the Sun, it
takes almost thirty earth years for Saturn to complete a year.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, because you know, they're rotating very very quickly on
its axis, second fastest in the Solar system, second just
behind Jupiter. But if you're talking rotation speed here on Earth,
we're going at about nine hundred and seventy eight miles
an hour. Saturn is twenty three thousand miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, almost, no more than twenty three times faster than he.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
And that's going to give it a short day, about
a ten point seven hour day.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yes, And here on Earth, for comparison, a day is
more than twenty hours long.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
So I said earlier, Chuck, that Saturn's a gas giant
and the two gases that it's most fond of our
hydrogen and helium, and overall, the I think the composition
of its atmosphere is about three quarters hydrogen one helium,
but in the planet itself it has far less hydrogen
(10:05):
than helium. That's about all you really need to know
about those two for now. But the point of the
whole thing is that there is an atmosphere. There are
different layers, and the atmosphere itself is about thirty seven
miles thick, and it is just generally gas, but it's
also super freaky, as we'll see. But if we zoom
(10:26):
in a little further, drop down a little further into Saturn,
into its center, and we make it through the thirty
seven mile thick atmosphere, we're suddenly going to find out
that the pressure is extraordinarily great in the next layer,
which is a layer of liquid hydrogen.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, and it's liquid hydrogen because of that pressure. It's
the It's just such a massive planet that here on Earth,
if we want to make liquid hydrogen, you have to
cool that gas down to very very low temperatures like
negative four hundred and twenty three degrees fahrenheit. But it's
just the pressure on Saturn. Even though those are high temperatures,
(11:05):
that pressure alone can make that gas a liquid, which
is incredible.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
It really is. And then it gets even crazier because
so further in towards the core, toward the center of
the planet, that liquid hydrogen turns into a completely different
kind of thing that they call liquid metallic hydrogen. It's
still again on the periodic table, the gas even though
it's in liquid form, but it behaves like a metal
(11:31):
and that it can conduct electricity. So imagine hydrogen gas
conducting electricity. And once you put your head back together,
because it got blown so wide open from that, you
will understand now how heat is generated inside Saturn. It's
from that liquid metallic hydrogen just acting like it ain't
(11:52):
supposed to. The reason why is because it's so compressed
from the pressure toward the center that everything, even the
electrons you remember like electrons are they are to like
a nucleus of an atom. What you know. I think
the outer planets in our Solar system is to the Sun,
they're really far away from it. This pressure is so
(12:14):
great in saturn center that their electrons are touching. It's
all mushed together. And that's why it's behaving weirdly, because
the electrons can conduct electricity a lot more easily.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
And then if you want to go further down to
the core, you talk about hot. We don't know for
sure because you can't get in there. They've tried, they've tried,
But the current belief right now is that it's basically
compressed molten iron into a ball about the size of
fifty five earth and a temperature of about fifteen thousand
(12:47):
degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Which is hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Hot hot stuff in there.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
But if we're going to compare core to core, the
core of the Sun is twenty seven million degrees fahrenheight.
Note I saw one other thing about the core of Saturn,
and then maybe we'll take a break. Apparently some researchers
have concluded that it's actually slushy, so it's not solid,
(13:13):
which makes sense. I mean, you'd think it'd be kind
of moltener in some weird state, but that it's also
made of in addition to iron, ice, rock and gas,
and how there could possibly be ice in the core
that's fifteen thousand degrees fahrenheit is totally beyond me. I
couldn't see a good explanation of this whatsoever. It's possible
(13:36):
that the researchers who've proposed this completely off their rockers.
I don't know, but I thought it was worth mentioning
because I think that's fantastic if it is true. And
hopefully there's the stuff you should know listener who is
out there as like grave and I'm going to email
in and explain to Josh and Chuck how there could
possibly be ice there.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
That would be great.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yep, Okay, you want to take that huge four promised break.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, let's do it and we'll be back on I
don't know. Let's talk about like how Saturn was sworn
to begin with, right after this. All right, So there
(14:35):
are a couple of theories about how Saturn was formed.
If you're a if you're a regular human walking around
planet Earth, you might hear both of these and say
sounds like like you're kind of talking about basically the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
If you're an astrophysicist, you might glavin out as you
mentioned before, that's two Glavin's and say, oh no, no, no,
it is a very very polarizing question in astrophysics, and
to us this different is very large. So yeah, so
if you're an astrophysicist out there, this might really excite you.
(15:11):
If you're not, would I would dare you. I would
urge you to try and be delighted in the minutia
of the difference of science and how important that can be.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
The question about how Saturn or gas giants like Saturn
form is more polarizing than the proposal to rename Uranus. Right,
if we work together, that's two.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
That's two.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
So I'm going to explain the difference because I find
this fascinating. There's the main generally accepted model of how
planets form, including gas giants like Saturn, is called the
core accretion model, and that is basically, when a star forms,
like our Sun, it forms out of dust and gas
and all sorts of crazy stuff, and there's a lot
of other debris that starts swirling around it, forming a disc,
(16:02):
and that's where planets form from. There's all sorts of
collisions and things get bigger and kind of clump together,
and as they get bigger, they attract more stuff. And
the closer you are into, the closer you are to
the star, the more likely you are to attract heavy
stuff like say, iron, nickel, stuff that makes up rocky planets, right,
(16:22):
And everybody's like corecretion model, that's just how planets form.
But then there's a group of like renegade astrophysicists led
by a guy named Alan Boss, who are basically like no.
That leaves a couple of questions out there. One is
that there's less rocky debris in the outer reaches of
this disc that's swirling around the Sun, so you know,
(16:45):
how can a gas giant be made out of rocky core?
And then secondly that the remnants that are out there,
say like dust and gases like hydrogen and helium, they
will float away into outer space and out of the
Solar System and out of reach before a gas giant
could form using the core accretion model. So what they've
(17:08):
come up with instead is called the disk instability model.
And they said, you don't need rocky stuff like iron
and nickel to form a gas giant. It forms from
gases from the start, And the core accretion model people said, okay,
smart guys, how how could that possibly happen? And the
disk instability model people said that that swirling disk becomes
(17:31):
so compressed and so dense from swirling around the Sun
for so long that when it breaks up, some of
that dust and gas has enough density that it can
attract other dust and gases and hence form a gas giant.
And the core accretion model people were a gog.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I love that word, by the way, I do too.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It works really well well.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Another remarkable thing about Saturn are the just incredible storms
that have and around Saturn. There's a very large temperature
difference between the very hot interlators that we were talking about.
I can't remember how many degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
We said, but fifteen thousand, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Fifteen thousand, and then the very icy atmosphere out there
is very very cold I see obviously, and so near
the equator you're going to have winds that are going
about one thousand miles an hour. You've got a very
erratic atmosphere, so it's not like it's just constantly stormy.
(18:34):
There may be years that go between storms, but then
they might go through a storm that lasts like literal
years and years and years. They photograph one with the
Cassini probe in twenty ten, and this storm was so
big and this is you know, on a big planet
that it went all the way around and met itself
like a single storm system like Borros. Yeah, that is
(18:57):
just I mean, we've seen some crazy storms here in
recent years where like, you know, from middle Mexico all
the way up through like the northeast of the United States.
I'll and I'll look at a Doppler and be like,
that's incredible to see a storm that large. So imagine
when going all around the entire planet of Earth, and
(19:18):
then imagine Earth's size and relation to Saturn, and that'll
kind of tell you how big of a storm we're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, it's absolutely nuts. And the reason why that it's
got such a crazy atmosphere is because of that temperature difference,
the temperature gradient. So remember we were talking about how
tornadoes form on Earth and the tornado alley short stuff
that you have to have a temperature gradient. Apparently the
same thing happens on Saturn as well. But there's also Chuck,
a really weird weather system that does not come and go.
(19:46):
It's essentially a feature, it seems like, because it was
first photographed in nineteen eighty one when the Voyager two
probe did a fly by of Saturn and when the
Cassini mission arrived I think in like two thousand and
nine or ten or something like that, it saw the
exact same thing was essentially there. So what they figured
out is it's not a storm. It's a really really
(20:08):
fast jet stream. But the thing about it, I'm sure
people out there who are familiar with jet streams are like,
so big, whoop, Well get this. This jet stream forms
a hexagon around the top of the planet. It's one
of the weirdest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, it's like you said, they photographed it in nineteen
eighty one, and then I think the Cassini Huygens mission
ended in twenty seventeen and it was still there and
still basically looked the same, and I can only reckon
that it's still like that today.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, I think that's a good reckon.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
We're talking five hundred mile an hour winds at the
center of this vortex, and they think that weird shape
is due to the really fast rotation, which makes a
bulge at the equator and flattens things out at the pole.
So it's just created this really strange kind of jet stream,
this strange shape.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, So I think, Chuck, we can't really put it
off any longer. I believe that it's time to talk
about Saturn's rings because I mean, imagine if we didn't
in this episode.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yeah, I mean you mentioned, you know, it's not the
only one with rings. I know you mentioned myanus.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Sorry that's three.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I know that's the lowest of lowing fruit.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Though Phil would be like, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, Phil would love it. But Neptune and Jupiter, I'm
not sure if you mentioned those. Those are some other
ringed planets. But Saturns are like, those are the show stoppers.
They're incredible. If you've ever you know, do yourself a favor,
if you've never looked at like real pictures, like telescopic
pictures of Saturn, like, do so, because oh it's incredible
looking these pictures.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I have an anecdote about that.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
So remember we did an Australian tour a few years back.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yes, yeah, it was on one of the days off.
You mean, I went to the Sydney Observatory one night.
Oh cool, and they had just happened to have one
of their telescopes trained on Saturn and you could lean
over and look through the eyepiece. And we did, and
both of us just started laughing because it looked so fake,
like a little white cutout of Saturn, just fat as.
(22:23):
It just looked like they were like, we can't find Saturn,
so we're gonna.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Have to put this slide exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
But the volunteer was looking at us like, what do
you what's so funny about Saturn. Basically we just moved along.
But that was our that's my Saturn annexode.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
And you said it looked fake, and he's like, that's real, man.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
No, we didn't. We didn't bother to say anything. It
was mine and Yumi's little joke.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
That was the worst aussy accent I've ever done, and
I've done some pretty good ones over the years. I
don't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
It sounded like Billy Ray Cyrus trying.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
To be h It came out so wrong. It was
very strange. It sound about in my head right before
I said it. So yeah, any aside from the telescope
slide fake, it's just incredible looking and the sort of
knockout fact is we're still not exactly sure where these
rings came from.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
And we've known about the rings, so I remember people
have known about Saturn since we started looking up at
the sky, but you can't see the rings. But right
when people started inventing telescopes, they noticed that Saturn had
something weird going on. In sixteen ten, Galileo, the astronomer
made famous by the Indigo Girls, he spotted Saturn's rings
(23:36):
in his telescope, but it wasn't of high enough quality
for him to be like, those are rings. He thought
they were like bulges on the side, like handles on
a pot or something like that. He wasn't quite sure
what the heck it was. He actually, I think thought
it was like a three body system, like two huge
moons in a planet, and it wasn't. But I mean,
(23:56):
fifty years later, I guess even less that. Christian Huggins said,
I've got a much better telescope now, and those are rings.
I bet my bottom dollar on it. That was his
famous quote.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
You know what Galileo's crime was.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Loving too much looking up the truth? Is that what
the lyric is?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, that's a great song, sure it is. You know
I went to the same orthodontist as Emily from Indigo Girls.
Oh that's great, that's my claim to fame.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Did I can't even come up with a joke. But yes, that's.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Great, shout out to oh God, doctor Blake. Hope he's
still around. He may not be. This was in the
eighties and he was okay and is probably. I mean,
he looked at seventy, but that means he was probably.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Fifty right in the eighties. Sure.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, And just for my teenage gays, you know, I.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Was gonna say that's that was mean, Like this is
like a recent person he went to.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
No, he could still be around. He could be in
his nineties probably, But I hope he is. I hope
he's still putting braces on kids.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, they don't want them, but he's doing it anyway.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
He's putting like nineteen eighties braces on kids, though they've
come a long way. And he's like, no, these metal
bands go around your teeth.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
The lip slashers.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Oh god, all right, So back to the rings. They
are ninety five percent ice. It's rock and ice, but
ninety five percent of it is ice. And these are particles.
But when you say particles, it could be a particle
like a sandy grain, but it could also be like
a large boulder like they very widely in size. And
(25:41):
here's the thing about those rings too. They are very
very wide, but comparatively they are very very thin. I
think the farthest ring, which is one hundred and seventy
five thousand miles from the upper atmosphere of Saturn, is
seven thousand times the diameter of planet, but only about
(26:01):
thirty to sixty feet wide or thick, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
And that nuts. Yeah, I mean that's crazy. Like, how
does that thing even exist? Is my question.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
We're about to tell you.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
So if you look at Saturn, especially through a Sydney
based telescope, you're gonna see that it looks like it's
it basically like kind of cocked its rings to the
side like a hat, a jaunty cap, as I put it.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, I do that sometimes with certain caps exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Who doesn't. Everybody's familiar with that. Now, the thing is
is Saturn's not doing that. Actually, if you straighten Saturn out,
its rings would be roughly parallel to its equator. It
turns out that Saturn itself is jauntily cocked to the
side too, to the tune of twenty seven degrees and
(26:50):
Earth's axial tilt I think is what it's called. So
the tilt relative to the plane of orbit around the Sun,
black plane tilted planet. Let's just leave it at that.
Earth's twenty three degrees, so twenty seven isn't that much more.
But Saturn's rings like really point out how angled the
(27:11):
whole thing is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, if we had a little jaunty cap, then Earth
would look good jaunty as well, I guess.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah. But the other thing about it too, is with
an axial tilt that pronounced like Earth's and like Saturns,
that's how you have seasons. Some parts are closer to
the Sun at different times of the year. Same thing
on Saturn. But since Saturn's years are almost thirty Earth
years long, that would mean that the seasons are like
(27:38):
seven years long on Saturn. Yeah, seven year spring. Who
wouldn't want that.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
That's a good band name right there.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
It is, It really is, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
These rings are separated, obviously. When you look at them,
you can tell there are gaps in between, and some
are brighter than others, some are more dense than others.
And because of that, they you know, when they knowed
the rings, they didn't know about all of them. They
were discovered individually over time and named A, B, C, D, E, F,
and G. And order of when they were found, but
(28:10):
that's not the actual order of where they are. If
you just started at Saturn and work your way out, right,
in that case, it would be DCB, A, F, G
and then E.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
The best mnemonic device I could come up to, remember
that is, don't choose brunch and four go grits and eggs.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, I thought so too.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
I thought just a nonsense joke was coming my way,
But no, that one actually makes sense. Yeah, nice, nice work, Yeah,
Phil A.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Bruise, good. Thanks Phil. So if you ever noticed Saturn's
rings also, there's like dark stripes in between them that's
actually voids in between the rings, right that Saturn's got
tons of rings, some are bigger than others, and when
you kind of look at them from afar, it just
looks like they have what is that seven seven rings,
(29:01):
but there's actually way more. These are just the rings
that we can see and identify, and they're they're differentiated
by these gaps, and there's a huge gap I think
between the B ring and the A ring. So it's
about in the middle of Saturn's rings. It's called the
Cassini division and it's about three thousand miles across.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, and it's a gap.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, it is a big gap. And kind of put
this in perspective, especially for our American friends. If you
took Seattle and you took Boston, and you erase the
country in between them and replace it with the void
of space, the people in Seattle and Boston could look
out from one another across what was roughly the size
of the Cassini Division. I like that analogy. I don't
(29:47):
know what's so funny about.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
It, Daddy, how far is three thousand miles?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Okay? But it was replacing it with the void of
space that I think really drove it home. If you
ask me, Yeah, do you know how long I went
into a distance calculator to figure out two cities that
most people know are roughly three thousand miles apart.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Did you come up with that? Yeah? So the Cassini Division.
The cause of that whole thing is the interaction gravitationally
speaking with the moon. And we'll talk about the various
moons coming up. But the moon, I guess, is it mimis.
It is not mimas, is it.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
I've been saying mimis.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah, I've been saying mimis in my head.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Although Mimas makes sense too.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, but I like Mimas okay, because it's not Titan.
It's Titan depending on where you live, though, I guess so.
But the particles in that b ring orbit about two
times for each of Mimis's trip around Saturn, and each
time they're going to pass, Mimis has the chance to
(30:55):
inflict a little gravitational influence on those particles, and that
just accumulates, basically, and it creates a very steady gravitational
force on those particles. It's just going to hold them
right there in place, and they're not gonna drift into
the gap. They're gonna stay nice and tight.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's how that's how the Cassini
division is created by that gravitational pull and me Mimis
also is nicknamed the Death Star because if you look
at a picture of Mimis, it looks an awful lot
like the Death Star. Yeah, and the death Star that's
a it's like a space fortress in the Star Wars movies.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That's no planet, that's right, But no, it's a moon.
Oh that's no moon. Was that what it was?
Speaker 2 (31:40):
No? I'm saying he was right. It isn't a planet,
it's a moon.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I can't remember the line that was it that's no planet.
I think that's what it was.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I'm pretty sure when the Hans solo is saying that, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I think so. But you know, it's no big deal
if you gets Star Wars stuff wrong.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Right now, everybody's very easy going about that stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Uh, should we know, should we break or should we not?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Let's talk about how the rings formed and then we'll
come back into it. Now, let's take a break.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
You want to take a break, Yeah, okay, and then
we'll talk about how those rings form.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Right for this, So, Chuck, you said a little early on,
(32:39):
I think that the people who study this kind of
stuff are not one hundred percent sure how Saturn's rings formed.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
There's a lot of different competing theories. There's a whole
camp that's like they're as old as the planet, so
there are multi billion year old rings, and other people
are like, that's just stupid. And specifically, there's a researcher
from NASA who in nineteen eighty six wrote a paper.
Its name's Jack Connerney. I don't think he actually said
your idea is stupid. To other people But what he
(33:08):
did do he calculated the rate of what came to
be called ring rain, and that is those particles falling
into Saturn. And when they do that, that ring becomes
slightly depleted, and it happens more and more and more,
and on the scale of tens or hundreds of millions
(33:28):
of years. Saturn is eventually steadily losing its rings. And
apparently the particles fall into Saturn when they become charged,
and I guess they're more attracted by Saturn's gravitational pull
and they travel down the magnetosphere just like particles bombard
Earth's magnetosphere and produce the auroras. Same thing happens to Saturn,
(33:51):
but it's paying the price. It's at the expense of
losing its rings.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Does it come does it become part of Saturn itself?
Does it suck that up into Saturn?
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yes, I believe so, and I think it melts as
it gets further and further toward the center.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Okay, so Saturn isn't necessarily becoming larger as the rings deplete.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
No, Leon's becoming larger.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Okay, So all right, that means a lot of stuff.
That means that we are living on Earth at a
time where we just happened to live and it's a
long period of time, but if you if you zoom
out on a macro level, cosmically speaking, it's not that long.
But we happen to be living in a time where
(34:36):
we're probably at like peak ring, don't you think?
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, because guys like Jack Connor and he calculated that
based on the rate of ring rain, the rings probably
aren't more than one hundred million years old, right, So
one hundred million years before this, Saturn wouldn't have had rings,
And they also calculated one hundred to three hundred million
years Hence Saturn's not going to have rings. The way
(35:00):
that they came up with that one hundred million year
old estimate is because any older than that there should
be far less rings based on the rate of ring rain,
and if it were younger, there should be more rings
than that. So that group is pretty self satisfied right now.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, I bet they are. We also talked about, well,
we still haven't really talked about where the actual stuff
that makes up those rings come from. And again there
are competing theories, one of which is that there used
to be and again we'll get to the moons Saturn
has lots of moons, but one theory is that there
used to have even a lot more moons than they
(35:38):
have now. And one of those moons that may have existed,
they actually named Chrysalis, was in a little bit of
a push and pull with Titan, the largest moon, a
gravitational battle or Tin or titin. Yeah, it fell out
of orbit because of that battle, I guess Titan wins
and Chrysalis verr too close to Saturn, was basically just
(35:59):
busted apart by the gravity of this enormous gas giant,
and then that debris field is what formed that ring.
And then over time, over millions and millions of years,
Chrysalis continued to sort of crash into itself and created
like the smaller rings around itself or above and below.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
And also some of the bigger ones because you know,
like you said, some of the some of the particles
in the rings are like grain of sand size, but
other like bowler size, and those bolder ones are just
ones that haven't crashed into the proper other boulders yet
to create those sand grains. They just it's just a
matter of time eventually.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, what's what's the other theory?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
There's another theory, which, by the way, Saturn apparently is
like a thunderdome for astrophysicists. There's so many different theories
about so many different things. Yeah, but the other theory
is that a bunch of Saturn's moons collided together. It
wasn't just one getting pulled towards Saturn. They all just
kind of got all tripped up and boom boom boom
(36:59):
boo boo boom, and all of a sudden, you've got
this dbris field that got smaller and smaller, more particulate
over time, just like the chrysalis theory too.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
So they don't fight over this one, probably as much.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Not as much, but they do dress like master Blaster
when they talk about it. They just don't actually fight.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Some of these rings are formed by these moons. There's
one called one of the moons ensilattice.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I'm going with enceladus, enceladus o encilatus sounds way too
much like salad.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, en solata. Yeah, this thing is erupting saltwater kind
of constantly into the atmosphere and that turns into ice crystals,
and those ice crystals, as we see, can very easily
form into rings. And that is, in fact where we
get our e ring around Saturn. If you know, you're
looking at the letters, So I guess the ABC the
(37:56):
fifth one discovery.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Well no, remember they are out of or oh yeah,
the fifth one discovered. You're right? Sorry, nice save. So
there's also another ring that they discovered as recently as
two thousand and nine, because our telescopes just keep getting
better and better, from Galileos in sixteen ten to the
Spitzer space telescope. Surprisingly hard to say, Yeah, they found
(38:19):
a new ring that basically follows the orbit of Saturn's
furthest moon out Phoebe Buffe.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah that's right. I was gonna say Bridgers, but sure.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, yours is a little more art housey than mine.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Who I love that boy, genius record so good. I
believe Phoebe's is a very faint ring, is that right?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah? Yeah I do. Yeah, it's very That's why it
took so long for us to find it.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
I think we knew Phoebe existed the moon. It could
be fau Abbe they might be pronouncing it like that,
but we didn't know the ring was there until two
thousand and nine.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah, but were mentioning all this is the fact that
those rings are they're dynamic, they're changing, they're reshaping, and
like we said, and you know, maybe as little as
one hundred million years, they might may not even be there.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah. I just think that's really fascinating. You know, you
can thank the Good Lord that we're alive at a
time when Saturn has rings and we have telescopes.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
So we also talked a lot about the moons just now,
and it turns out that Saturn's moons are really fascinating
in and of themselves. It has a bunch of moons,
as many as one hundred and forty six that we
know about right now. Just last year, well two years ago,
when this comes out in twenty twenty three, the International
Astronomical Union, they added sixty two more moons. And I
(39:47):
don't know if they were saving up and just wanted
to do a batch edition of moons. Yeah, if they
found a bunch in quick secession, I'm not sure, but
they're like, there are definitely more moons there.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, our moon's coming, I mean, because yeah, just a
couple of years ago they were under one hundred and
now there's one hundred and forty six. So big changes.
So keep collecting those moons, everybody, and hit us in
a few years with a number that's going to knock
our socks off.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Collect all one hundred and forty six, that's right. So
the other thing about the moons too is that they
orbit outside of the rings, which makes sense because the
moons that were inside of the rings were what make
up the rings. Probably. Yeah, so these moons haven't smashed
into anything else and they're just orbiting around. And like
you said, mimis that one exerts a gravitational influence that
(40:36):
creates the Cassini division, which means that it's really close
to those rings. It's actually the nearest moon to Saturn's atmosphere,
but it's only about half the distance of the moon
we have here on Earth. Whi's about two hundred and
thirty seven thousand miles, as every shining.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Fan knows, that's right. But this thing hauls it. It
has an orbital speed of about thirty two thousand miles
an hour. It's so fast that it completes an orbit
in less than an Earth day, about twenty two hours.
And if you consider our moon here on Earth, what
does it take about a month to complete its orbit.
That's that's really cooking.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
In fact, the month is based on the moon taking
a month. They're inextricable basically, So is there a month.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Two hours?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I guess so?
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, because what was their day? What did you say
their day was tennish?
Speaker 2 (41:31):
I think ten point six?
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, that's right. Ten.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
So there's a bunch of different moons, different sizes, but
Saturn has some really really big ones. Titan, which we've
already talked about, is enormous and what a moon. It
is a great moon. Its size is large enough that
it can actually hold an atmosphere in place. It's one
of the very few moons that we know about that
has an actual atmosphere to speak of. And boy are
(41:59):
we gonna speak about it?
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, it is. It's a It's Titan is quite striking.
It is has mountains made of ice, has seas made
of ethane and liquid methane. So it's just an incredible moon.
It has an atmosphere much like ours. It's composed of nitrogen,
but it has an air pressure that just knocks ours
(42:23):
out of the park. It's I think one hundred and
fifty percent stronger at sea level, which is it's going
to be like you'd think you were on LSD or
something if you you plopped yourself on Titan and you
would look around and you were being like, wait, there's
odd things happening, like it's raining really slowly, and someone say, well,
what does that even mean. It's like, well, look at
(42:43):
the literal rain. It's coming down at about three and
a half miles an hour on Earth, it rains down
at about twenty miles an hour, and it just it's
it sounds funny and it looks funny.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
And the one of the friends there was like, rains
of weird word have you ever thought about that word rain?
Speaker 1 (43:00):
But why does it sound funny?
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Because the atmosphere is so thick that vibration sound can
travel much more efficiently through it. So if you shouted
like hello, you would burst the eardrums of your friend
on LSD.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, if you said look how slow the rain is.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
They just tap their hands over their ears and like
double over and pain.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
But it's not a hospitable place, like nothing could could
live on the surface of Titan. I think it has
a negative two hundred and forty I'm sorry two hundred
and ninety degree fahrenheit average temperature and like we said,
the liquids there are methane and ethane, so that's you
know what, you can't do anything with those two.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
No, but there is a liquid ocean about fifty miles
below the surface that methane and ethane and ice surface.
And this ocean is actually made of salt water.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah good fishing, yea from what I hear for sure.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
But that's the point. They're like, wait a minute, there's
salt water. There's it's heated by the core of Titan.
There's also hydrocarbons on the planet's surface. Like if you
put this stuff together in just the right arrangement, you
might have some sort of bizarre form of life. Like
these are organic materials that you could conceivably create life from.
So who knows what's swimming around or floating around in
(44:23):
that ocean underneath Titan's surface. Yeah, that's why people are
so jazzed about Titan.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, totally. And it's Titan, I mean, come.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
On, yeah, you know there's also what'd you say, ensaladus.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Insuladus, That's right, what'd you call it?
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Uh? I said enceladus? You said something else. It sounded
like salad. Are you Enceladus.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
I think I said, enceladus. We'll let the listeners decide.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Have you ever thought about that word in soladus?
Speaker 1 (44:54):
What's the deal with that one? That's I know it's
about the size of Arizona and also has the salt
water ocean under the crust.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
That is so so far Titans two for two that
we've talked about. We've talked about two moons and both
of them happen to have salt water oceans. Yeah underneath Yeah,
that's a big one too. So like it's underneath its
icy crust, which means that it's protected and heated and
heated so much in fact that I think we said enceladus.
(45:22):
Now I don't know how to say. It bursts ice
from its ocean out into the atmosphere, creating the e ring,
which is pretty cool in and of itself, But that
also means that there's geysers, and where there's geysers, there's
probably hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, the floor of
the salt water ocean, and that means that life could
(45:45):
conceivably create or start up there, because that's a really
popular theory these days about how life started on Earth.
Around hydrothermal vents in the ocean. Yeah, so who knows.
And then the Cassini probe wrote back, wrote home from
camp not too long ago, and was like, hey, I
sampled some of this water and it's got some mind
(46:06):
blowing stuff in there.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah for sure. And you know we mentioned earlier the
Cassini spacecraft finished up in twenty seventeen. It was called
the Grand Finale when it wrapped up its mission because
it on purpose says like, hey, let's just get really
close and just kamikazi this thing and just see what
kind of readings we can get up to the last
(46:28):
second there. So that's how it ended its mission. But
there's a new and dragonfly that's coming up, I believe,
launching in twenty twenty eight and will arrive on Titan
by twenty thirty four, so I mean, hang on to
your hat. So it'll be a decade. But then from now,
but then we're going to start get some I mean
imagine the changes that were going to happen between now
(46:49):
and then.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Yeah for sure. And there's actually a really cool animation
artist interpretation of that Grand Finale of the Cassini pro bit.
It's worth watching on YouTube. Oh cool, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (47:05):
I got nothing else.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
I got one more thing. It turns out in the
northern hemisphere September twenty twenty five will be the best
time to view Saturn because it'll be on the opposite
side of the Sun from Earth, so it'll be nice
and bright and easy to see. Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Well, we'll either think to remind you and we'll probably forget.
But I imagine that'll be a newsmaker like people on the
news will be saying, like, hey, go out and look
for Saturn. For sure, might be able to see it
with your eyeballs.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Okay, well, Chuck mentioned eyeballs, so we have no choice
but to unlock listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Hey guys, this is from Rockney. I'm the mother of one.
This is another, but I bet they met mother probably
I'm the mother of one aber longtime listeners. I don't
remember exactly when I started listening, but it was back
in high school I graduated.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, so Rockney is the
mother of one of our listeners.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
I bet you anything they meant to say, I'm another
one of your longtime listeners. Now that I'm reading it
and doing the.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Math, okay, okay, here we go.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Hey guys, my name is Rockney. I'm another one of
your longtime listeners.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
My girlfriend Anna has never listened to a single episode
of your podcast. English is her second language, so she's
probably ana and English spoken word entertainment doesn't quite feel
relaxing for her yet, so don't hold it against her.
But over the past few weeks, I've been on a mission.
I've been humming, whistling, and vocalizing these stuff you should
Know theme song non stop around her, trying to make
it familiar. And this past weekend my experiment finally succeeded.
(48:40):
I called her humming it on her own, completely unprompted.
I came clean, told her I'd been training her ears,
explaining it's the theme song of my podcast. She's familiar
with stuff you should Know through my constant mentions, and
she just calls it my podcast. We've both had a
great laugh about it. Recently, I heard a listener mail
from a mom who casually used as a verb, so
(49:01):
I figured i'd share my similar success story. So thanks
for over one point two decades of entertainment, and that
is from Rockney.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Thanks a lot, Rockney, we appreciate that. Thanks for trying
to spread the good word by creating earworms. It's right
if you want to be like Rockney and let us
know your situation. We love to hear that kind of stuff.
You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
(49:32):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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