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Short Stuff: Saturn's Rings · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. We're just zooming through
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the universe trio of cool cats who apparently can survive
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: in the vacuum of space.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's right, we're talking about Saturn's rings and big thanks
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: to doctor Ian O'Neil, who wrote this for houstuffworks dot com.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: And we're talking about Saturn's rings because semi recently, in
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: the grand scheme of things, what like six years ago
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: or so, and in the time since, we have learned
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: a couple of kind of cool things about Saturn. One
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: not cool as in like, hey, it's good that this
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: is happening, but cool as in we never knew this stuff. Yeah. One,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: in the next one hundred million years, Saturn's rings will
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: no longer be around. They're going to disappear, completely denuded.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: And Two, because of what we're going to tell you
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: about in a second, we learned a lot more about
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: those rings and the fact that they are a lot
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: younger than we thought.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Chuck, that was such an amazing intro. I'm that was
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: great stuff. Man.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Hey, Jerry just said we were on fire before we recorded.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So we can thank our friends at NASA for launching
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the Cassini mission and more robe.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, NASA in the it was a three three uh
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: what do you call it? A monagatwa Sure, NASA and
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the we got to shout out the euro Space Agency ESA,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: sure and the utality in a space agency which is
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: not of the ISA. But it's the aside, don't.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Ask very nice. So this this Cassini mission, great stuff, Chuck, chuck.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: It was flying around Saturn for I saw thirteen years.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I think doctor o'neilsa's thirteen years. I saw up to twenty.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they launched in ninety seven, but it entered the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: orbit of Saturn in two thousand and four.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Ah, there's the discrepancy. Yeah, but we learned a lot
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: about Saturn, which is, by the way, one of the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: gas giants of our of our Solar system.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Any who else is Jerry.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: She is kind of gassy, isn't she.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: He's a gas giant.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So we learned a lot about Saturn. And one of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the things we learned, number one, that there's tons of
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: moons around Saturn. Number two that there's some of these
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: moons might be habitable. And so as a result, when
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: they launched the Cassini mission. They were like, okay, we've
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: we've got to figure out a way to dispose of
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the Cassini probe without just crash landing it, because you
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: know it could be lousy with earth germs on it. Still,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want to infect one of these moons. So
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: they burned it up in the atmosphere instead. And I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: realized that this is like the NASA equivalent of wearing
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: a mask. Explain, well, they didn't want to contaminate the moon,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: so they burned the thing up in the atmosphere.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I got you.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: It was way better on paper.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you actually wrote that out.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Actually, some of them are so good I don't
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: want to forget them.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotcha.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: And that's a good example of it.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Uh huh. So that's what happened, right, This thing was
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: low on fuel and so they did that. They burned
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: it up in that upper atmosphere.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: They did, but they said, you know what we're going
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to do, We're going to do something crazy. Cassini's at
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the end of its mission. I'm gonna say her. Cassini's
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: at the end of her mission. She's been a stout
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: and true pioneer for US teaching us all sorts of
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: great stuff about Saturn. But one thing we don't know
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: about is what is between Saturn's rings and the planet itself.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That's great gap between the planet and its innermost ring.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: What's going on there?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like, not only what's going on there, but
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: what can we learn a about the rings and about
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Saturn as a whole if we learn about what's going
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: on in between those rings. They thought, well, you know,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we're going to find some gases. But they
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: basically thought, like, you know, it's empty in between there,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: as Dave Matthews would, there's space between, and that's what
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: they thought. But what they found was not that at all.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: What they found was a virtual rainstorm of particles and
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: elements and molecules raining down between the gaps. And what
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: they found out was hold on a second, these That is,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: the rings sort of falling apart, right.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're dissolving onto it's just falling into the atmosphere
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: of Saturn, which is pretty cool. But what that implies
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: is that since there's a finite amount of these rings,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: eventually they're going to dissolve. There won't be any rings
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: any longer. And that was a big thing that they
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: did not know before. They didn't know the age of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the rings. They didn't know that the rings were slowly dissolving.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: And they learned it by sending Cassini on a crazy
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: screw e mission flying orbits inside the gap between the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: planet and its inner string, which is really really cool.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And I say, we take a break, we'll come back
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and talk about what Cassini taught us.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. So first off, we've been saying just Cassini,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: it was technically the Cassini Huygens.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't see that anyway.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: But Huygens is kind of clunky, so everyone in Cassini
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: just I guess that was the Italian input. Sure, so
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Cassini sounds better. But one of the things they learned,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: like we said, is that these rings have about one
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: hundred million years to live, which sounds like a long
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: time and it is, but considering Saturn is a about
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: four billion years old, it's much shorter than they thought.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Did you say that it's raining ten tons of material
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: per second?
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: No? No, no, I didn't. That's a great stat.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: It is, and it's hilarious that they went with ten
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: tons because it's nine thousand and seventy two kilograms. But
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: ten metric tons is ten thousand.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Kilograms, okay if you say so.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Regardless, that's how much is raining down in particulate form.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: So that's a lot of particles that it's using every second.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: But there's still so much of it that's going to
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: take one hundred million years to dissolve.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And here's I mean, this is this kind
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: of tough stuff. But here's how I understand it and
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: how they figured some of this stuff out was while
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Cassini Huygens was going through that that ring plane, they said,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: the people running the mission that that three pronged Manasata
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: as you said, said, you know what, those those rings
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: and those moons have gravitational pulls, So why don't we
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: just let it work its magic on the space and
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: let it pull it a little bit in whatever direction
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: it's going to go in and that will result in
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: these little bitty changes to its trajectory and we can
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: measure those and that'll allow us to find out the
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: mass of this thing using magic.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they could detect fractions of a millimeter per
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: second increases in acceleration. That's how sensitive the stuff that
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Cassini was sending back Cassini Huyggens. Sure, it sounds like
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Jerry lewis saying Cassini, Cassini, Huygens exactly. Hey, So what
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: they were doing was they were figuring out the mass
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: of the rings by figuring out how much the probe
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: resisted the pull of Saturn itself. Yeah, okay, And then
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: by figuring out the mass of the rings, they could
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: make a pretty good guess at the age of the rings, right,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: because less mass would be younger, more mass would be older.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Because this is a These things are spinning in a
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: very tight orbit around Saturn. They're not like these solid things.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like an asteroid belt, but there's so
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: much stuff in there that they actually appear as rings.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: An solo couldn't even navigate that asteroidery.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Not a chance. And so the longer that they are around,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the more space stuff they're going to attract. So there
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: would be more masks, the older they were, less mass,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the younger they were. But what they found out was
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that the predictions were way off, that what they came
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: up with was just didn't make any sense. And what
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: they figured out how to explain it was actually taught
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: them a lot about what's going on inside of Saturn.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as they figured out in the end, that was because,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: like we said, it was being altered by the tug
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: of gravity, but it was also being altered by these
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: big flows of material in that atmosphere at the equator,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: which was about six thousand miles deep, and they were
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: moving slower, about four percent slower than the upper atmosphereic
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: clouds that we could see. And that was sort of
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: the discrepancy. It was that they did not know about
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: and therefore couldn't predict right.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: So once they figured out that the mass of the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: rings are actually much lower than they thought, they took
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: some other measurement from I can't remember, some sort of waves.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I guess gravitation always, but I don't think that's what
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it was. Yes, they had a measurement from before that
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: they're like, that is way low. There must be some
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: hidden mass in there that we're not detecting from the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: density waves. And when they did the calculations they figured
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: out Nope, that was actually a pretty good estimate. These
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: things are not as massive as you think, so they're
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: made up of fairly light stuff. And because it's not massive,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: and because the rings are still very bright, it suggests
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: that there's not a lot of rocky crud mixed in there,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: which suggests that they're fairly young. So they estimate that
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the age of Saturn's rings are between one hundred and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: ten million years.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Old, Yeah, which is way off. Initially they said anywhere
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: it depends, but from four point five billion years to
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: maybe like thirty million years.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, but so yeah, they figured it out what
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: they think figured And by the way, I want to
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: do a whole episode on Saturn. But they they both
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: that they believe. No, it's gonna be great. Remember our
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Venus episode was really fun. Yeah, So what they believe
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: is that either the rings are made up of an
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: icy comet that got caught in Saturn's orbit and was
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: basically pulled apart by the gravity of Saturn and it
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: turned into spread out into a ring. So what you're
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: seeing is a super spread out comet, Whi's pretty cool.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: It's also possible it's Moon that the same fate happened
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: to it just kind of crumbled and came apart, but the.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Kin might say it's beach.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: The upside of it is that we're going to do
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: an episode on Saturday, and so look for that one day.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the upside is that this could I mean,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: if it was an arrant comment, that could happen again
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: to another planet. So there could potentially, in another you know,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: twenty thirty million years, be another one of our beloved
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: planets with their own rings.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: That's right, And I sent upside on that upshot of course,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: of course, and that of course means short stuff is app.
• 11:28
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• 11:31
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• 11:35
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