Let's Learn About... #02: Saturn

Charlotte 0:14
Hi, and welcome to a new episode of 'Let's Learn About' - this is a show where you can learn about all sorts of random topics that you never knew you wanted to learn, but you will go away happy that you did.

Ellie 0:27
And possibly in a better knowledge position for when you go to your next trivia night.

Charlotte 0:31
Yeah, we we will hopefully... our aim is to make you win every single general knowledge pub quiz that you ever attend.

Ellie 0:40
Because you never know! At some of these pub quizzes, you could win like, mini fridges and if one of our podcasts help you win that mini fridge, we want a party at your house!

Charlotte 0:49
Yeah. Or you know, if you ever win money then we expect you to pay us some of it just because, you know...

Ellie 0:54
We expect 10% of all your winnings!

Charlotte 0:57
We expect a cut! So just letting you know now early on.

Ellie 1:02
Although to be fair, if you did actually win a pub quiz because of one of our podcast information knowledge... moments, let us know on our social media handles!

Charlotte 1:11
Yes. That would be a big honour, we will definitely ask you for a testimonial.

Ellie 1:16
We would dedicate you in the following podcast, I'm not gonna lie there.

Charlotte 1:21
So if you didn't listen to the last episode, we talked about Sarah Churchill, who is an incredible woman - go and listen to that if you're interested - but today we've got a completely different topic. So I've said... we've said in the past that this podcast is going to cover all sorts of topics from, you know, history, and academic stuff, and science and pop culture and everything. So we're going from a bit of history last week to some science this time; we're going to do a little bit of astronomy, and that's because it's my episode. Today we're gonna talk about my favourite planet, which is Saturn.

Ellie 2:12
I kind of want the Doctor Who music to be over at this point! Can I just sit in the background while you're talking and go... [Ellie proceeds to do a very bad impression for the Doctor Who theme music]

Charlotte 2:23
Yeah! I think unfortunately, if we had the actual music, we might be copyright claimed.

Ellie 2:28
Dang it!

Charlotte 2:30
We could just make our own.

Ellie 2:32
[Ellie continues to do a very bad Doctor Who theme tune impression] Doctor Who please don't sue us, we're only on the second episode!

Charlotte 2:44
Right, so I'll just get straight in. I have some questions that I will ask you to see if you have any idea about...

Ellie 2:50
No one told me that there'd be a pop quiz!

Charlotte 2:52
...do you have any idea how big Saturn actually is compared to Earth?

Ellie 3:00
Very big. It's like the second... it's the second biggest planet in our solar system?

Charlotte 3:05
It's very large. So Saturn is 74,800 miles wide.

Ellie 3:11
Well, I wasn't wrong when I said it was pretty big.

Charlotte 3:14
Yeah, which is nearly 10 times wider than Earth. Just for a bit of context, approximately 750 Earths could fit inside of Saturn.

Ellie 3:24
That's a lot of Earths.

Charlotte 3:25
So if that doesn't make you feel very tiny, being a speck on a planet, which in comparison to Saturn is also a speck. That's kind of terrifying and I don't want to think about it much more.

Ellie 3:37
No, I'm gonna get an existential crisis in a minute.

Charlotte 3:41
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. However, if that seems big, nearly 1600 Saturn's could fit inside the Sun. So if anyone's ever wondering why we can't see the planets compared to the Sun - obviously the sun is closer than the rest of the planets - but the Sun is so ridiculously massive that... Saturn is that big and you can fit 1600 Saturn's inside the Sun. So, have you seen the film 'Horton Hears a Who'?

Ellie 4:19
Yes.

Charlotte 4:21
Where there's an entire world on a speck on a flower, that's how I feel right now.

Ellie 4:26
Yeah. Yep, same here. The thing is though, when the numbers get that big you just can't picture it. I'm trying to picture that many and my brain is like... you know the meme of the man going 'pew' and his brain explodes, that's what mine's doing right now.

Charlotte 4:43
Doesn't even mean anything anymore.

Ellie 4:44
No, numbers no longer have meaning.

Charlotte 4:45
So, also a bit of a fun fact about the shape of it. Like we always we always assume, I think from diagrams and stuff we always assume that planets are like perfect spheres. But Saturn is kind of Weird bolt shape. So basically it rotates so fast, like it rotates at over 6000 miles per hour. And that means that the planet kind of bulges at the equator because it goes so fast that it can't remain like a perfect circle, it boulders in the centre and it's flat at both of the foliage. So, at like the top, we've got the two poles. It's like the planet is flat, and it kind of goes into like a weird bulging shape. And it's the flattest planet in the solar system, which I can't even picture like when people say Earth is flat. We only get you know the flat earthers. If we lived on if we lived on Saturn, then I mean they could technically be correct saying that the planet is flat because it genuinely is like a weird flat bowl shape.

Ellie 5:57
Yeah. For some reason I've got this image of, you know, when babies have to be foreclamped to in order to be delivered? I've kind of got that image, cos their heads also get a little bit squished because of the clamps, and I don't know why but I've now got that image in relation to Saturn and it's kind of weirding me out.

Charlotte 6:21
So when the Big Bang happened, Saturn refused to create and then Jupiter had to get clamps, and clamp Saturn out of the black hole that created the Big Bang.

Ellie 6:33
This episode has taken a weird tangent... and then he decided to put a ring on it!

Charlotte 6:41
Please disregard that last bit, that's not fact. The bit before is.

Ellie 6:51
Anyway, continue! Yes this is facinating, I've never... Yeah, cuz as you said, you picture them like perfect spheres. So Saturn's a bit buldgy.

Charlotte 7:04
So do you have any idea how long a year might last on Saturn? Obviously on Earth it's 365 days-ish. It's a little bit over; I learned this, that a year on Earth is slightly over 365 days, like for it to rotate around the sun it is slightly longer, which is why every four years we need to Leap Year to basically catch up.

Ellie 7:26
Yeah, yeah, cuz it's like 365 and a quarter or something like that. So yeah, that's why we have Leap Years every four years. So Saturn? I'm gonna go for around 700 days in a Saturn year.

Charlotte 7:42
Okay. Well, you're very cold. One year on Saturn is 10,759 days.

Ellie 7:54
Okay I was very cold. Yes, I was!

Charlotte 7:56
It takes 10,000 days for Saturn to do its full orbit around the sun.

Ellie 8:04
So if we lived on Saturn we'd be four or something like that. We'd be four years old, we really wouldn't get that many birthdays in our lifetime.

Charlotte 8:13
No. I wrote in my notes here "Wouldn't be ideal if you want to wait until next year to make a New Year's Resolution".

Ellie 8:23
Or if you're trying to book a wedding ceremony, and you've got to wait a year for a reservation.

Charlotte 8:28
Yeah, "So everyone we're getting married in 15,000 days".

Ellie 8:34
Oh, my word. Well, yeah, I suppose, cuz the time again to get round the sun... Yeah, no, that makes sense.

Charlotte 8:40
Yeah. But, however, a day on Saturn is only 10 and a half hours compared to our 24.

Ellie 8:46
So the planet itself spins faster, but it takes longer to make it's orbit. Okay.

Charlotte 8:52
Yeah. Because obviously with where it rotates so fast, it means that it's day is less than half of what ours is.

Ellie 9:02
So you'd have less time in a day to get stuff done, but you'd have more time in the year in order to continue doing the things you need to do. Yeah. Okay.

Charlotte 9:11
So one thing that always fascinates me about Saturn is its rings, but did you know - this is another thing with looking at people's diagrams and photos and things - Saturn isn't the only planet that has rings?

Ellie 9:26
Wait, what?

Charlotte 9:27
And this kind of blew my mind. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune all have rings, but we never see them in pictures because they're really faint. So like, there's basically less layers to them and the materials that make up the rings are less dense. So we've never seen them, but scientists know that they're there. But it's why we can't see them on photos and things because they're so faint, but four planets actually have rings. So now Saturn suddenly seems less special.

Ellie 9:58
Primary school science teachers lied to us for years!

Charlotte 10:04
And one thing that I also found really interesting; although Saturn's rings weren't discovered until the 1600s, some scholars before that theorised that ancient cultures may have known about them. So for example, there was this Maori tribe in New Zealand that have historically referred to Saturn as this word - that I'm not sure how to pronounce - which is an ancient name that means 'surrounded by a headband'. And I'm very intrigued to know how they knew that? Because obviously we now have ways to actually see the planets, but how did ancient tribes know that a planet had rings?

Ellie 10:53
Because it's not like we can see Saturn in the sky? As far as I'm aware, we cannot see Saturn in the sky with the naked eye, so how in the 16th century did a Maori tribe have a name for Saturn that basically means 'planet that wears a headband'?

Charlotte 11:12
It blows my mind. I don't understand how they would have known.

Ellie 11:16
It's either a sheer coincidence, or they basically made a telescope way before anyone else did and then refused to tell anybody. And they were just like "we knew, we just knew".

Charlotte 11:29
Yeah, the world could have advanced so much more than it has now if they gave us their amazing telescope. So I that just blows my mind, I'm so baffled by how they would have known.

Ellie 11:40
See, this is the reason why when people say would you rather travel forwards or backwards in time, I always say backwards. But not backwards in our history, I'd go to another part of the world way, way back because it's stuff like that I want the answers to. Like how did you know? How?!

Yeah, yeah.

But I'm just going to spend a lot of this episode baffled. I wish we had a video feed for this because my my face is just like "Whaaaaaaaaaat?"

Charlotte 12:11
However, Saturn needs to make the most of it being special with having it bright rings, because scientists speculate the Saturn's rings may disappear in the next 50 million years or so, it's not gonna be in our lifetime. But in the next like 50 million years, if Earth isn't dead by then, Saturn's rings might disappear. So they've basically speculated that either Saturn's own gravitational pull will suck the rings into the planet - so the rings, all the material that makes up the rings will basically be pulled into the planet and will just become like bits of rock on the planet - or the rings will simply just dissolve out into space.

Ellie 12:57
Oh, wow.

Charlotte 12:58
So there might be bits of rock flying around space that used to be part of Saturn's rings, or Saturn will just become a normal round planet like the rest of them. Which is just crazy.

Ellie 13:12
But how do they...? Again, this is where science and maths stops becoming a picturable thing, because how do scientists know it's going to take 50 million years for that to happen?

Charlotte 13:25
I'm assuming it's something to do with the changes in the rings already. So what they might have pictured a certain number of years ago, and they might now picture those rings again, and they've changed over the decades that they've been doing space study. And then I assume, say the rings are starting to thin out already a little bit, maybe they can calculate it and because it's going so slowly, it would take like that massively long time.

Ellie 13:58
The thing is though, is a lack of the rings going to have a detrimental effect on Saturn though? But will it just continue being the little fast spinning planet that it is, just without its extra decorative features?

Charlotte 13:59
I assume yeah, because the rings don't do anything, they're just there. It's just something to do with the gravitational pull that stops the rings kind of flying fully in towards Saturn, and it's why the rings go fully in a circle, because the gravity just doesn't pull them right in. So I guess it wouldn't really have an effect. It would just not have the rings anymore.

Ellie 14:32
I can't imagine Saturn without its rings. It's kind of the iconic thing that people know about Saturn is this the rings.

Charlotte 14:40
I mean with this, we're not really going to be alive in 50 million years so luckily we won't see that.

Ellie 14:48
And now I'm questioning my previous statement about going back in time. I now also want to go forward in time! I know what, you go forward, I go back and then we'll both meet in the middle and discuss what we found out.

Charlotte 15:01
Yeah, Mm hmm. I'll just go 50 million years into the future and hope to come back unscathed.

Ellie 15:08
Yeah! The technology will be much better then, you'll get back no problem!

Charlotte 15:12
Yeah. So one of my favourite things about Saturn is its moons. I feel like I talk about Saturn's moons to people constantly. Every time there's news about them, I'm just like, "oh my god, have you seen this news?" I'm actually planning on getting a Saturn tattoo at some point.

Ellie 15:28
That would be cool.

Charlotte 15:28
So the moons are really cool. So do you know how many moons Saturn has? Do you have any idea?

Ellie 15:40
No, and I'm feeling like a really failing this pop quiz! "I didn't study Sir, I'm sorry, the dog ate my homework". How many moons does it have?

Charlotte 15:51
Well, up until a couple of weeks ago it was kind of common knowledge that Saturn had 62 moons, which already is crazy compared to our 1. We have one singular moon, Saturn had 62 of varying sizes; they can be full decent sized moons, down to these tiny, tiny little rocks that they also classes moons. Basically, anything that is made of solid material that is in orbit around a planet becomes one of its moons. There can even be this tiny little piece of rock and if it has an orbit around the planet then it's still classed as the moon. However, it's been in the news recently that scientists discovered 20 new moons in one go around the planet, so Saturn now has 82 moons all together that we know of. It probably has loads more, but that we know of so far, Saturn has 82 moons and now that's more than any other planet! So before, I think, Jupiter...

Ellie 16:59
...had the most moons.

Charlotte 17:01
It was something like 63, it was one more than we knew Saturn to have. So Saturn has suddenly just won the race and just been like "Haha, I've suddenly got 20 more moons"!

Ellie 17:14
Saturn is getting greedy at this point, it can't take the moons!

Charlotte 17:19
Waving its 20 more moons in Jupiter's face.

Ellie 17:23
In the way that Jack Sparrow does in Pirates of the Caribbean - "I've got a jar of dirt" - Saturn's just going "I've got 20 more moons, I've got 20 more moons!"

Charlotte 17:32
So there's probably loads more, as I said, but scientists need a heck of a lot better technology and a better telescope to be able to see them. And also, judging by the fact that the orbit around the Sun is so slow, it might also need to line up better for us to be able to see moons that are maybe blocked by the other side of the planet to be able to see them. One cool thing, that I will put a link to in the show notes for this episode, is that there's actually a competition running right now to name one of the 20 moons. So if you go to the link in the show notes, you can actually enter names for them to actually name one of the new 20 moons.

Ellie 18:25
That's so cool!

Charlotte 18:27
There are specific rules in place. So all of Saturn's moons are named after specific things; you've got Greek gods, and then you've also got... I can't remember what the other one is, but there's specific rules in place that you need to follow. If anyone does happen to want to enter the competition to name a moon on Saturn, then I will put the link in the notes and you can go and enter! How cool is that?

Ellie 18:58
That is amazing, but knowing the British public - or especially the British public - you know for a fact someone's gonna go with Moony McMoonface! Because that's what we do! So I'm betting the rules are in place because they know someone's going to do that, so they're like "no, we're not having that all over again". Although I still think Moony McMoonface would be an excellent name. Yeah, that's so cool. I tell you what, after this recording I'm getting on that. I'm going to enter a name because that would be awesome.

Charlotte 19:33
Well, I am actually - a little spoiler here - I'm actually planning on doing another episode at some point entirely just on Saturn's moons. There is so much to discuss, obviously, there's now 82 of them. There's so much to talk about, that as a little kind of summary; one of it's moons is one of only the places in the whole solar system that is most likely to have life on it - like, the setup of the moon is almost the same as Earths'. And the probability of life, even if it's down to... I feel like, when people think of life on other planets, they're considering entire life forms, but by life on other planets they could literally mean there's living cells. And this moon, one of Saturn's moons, is one of the contenders to actually potentially have life growing on it, which is just...

Ellie 20:43
So for any future space travellers that are listening to our podcast in 200 years time, and they're looking for a new planet to inhabit when we inevitably destroy this one, look to Saturn, that could be our new home.

Charlotte 20:58
Yeah. So there is so much to talk about, about the moons, especially that one that I think I'm just going to plan an entire episode talking about them. Because otherwise this one could be like four hours long.

Ellie 21:11
You've already got me hooked. I'm in. I'm totally up for you to do it. Could it be the next one? We'll do Part Two. Okay, that's really cool though. That's fascinating!

Charlotte 21:23
It's just crazy, imagining. I think when people consider life, they always talk about life on other planets. So specific, the actual planets with life on, I feel like people don't consider the moons of other planets could also have life on.

Ellie 21:40
No, cuz yeah, because when you think of inhabitable future space home, you don't think rock floating around space. That's really cool.

Charlotte 21:52
Crazy. So how about if we wanted to travel to Saturn? Sadly, it's not going to happen, at least in our lifetime. The atmospheric pressure on Saturn is over 100 times greater than Earth's and the pressure is basically so powerful that it squeezes gas into liquid, and it would basically just crush any human made spacecraft. So anything that goes near it, the atmospheric pressure is so strong, that anything that goes near it would be instantly crushed.

Ellie 22:33
It could get there but we wouldn't survive.

Charlotte 22:36
And it would be very messy.

Ellie 22:37
Yes, it would. It's a bit like when you take tin foil and then you scrunch it all up, so it's like a teeny tiny ball, that's basically what it would do to one of our spacecraft.

Charlotte 22:45
That's what it would do, yeah, we were just kind of implode.

Ellie 22:48
Oh dear, that's not good.

Charlotte 22:49
And also, not that anyone would ever want to, or need to, drive a car to another planet. But if we could, if there was a massive road built, like a huge motorway that we just built from Earth to Saturn, it - I said in my notes 'like an intergalactic highway', I think I was feeling creative...

Ellie 23:12
Don't tell Richard Branson, he'll be on it!

Charlotte 23:17
...if you consistently drove on a perfectly straight road, if you consistently drove at 70 miles per hour, it would take anywhere from 1290 to 1590 years just to get to it, depending on how far away Saturn is from Earths orbit.

Ellie 23:21
You would need a tot of road for that trip.

Charlotte 23:42
And you would need some sort of time reversal to stop you aging.

Ellie 23:47
Or take your kids with you and hope that you somehow get grandkids on the journey.

Charlotte 23:55
I mean, I assume that's why people don't drive cars to space and why rockets are involved.

Ellie 24:01
Slightly faster, might want to take a couple hours off that journey.

Charlotte 24:06
Yeah, it kind of shows how far away it is. But we can still see Saturn.

Ellie 24:12
Oh, we can see Saturn!

Charlotte 24:15
Sometimes. Again depending on how close it is to us in its orbit. It'll look like a bright really bright star in the sky, but you can see it sometimes. So if there's a super bright, what looks like a star, it could be Saturn because it's not really that far away compared to the other planets.

Ellie 24:38
I suppose, or maybe those Kiwis just had really, really good vision back in the day. Yeah, maybe they didn't need a telescope at all, they could just see it.

Charlotte 24:48
Yeah, with a naked eye they could just see right up to space. Can you imagine?

Ellie 24:53
Well, I suppose it didn't have light pollution back in the day, so it might have just been clearer skies.

Charlotte 24:58
Yeah, true.

Ellie 25:01
Oh, that's so cool because I genuinely didn't think... because I know you can see Venus at certain times of year, and I think you can see Mars as well, but I didn't know you can see Saturn. I thought it was too far away.

Charlotte 25:13
But we can.

Ellie 25:14
That's so cool.

Charlotte 25:16
Which is pretty cool.

Ellie 25:17
Space is crazy!

Charlotte 25:19
I know. It terrifies me. As much as I adore it, it just terrifies me to death.

Ellie 25:25
Well it's the infinity of the cosmos isn't it?

Charlotte 25:29
The idea of it is just flipping terrifying. Just knowing that it potentially never ends.

Ellie 25:36
Apparently it does never end.

Charlotte 25:37
Where does it end?

Ellie 25:38
It's just... they haven't found an end yet. And we're such a tiny... it really does make you feel very, very tiny on the grand scheme of things. We get so involved in our lives, and then you think about space, and it's just like "Oh, my God. We are so small". I feel like I'm on something right now, because I've kind of gone into this...

Charlotte 26:08
We're going into philosophy now as well.

Ellie 26:11
Oh, I think this is where our podcasts would lead us. But it is.

Charlotte 26:15
It's actually just gonna lead us into an existential crisis.

Ellie 26:18
I'm going to be facedown on the floor, Dan Howell style. Just face down, no, I'm done. But I can see why you find it so fascinating.

Charlotte 26:30
Yeah. Like, obviously the other planets have really interesting stories, too. I'll probably end up covering them at some point, but for some reason...

Ellie 26:36
You've got to do my favourite one at some point, which is Pluto.

Charlotte 26:40
Right, yes. That's the underdog of the planets.

Ellie 26:43
The planet that was formerly not a planet and is now a planet again. Yeah, you know, future episode.

Charlotte 26:49
Yeah, since high school really, I've just found Saturn so fascinating out of all the rest of the planets. It's that one planet that I've just found so fascinating, and I think a lot of it comes down to how cool the moons are to learn about; there's so much variation in the stuff you can learn, even just about the moons, and then the planet is just so cool in itself as well. But I mean, to summarise this, it's just a massive, beyond massive thing that we could never live on because we'll be crushed to death.

Ellie 27:25
Yaaaaaaay!!! It is fascinating though, in the respect that all the planets, you would assume, were created around the same time. But they're all so different. I don't even mean little differences, there are major differences between all of them. I can see why you're so intrigued by them, because our planet seems boring in comparison.

Charlotte 27:47
It is really boring.

Ellie 27:49
It's really boring in comparison! Which, you shouldn't really say that about the one planet in our solar system that does, as far as we know - conspiracy theory tune here - has life on it.

Charlotte 28:02
That's one thing that is so fascinating about Earth, is what makes Earth out of all the rest of the planets... why does it happen to be the only planet that is so inhabitable?

Ellie 28:16
I think I read somewhere, one of the few things I know about planets, is that if we were literally just little ways further or closer to the sun, our planet would not be inhabitable at all.

Charlotte 28:30
Yeah, because it's all to do with the poles and the tides and stuff. We can only control so much.

Ellie 28:37
It's in the perfect position to have life on it.

Charlotte 28:40
Yeah, it's like what is the chance of that? And I can tell it's proper intelligent life as well. Mostly intelligent.

Ellie 28:46
Depending on who you went to school with, yeah.

Charlotte 28:51
I just find it crazy. What is the chance of that? Why are we the only planet that is that perfectly set up?

Ellie 28:58
Well if Professor Brian Cox happens to be listening to this podcast, feel free to come on and tell us.

Charlotte 29:04
And be our guest.

Ellie 29:05
"Be our guest..." No!

Charlotte 29:09
I just thought exactly the same thing!

Ellie 29:13
But yeah, if anyone out there actually has the answer to that, feel free to get in contact with us either via social media or our website, because we would love to have you on and tell us what is it that makes this planet so inhabitable? And what are the chances that it became the way it did? Because I'd love to have you on, and I reckon you'd love to have them on as well.

Charlotte 29:36
Yeah, definitely. So like usual, if there's anything space related - or anything related really, doesn't have to be related to this - if you have any ideas, head over to our website - learnaboutpod.com - and you can find all the previous episodes as well as getting in touch with us to share your ideas, and if you have any kind of topics that you want us to discuss, that you're interested in, or even if you'd love to come on and educate people on a certain topic, then get in touch with us. And we'd love to hear from you.

Ellie 30:10
Alternatively, come find us on Twitter and Instagram - we also @learnaboutpod on there - let us know what you thought about the episode, and if there is any more, maybe about Saturn, that you'd like us to cover in a future episode, or something from pop culture, or music, or pretty much anything - as we said in our introductory episode, we will cover anything on this podcast to a point.

Charlotte 30:14
Within reason. Or if you have an idea for a Saturn moon name then share it with us, because I'd love to hear some of your interesting Saturn moon names that might be slightly better than Moony McMoonface.

Ellie 30:49
I don't know, I think Moony McMoonface is going to win.

Charlotte 30:51
I don't think anything beats that, to be honest. But yeah, I will put the link to that and some sources that I got some information from as well, if you want to carry on learning, in the show notes and they will be - again - learnaboutpod.com.

Ellie 31:05
And just to reiterate, with all our previous ones as well - so our last episode was about Sarah Churchill - there will also be information notes on research sources, pretty much all the information from all of our podcasts, so that if you found what we talked about interesting you can go forth and continue your knowledge expansion to your heart's desire. Yep, to educate. And to help you win trivia night.

Charlotte 31:29
To educate and inspire!

Ellie 31:33
We have grand plans for this podcast.

Charlotte 31:38
All right, we will see you next week with another topic.

Ellie 31:43
Which we will decide in five minutes time. See you next week.

Charlotte 31:48
Bye!

Ellie 31:48
Bye!