7. Uranus and Neptune, the Ice Giants
54 min
Ice giant: a planet made mostly of water, ammonia and methane, crushed into a hot, dense fluid under a deep blanket of hydrogen air. Uranus and Neptune are the only two we know in our own solar system. A planet that rolls around the Sun on its side, with forty-two years of daylight at each pole; a second blue world found with a pen before anyone saw it; and one small spacecraft that passed them both, once, and went on... Inside: a musician's comet, a planet first named after a king, a star that blinked five times, rings named for liberty, equality and fraternity, a cliff twice the height of Everest, the fastest winds of any planet, diamonds that may fall through the dark, and a moon that goes backwards and sends up plumes of dust. William Herschel and Urbain Le Verrier will be there too. Chapters: The far cold · A musician's comet · The planet found with a pen · What an ice giant is · Rolling on its side · The rings in the dark · The long road · Moons from the theatre · The windiest world · Triton · Seen again · The ones not yet sent · The ice giants. Sources: NASA and JPL (Voyager 2), ESA/Hubble, ESA/Webb and STScI, Royal Museums Greenwich, Elliot et al. in Nature (1977), the US Planetary Science Decadal Survey (2022). Read by a synthetic voice; script written and fact-checked by the show's team. More calm shows for the late hours: Embers of History (history), The Quiet Armoury (swords and armour), Myth and Score (composers). Every episode's full script: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/orbit/7.html On YouTube: Opera Stories https://www.youtube.com/@operastoriestv · Slow Orbit https://www.youtube.com/@sloworbitlectures Free line-by-line English translations of art songs: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/art-songs/ Enjoying the show? Leave a tip (no fees): https://ko-fi.com/artsongtranslations
