Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish concepts about how to tinker with the cosmos – from snapping the moon in half to inflicting a gravitational wave apocalypse – and topics them to the legal guidelines of physics to see how they fare. Listen on Apple, Spotify or on our podcast web page.
Uranus and Neptune are remarkably alike, so we don’t want each of them. That’s the reasoning behind this episode of Dead Planets Society, during which our hosts Chelsea Whyte and Leah Crane have determined to mild Uranus on fire.
Of course, there’s a scientific rationale for this – for one, burning a fabric and inspecting its mild by means of a way known as spectroscopy is likely one of the greatest methods to decide its chemical composition. For one other, the deep interiors of the ice large planets stay murky and mysterious, so burning away the outer layers might reveal what’s beneath.
Before we attain for some matches, this episode’s particular visitor, planetary scientist Paul Byrne at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, says this could be tough. As he explains, the outer layers of Uranus are missing in oxygen, which is required for combustion. It may not even assist to pump in additional oxygen than is contained in your entire photo voltaic system.
But the inside of Uranus isn’t simply mysterious; it additionally could also be stuffed with iceberg-like chunks of diamond. That rapidly shifts our hosts’ focus. This is now not a mission of pyrotechnics – it’s a heist.
We nonetheless want to do away with the planet’s outer layers, and probably the most environment friendly method to do that’s most likely by slamming one other world into it. From Earth, this could appear like a flash of sunshine, a cloud of glowing vapour and doubtlessly a vivid tail forming behind Uranus. The influence would have to be fastidiously deliberate to keep away from smashing the planet and its diamonds to bits.
With the precise collision, although, we might accomplish each the brand new purpose of getting at Uranus’s diamonds and the unique purpose of exposing its deeper layers to allow them to be studied. We might additionally wreck your entire photo voltaic system, however when has that been a priority within the Dead Planets Society?
Topics: