Reach out and catch a wandering star

[minoanmiss]

Today I spent some wonderful hours with TL, watching beautiful episodes of NOVA about planetary sciences. *beams*

I love that show ever so, not least because I always learn something from it. The recent series on the planets, narrated soothingly by Zachary Quinto, was really lovely with beautiful computer animations and awesome interviews with gloriously passionate scientists. I want to make this series required viewing for everyone who has said that scientists have no appreciation of beauty or that knowledge destroys wonder.

One interesting fact of many I learned is an important clue to the nature of our solar system and how it's different than the majority of solar systems. Many/most of those observed have 'super-Earths' (2-10x the size of the Earth) and/or 'hot Jupiters' (gas giants with rather less gas because of their location) very close to their stars (far too close for life). Our system started out headed that way, with Jupiter spiraling inwards towards the Sun (in so doing it knocked material away from the neighborhoods of Ceres and Mars, rendering both unable to keep growing and thus much smaller than they might otherwise have been), but when Saturn formed, its orbital resonances with Jupiter swung them into their current positions before Jupiter could disrupt Earth's formation. I find myself wondering if many of the solar systems with life in them (I very much believe, and rather hope, we aren't the only such) have a pattern like ours with at least two big gas giants keeping each other from crashing through the orbits of the planets in the habitable zone.

I also want to show everyone upset about Pluto's reclassification the episode on Pluto and the Kuiper Belt (which is a much more recent discovery than I had realized -- I must have learned about it in my astronomy class within a few years of its discovery!) Pluto hasn't been demoted at all -- Pluto is our first ambassador from the Kuiper Belt's thousands-strong bevy of small icy diverse worlds. Pluto's true awesomeness is more fully expressed in its reclassification.

We need more than one category of 'planet' anyway. Pluto is as different from Jupiter as it is from Earth, and both are equally different from each other.

Anyway, I could keep writing about things I learned, but I should really note one of the things I knew and had my memory refreshed upon: one of my favorite things about my species is our search for knowledge for its own sake, and I love learning more and more of what we've collectively discovered. And I had such a good time today watching and learning with TL. *beams*

Comments

[cmcmck]

https://youtu.be/Gx_EhMM2S5Y

[cjsmith]

one of my favorite things about my species is our search for knowledge for its own sake

I too find this a wonderful thing about humanity as a whole - wonderful in all senses of the word.

[lynnenne]

I watched that series, too. It was so captivating! I knew most of the facts already but I loved hearing it from the scientists who first made the discoveries. Their excitement was palpable. And I loved that there was a balance of female and male scientists interviewed, which you don't often see in documentaries.

[corylea]

In my 9th-grade English class, we had to write a ten-page report about any subject we wanted. We could pick any subject because the goal was to teach us to do library research, to organize information, and to present it coherently.

I did my paper on the solar system; my best friend in the class did hers on the stock market. Each of us looked at the other in astonishment and said, "But why would you care about THAT?!"

I did my report so long ago that Jupiter was said to have 12 moons. :-)


That's an interesting fact you learned, about Jupiter and Saturn balancing one another! Very cool.

What network in Nova on? We don't have cable TV, so I can only see stuff that we get over the air or that's available on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Zachary Quinto, huh? I guess he's taken over Leonard Nimoy's role in more ways than one. :-) He doesn't have Leonard's great voice, though. Ethan Peck, though -- the grandson of Gregory Peck who plays Spock on Star Trek: Discovery -- that guy has a VOICE.

[minoanmiss]

NOVA is on PBS stations, so it should be pretty findable.

Yeah, Quinto has a soft, soothing voice that he can crisp up when he wants to, but it's not rich and magnificent. I will look up this gentleman you mention and listen to him!

[sabotabby]

That sounds really awesome. I have such a TV backlog now or I'd check it out.

[lindahoyland]

That's fascinating.