16 ms·

Why Is Uranus the Only Planet Without Interesting Features on It?

95 points by mweibel 8y ago

pidu87 8y ago
All the ads crashed my browser. How can you even read this?
- farresito 8y ago
  Here you go, buddy: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
- kumarharsh 8y ago
  Load the page, but click stop when you see the content has loaded (ads take more time to load). Then use the reading mode in Firefox.
- KnightOfWords 8y ago
  Ethan Siegal's articles are usually re-published on Medium a few days later: https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang
booleandilemma 8y ago
Does that make it interesting?
unique-template 8y ago
This could be titled "Making the case for further study of Unranus". And I'm on board.
edmanet 8y ago
${insert anus joke here}
SiempreViernes 8y ago
The short answer is: "because clickbait titles is part of the industry, it's not really that boring." The longer answer it is sometimes too cold to make the same cool cloud patterns in the visual spectrum Jupiter and Saturn have.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  The more interesting question is ”Why does Neptune have interesting visible-light features even though it’s even farther from the sun than Uranus?”
- NickM 8y ago
  The longer answer it is too cold to make the same cool cloud patterns in the visual spectrum Jupiter and Saturn have. That's not what the articles says at all.
- scrumper 8y ago
  That's not what the article says. It says that, thanks to its unusual axis of rotation (it's lying on its side, with the axis more or less parallel with the ecliptic, unlike every other planet), it spends decades in solstice (sun mostly shining on a polar region) and decades in equinox (sun mostly shining on the equator). During periods of equinox, the day/night cycle rapidly rotates the surface of the planet into and out of the sun's light which causes all kinds of interesting weather phenomena. During solstice, where the sun just steadily warms one pole, not much happens. The article concludes by saying that it's boring, but only some of the time.
- ajross 8y ago
  The article literally proposes and refutes that hypothesis. No, the longer answer is that: 1: The Voyager shots featuring a featureless orb were shot near the Uranian solstice, so each hemisphere was getting nearly constant illumination (Uranus is tilted on its side). If you look at it now nearer the equinox (where it has a day/night cycle) you see storms and clouds. And... 2: The cloud patterns are always there anyway, they are just hidden by a methane fog that blocks visible light during the solstice. The heating/cooling cycles of the midyear break up this haze and it looks more transparent.
ohduran 8y ago
If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'. -- Andrew Marr
- ssewell 8y ago
  Betteridge's law of headlines!
- detaro 8y ago
  "Why is ..." "no"?
julius_set 8y ago
Anything to get clicks right? Uranus IS interesting as it’s the only planet which is turned on its side relative to the spin and orbits of its sibling planets. Just because it doesn’t have swirling clouds due to the extreme cold doesn’t mean it’s not interesting.
- detaro 8y ago
  The article doesn't say it isn't interesting (nor does the title), and actually says it has nice swirling clouds now. (The comments here really are something else...)
  - dwaltrip 8y ago
    HN doesn't like clickbait titles.
    - mweibel 8y ago
      was unsure whether I should change the title to something less clickbaity or not. It's the article's original title after all..
  - duxup 8y ago
    The title certainly implies it doesn't have interesting features.
    - detaro 8y ago
      "Features on it", as in "visible things", not "characteristics of it".
  - swasheck 8y ago
    Came for the puerile, stayed for the pedantry.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      What of the puerile pedantry and the pedantic puerility?
NDizzle 8y ago
My 9th grade science teacher, Mr. Chew, told me that I would outgrow my juvenile sense of humor. I turn 40 in April. Mr. Chew, you were incorrect!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- walrus01 8y ago
  https://bgr.com/2018/07/03/uranus-collision-early-solar-system/ https://bgr.com/2018/07/03/uranus-collision-early-solar-syst... "A massive object devastated Uranus a long time ago and it never fully recovered" In all seriousness, crude graffiti and dick jokes have been around as long as we've had civilization and the written word: https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-graffiti-of-pompeii-was-downright-raunchy-and-abso-5929627 https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-graffiti-of-pompeii-was-downrigh...
  - nwellnhof 8y ago
    Also this journalist: https://www.storypick.com/uranus-headlines-journalist/ https://www.storypick.com/uranus-headlines-journalist/
- posterboy 8y ago
  It doesn't get much better trying to be serious about it > οὐρᾰνός • (ouranós) > 1. the vaulted sky 2. the region above this vault, the home of the gods 3. (philosophy) the universe 4. anything shaped like the sky: vaulted ceiling, tent looks pretty good > Etymology > Probably from an older ϝορσανός (worsanós), which may be related to οὑρέω (houréō, “to urinate”), from Proto-Indo-European h₁worseye-, from h₁wers- (“rain”) (compare Sanskrit वर्षति (varṣati, “it rains”). OK, never mind. > A folk etymology advanced by Aristotle interpreted it as ὅρος (hóros, “limit”) and ἄνω (ánō, “up”). Oh wait a second. German ur-, English or- means roughly "original", from a sense "up", found e.g. in Urteil "sentence, decision, verdict", cognate to ordeal (teil and deal from a sense part, to split), but more significantly Urahne" "ancestor" (see above ἄνω "above"), Ursuppe* "primordial soup". Latin anus, cognate Ancient Greek ἀννίς (annís) means “grandmother”, old high german ano "grandfather", so Wer- as in werewolf means "man", too. Ouranus (wonder why Greek omega is written like a w) is father of the first titans. talk about ancestors. The name is potentially so old that it's constituents have been re-analized multiple times. but yeah, really funny.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
m4r35n357 8y ago
Because.
gagege 8y ago
The fact that it is the only one that is relatively featureless makes it incredibly interesting. It's anything but boring.
- andyjohnson0 8y ago
  > relatively featureless makes it incredibly interesting OT but this reminded me of the "Interesting number paradox" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox
  - posterboy 8y ago
    That's not a paradox, it's not the number that's interesting, but a sentence about it.
- b3lvedere 8y ago
  It rains diamonds on it. That doesn't sound boring. :)
dvtrn 8y ago
This is off topic but it was so distracting I had to ask: does anyone else trying to read this on mobile have this page serving up the exact same advertisement on this page for each break in the article? I refreshed and it fixed things for the most part. Two areas still have duplicated ads.
Dole_Bob 8y ago
It's a reptilian deathstar.
trinkwallopy 8y ago
Because it’s Uranus, by definition?
igolden 8y ago
Bad pickup line or clickbait title? Asking for a friend.
tabtab 8y ago
Venus is also bland in visible light. However, in ultraviolet light, Venus has interesting cloud patterns. I wonder what spectrum range Uranus shows the most? The article suggests infrared. As far as the funny name, scientists are planning on renaming Uranus to avoid all the embarrassment. The new name will be "Urectum". (Swiped from an animated Sitcom.)
Vrondi 8y ago
TL;DR: Because, methane makes it look that way in visible light.
your_anus 8y ago
Maybe your anus...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TomMckenny 8y ago
I would have thought interesting weather depends on Coriolis which a sideways planet can't have.
- abstrakraft 8y ago
  Of course it can. Any rotating frame has Coriolis forces.
vertexFarm 8y ago
If you're tired of the butt jokes or if this planet is just too mainstream for you, might I recommend another mysterious, ringed celestial body in the same general region i.e. a bajillion kilometers from nowhere? Why not Chariklo! You almost never hear about this baby. I'd love to see a mission fly close enough to properly photograph it in my lifetime, but it's super rare to send something out that far and it would probably have to pass up on much more important science objectives in order to swing by such a tiny backwater dwarf planet. Supposedly the rings have been confirmed by stellar occultation, which is cool because it's super small for such clear rings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10199_Chariklo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10199_Chariklo I want to stand on the surface and look up for a while. See also Chiron and Haumea.
- RobotCaleb 8y ago
  Fund my team and we'll go get pictures of it.
8bitsrule 8y ago
Today Wikipedia has 82 articles with Uranus in the title. Something is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=intitle%3A%22Uranus%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&se...

95 points by mweibel 8y ago

pidu87 8y ago

All the ads crashed my browser. How can you even read this?

farresito 8y ago
Here you go, buddy: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
kumarharsh 8y ago
Load the page, but click stop when you see the content has loaded (ads take more time to load). Then use the reading mode in Firefox.
KnightOfWords 8y ago
Ethan Siegal's articles are usually re-published on Medium a few days later: https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang

booleandilemma 8y ago

Does that make it interesting?

unique-template 8y ago

This could be titled "Making the case for further study of Unranus". And I'm on board.

edmanet 8y ago

${insert anus joke here}

SiempreViernes 8y ago

The short answer is: "because clickbait titles is part of the industry, it's not really that boring." The longer answer it is sometimes too cold to make the same cool cloud patterns in the visual spectrum Jupiter and Saturn have.

Sharlin 8y ago
The more interesting question is ”Why does Neptune have interesting visible-light features even though it’s even farther from the sun than Uranus?”
NickM 8y ago
The longer answer it is too cold to make the same cool cloud patterns in the visual spectrum Jupiter and Saturn have. That's not what the articles says at all.
scrumper 8y ago
That's not what the article says. It says that, thanks to its unusual axis of rotation (it's lying on its side, with the axis more or less parallel with the ecliptic, unlike every other planet), it spends decades in solstice (sun mostly shining on a polar region) and decades in equinox (sun mostly shining on the equator). During periods of equinox, the day/night cycle rapidly rotates the surface of the planet into and out of the sun's light which causes all kinds of interesting weather phenomena. During solstice, where the sun just steadily warms one pole, not much happens. The article concludes by saying that it's boring, but only some of the time.
ajross 8y ago
The article literally proposes and refutes that hypothesis. No, the longer answer is that: 1: The Voyager shots featuring a featureless orb were shot near the Uranian solstice, so each hemisphere was getting nearly constant illumination (Uranus is tilted on its side). If you look at it now nearer the equinox (where it has a day/night cycle) you see storms and clouds. And... 2: The cloud patterns are always there anyway, they are just hidden by a methane fog that blocks visible light during the solstice. The heating/cooling cycles of the midyear break up this haze and it looks more transparent.

ohduran 8y ago

If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'. -- Andrew Marr

ssewell 8y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines!
detaro 8y ago
"Why is ..." "no"?

julius_set 8y ago

Anything to get clicks right? Uranus IS interesting as it’s the only planet which is turned on its side relative to the spin and orbits of its sibling planets. Just because it doesn’t have swirling clouds due to the extreme cold doesn’t mean it’s not interesting.

detaro 8y ago
The article doesn't say it isn't interesting (nor does the title), and actually says it has nice swirling clouds now. (The comments here really are something else...)
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  HN doesn't like clickbait titles.
  - mweibel 8y ago
    was unsure whether I should change the title to something less clickbaity or not. It's the article's original title after all..
- duxup 8y ago
  The title certainly implies it doesn't have interesting features.
  - detaro 8y ago
    "Features on it", as in "visible things", not "characteristics of it".
- swasheck 8y ago
  Came for the puerile, stayed for the pedantry.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    What of the puerile pedantry and the pedantic puerility?

NDizzle 8y ago

My 9th grade science teacher, Mr. Chew, told me that I would outgrow my juvenile sense of humor. I turn 40 in April. Mr. Chew, you were incorrect!

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
walrus01 8y ago
https://bgr.com/2018/07/03/uranus-collision-early-solar-system/ https://bgr.com/2018/07/03/uranus-collision-early-solar-syst... "A massive object devastated Uranus a long time ago and it never fully recovered" In all seriousness, crude graffiti and dick jokes have been around as long as we've had civilization and the written word: https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-graffiti-of-pompeii-was-downright-raunchy-and-abso-5929627 https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-graffiti-of-pompeii-was-downrigh...
- nwellnhof 8y ago
  Also this journalist: https://www.storypick.com/uranus-headlines-journalist/ https://www.storypick.com/uranus-headlines-journalist/
posterboy 8y ago
It doesn't get much better trying to be serious about it > οὐρᾰνός • (ouranós) > 1. the vaulted sky 2. the region above this vault, the home of the gods 3. (philosophy) the universe 4. anything shaped like the sky: vaulted ceiling, tent looks pretty good > Etymology > Probably from an older ϝορσανός (worsanós), which may be related to οὑρέω (houréō, “to urinate”), from Proto-Indo-European h₁worseye-, from h₁wers- (“rain”) (compare Sanskrit वर्षति (varṣati, “it rains”). OK, never mind. > A folk etymology advanced by Aristotle interpreted it as ὅρος (hóros, “limit”) and ἄνω (ánō, “up”). Oh wait a second. German ur-, English or- means roughly "original", from a sense "up", found e.g. in Urteil "sentence, decision, verdict", cognate to ordeal (teil and deal from a sense part, to split), but more significantly Urahne" "ancestor" (see above ἄνω "above"), Ursuppe* "primordial soup". Latin anus, cognate Ancient Greek ἀννίς (annís) means “grandmother”, old high german ano "grandfather", so Wer- as in werewolf means "man", too. Ouranus (wonder why Greek omega is written like a w) is father of the first titans. talk about ancestors. The name is potentially so old that it's constituents have been re-analized multiple times. but yeah, really funny.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

m4r35n357 8y ago

Because.

gagege 8y ago

The fact that it is the only one that is relatively featureless makes it incredibly interesting. It's anything but boring.

andyjohnson0 8y ago
> relatively featureless makes it incredibly interesting OT but this reminded me of the "Interesting number paradox" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox
- posterboy 8y ago
  That's not a paradox, it's not the number that's interesting, but a sentence about it.
b3lvedere 8y ago
It rains diamonds on it. That doesn't sound boring. :)

dvtrn 8y ago

This is off topic but it was so distracting I had to ask: does anyone else trying to read this on mobile have this page serving up the exact same advertisement on this page for each break in the article? I refreshed and it fixed things for the most part. Two areas still have duplicated ads.

Dole_Bob 8y ago

It's a reptilian deathstar.

trinkwallopy 8y ago

Because it’s Uranus, by definition?

igolden 8y ago

Bad pickup line or clickbait title? Asking for a friend.

tabtab 8y ago

Venus is also bland in visible light. However, in ultraviolet light, Venus has interesting cloud patterns. I wonder what spectrum range Uranus shows the most? The article suggests infrared. As far as the funny name, scientists are planning on renaming Uranus to avoid all the embarrassment. The new name will be "Urectum". (Swiped from an animated Sitcom.)

Vrondi 8y ago

TL;DR: Because, methane makes it look that way in visible light.

your_anus 8y ago

Maybe your anus...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TomMckenny 8y ago

I would have thought interesting weather depends on Coriolis which a sideways planet can't have.

abstrakraft 8y ago
Of course it can. Any rotating frame has Coriolis forces.

vertexFarm 8y ago

If you're tired of the butt jokes or if this planet is just too mainstream for you, might I recommend another mysterious, ringed celestial body in the same general region i.e. a bajillion kilometers from nowhere? Why not Chariklo! You almost never hear about this baby. I'd love to see a mission fly close enough to properly photograph it in my lifetime, but it's super rare to send something out that far and it would probably have to pass up on much more important science objectives in order to swing by such a tiny backwater dwarf planet. Supposedly the rings have been confirmed by stellar occultation, which is cool because it's super small for such clear rings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10199_Chariklo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10199_Chariklo I want to stand on the surface and look up for a while. See also Chiron and Haumea.

RobotCaleb 8y ago
Fund my team and we'll go get pictures of it.

8bitsrule 8y ago

Today Wikipedia has 82 articles with Uranus in the title. Something is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=intitle%3A%22Uranus%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&se...