a star let's talk about Uranus and Neptune okay and again I'm gonna talk about these two planets together because they are very similar to each other all right so and they I don't need to say nearly as much about these planets because we don't know as much about these planets because they're way out on the outer edge we haven't studied them nearly as closely as as Jupiter and Saturn right here okay so first up let's talk about what they have in common what do they have in common what what could what's some things you can say are true about both of these planets what's similar here yep they're both the same size that's correct and they are both blue okay okay they are similar in size and they are both blue let me show you some closer up pictures of them them give me out of the way here we go here's a picture of Uranus here's a picture of Neptune they're not exactly the same color but they're both blueish but just like Jupiter and Saturn these atmospheres are mostly made out of hydrogen and helium which are colorless so that means even though these atmospheres are mostly made of hydrogen and helium there must be something else mixed in to give them this blue color can you guys figure out what these planets have in their atmosphere that turns them this blue color methane that is correct so the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune are give or take roughly 5% methane so there's a whole ton of methane in Neptune and and this makes me extremely excited to say here we go here we go Uranus is full of methane yay there's lots of methane in Uranus Uranus is full of farts hooray I'm a happy boy all right hopefully that'll help you remember it um that said um a lot of people including me I used to think that that meant that Uranus and methane smell like farts but that's not actually true because methane itself is actually odorless it's the other stuff in your farts that actually make them smell like farts so I can't say Uranus smells like farts it's just full of the main fart gas yay all right now here we go let's take a look inside the insides of these planets are almost identical uh there we go uh ignored this was what we talked about last time Jupiter and Saturn here let me see if I can make this a little bit bigger blow that up a little bit uh there we go okay sorry I'm getting a little bit of technical difficulties here okay so let's take check this out if we look at this the layers inside there's only three layers and the very very very middle one let's call the rocky core so these guys in the very center is the rocky core I don't really need to say too much more about that it's the same rocky core that Jupiter and Saturn head it's the same kind of material that the earth is made out of so lots of iron and still kids but again under a lot more pressure than they are on earth so it's probably mostly solid if not all solid probably all solid on top of that this sort of greenish blue area that their labeling that is an ocean but unlike on Jupiter and Saturn which had oceans made of liquid hydrogen and helium the oceans on Uranus and Neptune are made out of water with ammonia so these are much more similar to the oceans on earth but a few other materials there's a little bit of methane in there too but it's mainly water with ammonia so it's essentially very similar to industrial cleaning fluid so you wouldn't want to go swimming in it because ammonia is kind of caustic you don't want to hang out in there and then on top of that this top layer is just the atmosphere okay so again going through we've got a solid rocky core a liquid water and ammonia ocean and an atmosphere mostly made out of hydrogen and helium but with a little bit of methane that goes a long way to making that color blue okay and the layers of Neptune are the exactly the same now Uranus and Neptune both have magnetic fields can you figure out which layer is making the magnetic field here it needs to be liquid and it needs to be able to conduct electricity what is making the magnetic field of Uranus and Neptune which layer now the core can't be making it because the core is probably almost entirely solid so the entire core of Uranus and Neptune unlike on earth is under so much pressure that it should be basically all solid so there needs to be some other liquid there that can conduct electricity and you might be overthinking it it's the ocean the ocean is mostly made out of water and water can conduct electricity okay so the water in the ocean here there's so much ocean and it's spinning fast enough that it actually causes electricity to flow in that ocean at basically all times and that gets a magnetic field forming okay one weird thing though that I should point out both of these planets their magnetic field is very very crooked okay it doesn't line up with their actual poles right so on earth our magnetic field is slightly off from our poles like if that was our North and South Pole our magnetic field is a little bit crooked on Uranus and Neptune their magnetic field is almost ninety degrees off of their actual poles it actually points along their equator give or take so they're very very very crooked and we are not sure why they are a crooked one possible answer is that maybe these magnetic fields are both in the process of flipping because remember our magnetic field flips every once in a while but we're not sure that that's what's going on and additionally another in fact what I think is the coolest possible answer for that is that it seems like the conditions on these planets are right that mixed into those oceans might be those oceans that are mostly water and ammonia and methane there might be a layer of what they call liquid diamond a layer of liquid diamond might exist in these oceans what exactly does that mean I have actually not 100% sure this is a very cutting edge research that'sthat's discovered the conditions for this liquid diamond to exist but the way that I understand it is imagine that if you took a bunch of diamonds and melted it and it was right at the melting point so that as it flowed along there were constantly diamonds like solid diamonds forming and melting all in that liquid essentially what they're saying is that there might be diamond icebergs floating around in the oceans of Uranus and Neptune that said we're not sure on that that's sort of that's unconfirmed at this point but it seems pretty exciting I hope people continue to research that and tell me about that because I would love to think of the of being able to take a submarine around some liquid I mean you probably wouldn't want to because the pressure would kill you but it would be kind of cool to think of somebody swimming in diamonds it's kind of cool to me but the reason I'm bringing that up is that the the diamonds might kind of affect the magnetic field in a way that causes it to get out of whack and so that might be what's going on but again we don't know why these magnetic fields are so messed up okay now so let's take a look on the part of these planets we can see here's Uranus do you see a lot of detail do you see a lot of clouds and stripes and spots like we see on Jupiter and Saturn lots of detail here in this picture nope not a lot of detail it's pretty plain yeah it's pretty plain if we look at Neptune you could see a little bit of detail here but still not nearly as much detail as on Jupiter and Saturn but don't let these pictures trick you these pictures make it look like there's not a lot of clouds and storms and turbulence but there is there's probably tons of it just like on Jupiter and Saturn it's just much harder to see and this will make sense if we think back to Jupiter and Saturn because remember Jupiter had a lot of detail we could see but Saturn's detail was harder to see because Saturn had less gravity than Jupiter which made it so it couldn't compress its cloud layers tightly together and so less of that detail was visible from space it was lost deeper down in the atmosphere so if Saturn had less detail visible than Jupiter because having less gravity meant it's clouds were less tightly pressed together why would Uranus and Neptune have even less detail visible than even Saturn what must be going on why do Uranus and Neptune have less detail visible yes yes I think you guys are getting it even less gravity okay even less gravity so the remember Jupiter the reason we can see all the detail is those cloud layers are pressed tightly together so enough of that detail is close to the top of the atmosphere to see on Saturn with less gravity the clouds are spread even spread more out so less of the detail is visible from space and on Uranus and Neptune which are even smaller they have even less mass so they have even less gravity so those cloud layers are spread even more out and so basically the detail is there it's just so deep in the atmosphere you can't see it from space very well neptune you can see slightly better and if you notice if you look in real close here you can see on Neptune faint stripes going across like the zones and belts on Saturn and Jupiter we don't call them zones and belts here because they're not nearly as visible and in fact if we take a very enhanced picture of Uranus with other types of light that are invisible to the human eye remember like radio can penetrate deeper into clouds if we do that we get a picture like this this one's actually using infrared light to penetrate deeper in the clouds here's a picture of Uranus and we can see those stripes and some storms okay and this actually leads us to something super important about Uranus those stripes are vertical in all of the pictures of Uranus what does that tell us about Uranus what's weird about Uranus if all of the other planets have stripes going this way but Uranus has stripes going this way what does that tell us about this planet yes yes this planet is completely tilted on its side okay you know the earth is tilted twenty-three and a half degrees Uranus is the most tilted planet it's completely tilted on its side so it actually rotates like this instead of like this okay so it's Equator is is right here going down and the poles are here and here so it's the most tilted planet okay now let me show you back up that picture of Neptune again so we can figure out what the clouds are made out of the clouds of Uranus and Neptune are made of the same things but because it's even colder on these planets than on Jupiter and Saturn these clouds can be made out of different things so there probably are some water clouds so deep in the atmosphere of these planets that we can't see them from space but these clouds that we can actually see here or something else there methane okay which is not a big surprise Uranus and Neptune are the methane planets right so what's going on here because what color did I say net methane was I said it's blue but these clouds are white so can you tell what's happened to this methane to make it so it looks white instead what's happened to the methane in these clouds keep in mind it's very cold what's happened to this methane it got colder so cold that it froze this is frozen methane ice so if you look back where Saturn is Saturn is at a place where it's cold enough to form water ice and dry ice but out here it's cold enough for methane to start turning into ice so remember the methane on Titan was liquid because it was so cold these planets are even further out than Titan was so a lot of this methane at the very top of the atmosphere gets cold enough to actually freeze so these are frozen methane ice clouds they're crystallized frozen methane ice clouds which is not that crazy and here's a close-up picture of one you know frozen clouds that's crazy uh snow clouds our frozen clouds so this is this is like snow clouds but made of methane ice instead of water ice okay and the reason it looks white here is that when you turn into ice you can reflect sunlight very easily so you're getting reflected sunlight off of those frozen ice clouds okay frozen methane ice clouds all right um now I do want to point out another feature this is Neptune right here what they're pointing out right here is a big dark spot here's another picture of it right here it's a big oval and can anybody figure out what it is what is this big dark spot see if we can remember from the other jovian planets what are we dealing with yes that is a storm just like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter and the name for this storm on Neptune is the great dark spot okay and one important thing about that great dark spot is that unlike the great spot this great dark spot is not there anymore so something seems to have broken up this storm it doesn't seem to have broken up in the way that land breaks up a hurricane but it has broken up it's possible the turbulence ended up going against it just right to break it up but we don't know why it disappeared but yes there are storms all over Uranus and Neptune just like just like on the other jovian planets now somebody's asking me if I could explain why these clouds can be frozen but still stay up I don't mean that they're one big solid frozen chunk it's a bunch of little tiny little particle like basically snow particles that individually are very light and so the wind is wind and an air pressure is able to keep it afloat so basically yeah basically like snow clouds on earth okay now all right so again everything that I've said so far applies to both planets except for the slight differences that I pointed out like Uranus is all the way on its side Neptune's not tilted like that and the great dark spot is only on Neptune but Uranus definitely does have its own storms okay those right there are storms that are only visible if you use infrared