okay now last thing I want to say about these planets let's talk about the Rings do these planets have rings yes you can see it right here however do you see a rings in this picture or this picture do you see rings in any of these pictures I've been showing you right here on these planets no we don't we don't see rings that doesn't mean they aren't there it just means they're hard to see what other planet had it hard to see rings what other planet had rings but it was very difficult for us to see it Jupiter Jupiter that's correct let's see if we can figure this out though why were the rings of Jupiter hard to see they didn't have ice right so Jupiter's rings were made out of only rocky material because it was too warm where Jupiter was for ice deform in the Rings right so is that the reason that these rings are hard to see would it make sense that it's too warm for ice around Uranus and Neptune do we expect these to be only rock no it's even colder so the rings of Uranus and Neptune should be made out of ice but they're hard to see that seems like a contradiction because ice should be reflective and it should be easy to see sunlight bouncing off of it what it is what it means is the rings of Uranus and Neptune are made of a different kind of ice they're so far away from the Sun that it's cold enough remember for methane to turn into ice so the rings of Uranus and Neptune are made of methane ice but that's not the whole explanation for this because it seems like I just got done saying that we can see these clouds here because they're reflecting sunlight so I seem like I'm contradicting myself a lot right here but I'm not because it turns out that something else is happening to that ice something a little bit complicated but I'm gonna explain it right now check this out the ice and the rings of all the planets is being exposed to the Sun basically all the time and what the Sun slowly does is it destroys the material of that ice very slowly and if you've got water ice like Saturn's rings are mostly made out of what's water what's water made out of if we were to break water what two substances would we have if we broke the water if we broke the actual molecules of the water that's right hydrogen and oxygen water is h2o meaning it's made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom so if you let sun sunlight break down h2o it forms two gases and those gases are just lost to space and so what you have is just a piece of ice that slowly shrinks over time okay but it's gonna look the same all that time because anything that's broken just leaves but methane is not h2o okay methane instead of being made of hydrogen and oxygen is made out of carbon and oxygen so when the sunlight starts to break down this methane ice it breaks into carbon and oxygen the oxygen is a gas so it flies away but carbon is typically a solid in these conditions so the carbon is left behind on the surface of the ice if you leave it in the sunlight for long enough and does anybody know what color carbon is what color is carbon most of the time somebody's asking if it if methane is ch4 that is correct carbon hydrogen for what color is carbon most of the time it's black carbon is black right and if you having a hard time picturing it if you're writing with a pencil that thing we call pencil led that's not made out of land anymore it hasn't been made out of lead for decades because kids were eating it eating pencil lead and that's not good for your brain so we decided to make pencil lead out of carbon so that stuff in your pencil and the stuff that coal is made out of that's what carbon typically looks like most of the time so if you have a piece of carbon sorry of methane ice and you leave it in the Sun for you know thousands of years the Sun will slowly break down the surface of that ice and leave carbon on it which makes it so that the ice can't reflect sunlight anymore and turns black so the correct way to say this is that the rings of Uranus and Neptune are made of carbonized methane ice okay carbonized methane ice so it would be reflective we would be able to see the rings of Uranus and Neptune if we went out and cleaned the ice but the ice is dirty because the Sun is breaking it down and leaving carbon on the surface that doesn't happen to these clouds because these clouds are circulating into the atmosphere they get out of the sunlight before they that that carbon can break down does that make sense so but that but the Rings are stuck in the Sun all the time so that's that that's happened to them all right last thing I want to say and then I'm gonna let you guys go one thing this last bit is Neptune only when we've been looking at the rings of Neptune and let me show you an actual picture here these are enhanced pictures using infrared so you can see these rings a little bit better the rings of Neptune have we discovered them only about 40 years ago and during that entire time they've been disappearing and they've been disappearing so fast that maybe they will be gone in about a hundred years Neptune is losing its rings it seems to be losing its rings and we do not know why that is happening it doesn't seem to be happening to the other planets but it is happening to Neptune that said it is possible that this might be a seasonal effect for example maybe they're just partially melting away right now and maybe they could come back in another season I'm not saying that that is the answer here but would it make sense if Neptune's been losing its rings for 40 years could that be a seasonal thing does that make sense seems like it doesn't make sense right if it's been losing those rings for 40 years it really doesn't seem like it could be a seasonal effect but yes somebody pointed out though you're thinking about Earth years the years of Neptune Neptune's further out from the Sun so what does that do to its years well how long are the years of Neptune what's gonna happen to those years yeah because the orbit of Neptune is larger and because it feels less gravity from the Sun it moves much slower and those years are going to be very long and how long is a year on Neptune a hundred and sixty-five years a year on Neptune is a hundred and sixty-five earth years so if we divided that into four four four seasons if you divide roughly 160 by four you get 40 years because 40 times four is about a hundred sixty which is just a little bit less than the nei Neptune year so the seasons on Neptune would be about 40 years long so we've only been watching the rings of Neptune for one Neptune seasons length of time so if this is a seasonal effect we've got to watch for another 120 years to figure that out does that make sense actually even fun fact we actually haven't known about Neptune for a hundred and sixty-five years so what does that mean we have never seen Neptune ever do yet what did what do we have never seen Neptune do yet yep we've never seen Neptune complete a full orbit we can tell it's going to because it's tracing out that ellipse we know it's going to complete in orbit but we have never actually seen it fully happen so that's that's kind of cool to me anyway that's all I have to say about these planets Uranus and Neptune both have a whole ton of moons but I'm not going to be talking about them today