Learn about rain on other planets; why Americans used to not use forks; and whether sleep or exercise is more important. What is rain like on other planets? by Cameron Duke Dhingra, R. D., Barnes, J. W., Brown, R. H., Burrati, B. J., Sotin, C., Nicholson, P. D., Baines, K. H., Clark, R. N., Soderblom, J. M., Jauman, R., Rodriguez, S., Mouélic, S. L., Turtle, E. P., Perry, J. E., Cottini, V., & Jennings, D. E. (2019). Observational Evidence for Summer Rainfall at Titan’s North Pole. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(3), 1205–1212. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gl080943 https://jpl.nasa.gov. (2012, September 11). NASA Observations Point to “Dry Ice” Snowfall on Mars. Nasa.gov. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-observations-point-to-dry-ice-snowfall-on-mars Kerr, R. A. (1999). PLANETARY SCIENCE:Neptune May Crush Methane Into Diamonds. Science, 286(5437), 25a25. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.286.5437.25a Loftus, K., & Wordsworth, R. D. (2021). The Physics of Falling Raindrops in Diverse Planetary Atmospheres. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 126(4). https://doi.org/10.1029/2020je006653 Tomaswick, A. (2021). Fascinating Infograph Shows What Rain Is Like Elsewhere in The Solar System. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/this-graph-shows-what-raindrops-would-be-like-on-other-worlds Additional resources from Jason Feifer: Build for Tomorrow podcast: https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/ Website: https://www.jasonfeifer.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/heyfeifer Sleep vs. Exercise: Which Is More Important? originally aired September 23, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/sleep-vs-exercise-milky-way-pictures-military-meth Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn about rain on other planets; why Americans used to not use forks; and whether sleep or exercise is more important.
What is rain like on other planets? by Cameron Duke
Additional resources from Jason Feifer:
Sleep vs. Exercise: Which Is More Important? originally aired September 23, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/sleep-vs-exercise-milky-way-pictures-military-meth
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-rain-is-like-on-other-planets
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about what rain is like on other planets; why it took Americans a long time to start using forks, with help from Jason Feifer; and whether it’s more important to sleep or exercise.
CODY: Let’s exercise some curiosity.
Earth is a special place, and the fact that it rains liquid water here is a big part of that. Just because Earth is the only planet with abundant water, doesn’t mean it is the only place where it rains. Rain is more common in the solar system than you might think — although, sometimes it looks a bit different. Let’s talk about how.
Most worlds in our solar system have precipitation, and they don’t let their lack of water get in the way. Take Venus, which gives the phrase “acid rain” a whole new meaning. There, sulfuric acid condenses in the clouds and falls down as rain. But because Venus is so hot, this rain never reaches the surface. Instead, it evaporates in the intense heat of the lower atmosphere.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has seasons that come with rain. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spotted liquid methane raining on Titan’s North Pole when it passed by. The weird thing is that clouds don’t form on Titan, so the jury’s still out on how exactly methane cycles work on the massive moon.
Mars is known to have water, but the water we know about is frozen. So instead, it snows frozen carbon dioxide — also known as dry ice. Scientists know this because instruments on the satellite known as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter first detected clouds of the stuff that extended all the way to the surface way back in 2012.
But those planets have nothing on Neptune and Uranus. It rains diamonds on these planets...probably. We don’t know for sure because we can’t directly detect it. See, both planets are gas giants, meaning the planets themselves are giant rocks covered in a thick soup of methane and other gases tens of thousands of kilometers thick. Experiments on Earth have shown that when methane is compressed at the crushing pressures found about 7,000 kilometers beneath the surface of those dense gases, methane is compressed into diamonds. This means that diamonds might form and hurtle toward the surface like hailstones. Theoretically.
The weird thing is that raindrops on other planets are probably around the same size as those on Earth — one to four millimeters or so. That’s because no matter the material, raindrops smaller than one-tenth of a millimeter in diameter tend to evaporate in the high atmosphere, while much larger drops tend to break apart. This all makes rain a surprisingly uniform size. While raindrops are probably bigger on planets with weaker gravity, it’s likely not by much: only about 10 to 20 millimeters, or around the size of an aspirin.
So there are similarities all over the solar system. Other planets — they’re just like us!
From soccer to the metric system, Americans have a long history of brushing off anything they see as European. Would you believe that the fork is one of those things? We learned about this from today’s guest, Jason Feifer. He’s the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and the host of Build for Tomorrow: a podcast about the curious things from history that shaped us, and how we can shape the future. He told us that while the fork had a long, difficult journey to adoption in Europe, that was nothing compared to its challenge in the United States. Here's Jason.
[CLIP 4:30]
I will never look at oyster forks the same way again. For more stories like this, check out Jason Feifer’s podcast, Build for Tomorrow. We’ll include a link in today’s show notes.
Sleep and exercise are both important, but is one of them MORE important? Here’s a story we remastered from 2018 to help you find out.
[ASHLEY: clip 1:55]
Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: The writer for today’s first story was Cameron Duke.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: You can take today’s episode and stick a fork in it! Cause we’re done! So join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!