
Why Is Uranus the Only Planet Without Interesting Features on It? - mweibel
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/22/why-is-uranus-the-only-planet-without-interesting-features-on-it
======
NDizzle
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!

~~~
posterboy
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.

~~~
labster
> re-analized

I see what you did there.

I tried to find something relevant to link but Language Log doesn't seem to
have discussed this particular planet.

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julius_set
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
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...)

~~~
NelsonMinar
HN users feel no requirement to read an article before commenting on it.

~~~
jgamman
>2 sentences? i don't even bother finishing the entire comment either.

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

~~~
andyjohnson0
> 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
That's not a paradox, it's not the number that's interesting, but a sentence
about it.

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vertexFarm
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
Fund my team and we'll go get pictures of it.

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tabtab
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.)

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8bitsrule
Today Wikipedia has 82 articles with Uranus in the title. _Something_ is
interesting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=intitle%3A%22Uranus%22)

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SiempreViernes
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.

~~~
scrumper
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.

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booleandilemma
Does that make it interesting?

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

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

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

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pidu87
All the ads crashed my browser. How can you even read this?

~~~
farresito
Here you go, buddy:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-
origin...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/)

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dvtrn
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.

