In a world filled with people being scared of maps, rainbows, school lunches, questions, and all of the LGBTIQA+ community, it’s nice to know that through the madness, there is something that is still constant and reliable, which is the poor quality of these blog posts.
If you thought the worst tour in the Solar System was over, think again! It’s making a comeback, just like the rise of fascism in the 21st century. Yes, Some Geek Told Me’s Tour of the Solar System is back for its 20th entry.
For the previous entries, please do yourself a favour and check them out. Or not. It’s not like the formula for winning the lottery or the unified field theory is hidden inside them. Or are they?
1.) Meet the Family
2.) The Sun
4.) Mercury
5.) Venus
7.) The Moon
8.) Mars
10.) Ceres
11.) Jupiter
12.) The Galilean moons
13.) Saturn
14.) Titan
15.) The Moons of Saturn
16.) Uranus
17.) Titania
18.) The Moons of Uranus
19.) The Literary Moons of Uranus
We’ve spent a few months talking about Uranus and its moons; four to be precise, so now it’s time to turn our collective attention to its wayward sibling, Neptune.
As always, the disclaimer for the tour is that there are no refunds, and discounted tickets are not available. Sweet, let’s push on and meet Neptune, just don’t tell Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Brian Cox, or Jocelyn Bell Burnell, because they would point and laugh at me.
We have finally arrived at the final planet in the Solar System, that we know of. Sorry, Pluto. Neptune is the eighth planet from our local star, the Sun, and it is also the fourth largest planet in the Solar System. It’s the fourth Outer Planet or Gas Giant, and formed around the same as Uranus, about 4.5 billion years ago.
As we traverse this entry, you will see that Neptune and Uranus share a lot of similarities, with some people calling them twins; like Venus and Earth. Not identical twins of course, but still fraternal.
Like the other planets we have met, with Earth and Uranus being the exceptions, the name Neptune comes from Roman mythology. The planet is named after Neptune, the god of oceans, and brother to Jupiter and Pluto. If it helps, Neptune is the Greek equivalent of Poseidon.
Like its twin, Neptune was discovered through mathematical prediction, but also observations of Uranus. Its discovery was built on many different astronomers’ work, because even in 1612 and 1613, Galileo observed and recorded Neptune as a fixed star, while he surveyed space with his small telescope.
However, over the night of 23rd-24th September 1846, Neptune was officially discovered by three astronomers, Johann Galle, Urbain Le Verrier, and John Couch Adams. It only took about three months for the name of Neptune to stick with the press, and the rest, just like the Concorde, is history.
Since Neptune is a gas giant, you would expect it to be larger than the home planet of Salt and Vinegar chips, and you would be correct. Neptune has a diameter of about 49,528 km, which means you could fit 57 Earths inside it. Hopefully, there would still be some Earths left in the multiverse after that rearrangement.
Speaking of Earth, we share something in common with our older, bigger sibling. Not only do we like the colour blue, but we both have an elliptical orbit. Actually, to be fair, all eight planets have one. At its perihelion, which is its closest point to the Sun, the distance is 4.46 billion km, with its aphelion is 4.54 billion km, which works out to be an average orbital distance of 4.5 billion km, along with an average orbital speed of 5.43 km/s. That’s an impressive speed, though it’s still slower than The Flash.
Because of Neptune’s massive distance from the Sun, it roughly takes 4 hours and 12 minutes for sunlight to reach the planet. That is the same length of time as Blade Runner and Uncut Gems combined, as a reference.
Neptune’s rotation is on a whole new level of awesome. The length of time that it takes Neptune to complete one rotation on its axis, which equals one day, is about 16 hours, measured by Earth’s standards. However, one year on Neptune, which is the time it takes to complete one single orbit of the Sun; just one orbit, takes about 165 Earth years.
For context, and roughly speaking, the last time Neptune was in its present location in time and space, when this charming blog post was published, the year was 1860. The First Taranaki War in New Zealand, between the British Crown and Māori had started; the chemist, Stanislao Cannizzaro presented his table of atomic weights at the Karlsruhe Congress; and the slave population in the United States was close to 4 million, with the Civil War starting the following year.
Here is a fun fact for people looking for an icebreaker at a singles event. Every 248 Earth years, Pluto has such a batshit crazy orbit, that it brings it inside Neptune’s orbit. This lasts for about 20 years, and the last time it happened was between 1979-1999. That meant from 1979 to 1999, Neptune, not Pluto, was the furthest planet in our Solar System.
Earth’s axial tilt is 23.4°, which is how and why we have the changing of seasons. Neptune has a similar tilt at 28.32°. This means Neptune has seasonal changes like Earth, but instead of seasons lasting three months like us, Neptune’s seasons last over 40 years, because of its 165-year orbit. And you thought your commute to work was long.
As you can imagine, because of its long distance from the Sun, it’s not really the place Wham! could party to Club Tropicana. Neptune’s temperature and atmosphere are like an episode of the Twilight Zone. The average temperature on Neptune is a balmy -200 °C, which is -110.8°C colder than the lowest temperature recorded on Earth, at −89.2 °C; which is still slightly colder than my feet, at any given time during winter.
Neptune’s atmosphere isn’t that much better. It has a mixture of hydrogen, helium, methane, hydrogen deuteride, ethane, ammonia, water ice, and ammonium hydrosulfide; you know, all the stuff that life as we know it hates. Remember that Neptune is a gas giant, and not for its obsession with baked beans.
Neptune’s blue colour comes from the methane in its atmosphere, and scientists have observed a huge, dark spot in its southern atmosphere, quite similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.
The Great Dark Spot is a massive, oval-shaped storm or vortex roughly the size of Earth. However, advancements in technology have allowed scientists to observe that the Great Dark Spot has significantly decreased in size over the years.
If Sauron, the Dark Lord of Middle-Earth, was allowed an expansion pack, he would include Neptune in it. As I have said previously, there are only four planets in the Solar System with rings, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and of course, Neptune. It can’t compete with its siblings over its quantity of rings, but it has five more rings than Earth does.
Some things in this life are worth repeating, but I love scientists and their work. However, their ability to give things cool names, sometimes works out. Starting near Neptune and moving outward, the planet has five rings and four arcs, which include stellar names like Galle, Leverrier, Lassell, Arago, and Adams (rings), with Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, and Courage (arcs).
If you have been keeping up, you would have noticed that Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité, are the motto of the French Revolution and Republic, which means, liberty, equality, and fraternity. You have to love the French though, just not their rugby.
Neptune has moons as well, 16 to be completely accurate, although there could be more to be discovered. Triton is by far the largest moon, with all of them being named after characters in Greek mythology, in some way connected to Poseidon (Neptune).
I’ve shared quite a bit about Neptune already, but there’s one more topic I’d like to discuss: its winds. Neptune is the windiest planet in the Solar System, with winds that are three times stronger than those on Jupiter and nine times stronger than those on Earth.
They can reach speeds of over 2,000 km/h, which is supersonic, meaning the winds are travelling faster than the speed of sound, which is 1,235 km/h. Imagine clouds of frozen methane being whipped around the planet faster than the speed of sound. The fastest wind speed ever recorded on Earth was 408 km/h. These are mind-crushing numbers.
There’s more to talk about Neptune, but like I said, I’ve shared enough today. What is your favourite fact about Neptune? As always, please let me know.
Thanks again for reading, following, and subscribing to Some Geek Told Me. I’m still hanging out on Twitter and Mastodon, posting daily facts about things that interest me, and some things that don’t.
Please don’t forget to walk your dog, read a banned book, continue to tell Nazis to fuck off, and I’ll see you next week.
Slava Ukraini!
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