I've always found the planets a bit boring because they just seemed like a set of odd facts that needed explaining. A bit like the classification of animals. But Brian Cox's TV programmes are sucking me in.
Having been asked by year 10, I have been reading up on Jupiter. Can you stand on the planet? I'd never really stopped to think about its "gas giant" status. It's not all as simple as gas apparently. Although mainly hygrogen and helium (the colours are traces of other gases), the intense pressure towards its core turns the hydrogen into "metallic hydrogen". I'm just getting to grips with what this is. I'm assuming it must conduct due to delocalised electrons to earn its name. Look it up on the Internet
On last week's programme, Brian Cox looked at the rings of Saturn. Apparently a larger outer moon does one orbit in the time it takes a smaller object within the rings to do two orbits. This means that once every two circuits, the inner object gets an extra gravitational kick. By going faster it moves to a different orbit, thus leaving a clear track within the rings.
