On This Day in History: March 13

Uranus is discovered

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Uranus contains a lot of gas. Uranus is gigantic, but Uranus is not a gas giant. Uranus is an ice giant, because Uranus is fucking cold.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: March 13, 1781--

Uranus is hostile to human life. Uranus was named after a primordial Greek deity, who was both son and husband (ew) to Gaia, another primordial deity, who personifies Earth. Uranus and Gaia had sex and popped out lots of kids, three of whom were the one-eyed cyclopes, which should teach Uranus a lesson about the perils of incest.

Uranus has an assload of moons—27 known ones—a lot of them named for Shakespearean characters such as Miranda, Oberon, Ariel, and Titania. Uranus also has rings, but they are difficult to see because Uranus’s rings are composed of extremely dark particles. Uranus’s rings are quite narrow and very young, cosmically speaking. Continues below …

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Uranus blows, with wind speeds reaching over 500 miles per hour.

Uranus was first thought to be a star, possibly observed by Greek astronomer Hipparchos in 128 BCE. Uranus was definitively observed by others several times in the 18th century, but it was Sir William Herschel who is credited with discovering Uranus on March 13, 1781, observing Uranus from his house in Bath, England, using a homemade telescope. At first, Herschel thought Uranus was a comet.

Uranus is heavy, weighing over 14 times that of Earth. Uranus is also big, being 63 times the volume of Earth. Uranus has gravity, 0.886 that of Earth.

Uranus is sideways, with an axial tilt that is almost parallel to the ecliptic plane. Uranus has a rocky and icy core. Uranus generates a magnetic field because Uranus has an active interior.

Uranus is lonely, having only been visited by Voyager 2 in 1986. Voyager 2 took pictures of Uranus, but there wasn’t much to see, because Uranus is featureless.

Some prefer to pronounce Uranus as “urine-us;” those people piss me off.

Uranus has different names in other languages, with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages translating to it to “sky king star.” Uranus has an 84-year orbit. Uranus is not very dense. Uranus gives off very little heat. A hypothesis is that long ago something massive smashed hard into Uranus, causing it to expel most of its primordial heat. That is the third time I’ve used the word “primordial” in this piece about Uranus. The hard pounding Uranus took may also explain its significant axial tilt.

In 2017 the Hubble Telescope saw something massive coming out of Uranus.

Uranus has no well-defined solid surface.

Rule 34 proclaims that because Uranus exists, the internet contains videos of someone having sex with Uranus.

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