loadingreadyrun.com

Kathleen brings her love of trivia to the LRRcast, testing the wits of Paul and Alex.

The way the 'Which planet isnt named from a greek/roman diety' question was posed got me thinking.

Not counting Earth, out of the remaining 7 planets' names:

Only one is a female diety.
Only one is not a roman diety.
Only one is not technically a god.

I think? : )

No wait, the 'technically a god' one is incorrect.

Bush was always going on about how he was proud to be a merkin. Seemed appropriate.

(It's pronounced Kaiper. Those crazy Dutch, right?)

The only one I got that Alex and Paul didn't was the Apple net worth question.

New podcast format HYPE!

(EDIT: This was written before Graham's interjection.)

Voyager 2 did not crash into anything. It's heading out of the solar system as well, but lagging slightly behind Voyager 1 (which was actually launched second, but ended up going faster and overtaking Voyager 2). There's also Pioneer 10 and 11, which were launched prior to the Voyager probes, similarly heading out of the solar system (though we've lost contact with both of them, unlike the Voyager probes which are still operational); and New Horizons, which is currently on approach to Pluto (the first spacecraft to do a flyby of Pluto, launched in 2005 when Pluto was still considered a planet) and will then continue out of the solar system.

Sojourner was the first successful mars rover (landing in 1997), while the Mars Climate Orbiter was the one that crashed into Mars in 1999 due Lockheed-supplied software producing units in non-SI units, while NASA-supplied software expected those units to be SI (the result was that the Orbiter's trajectory took it within 57km of Mars, instead of the planned 226km, causing it to break up in the Martian atmosphere).

Many probes have crashed into various planets and moons, usually intentionally. It's often done at the end of of a probe's mission for seismic testing, or to avoid unintentional contamination (Galileo, for example, was deorbited into Jupiter to avoid the possibility of it crashing into one of Jupiter's moons and contaminate it with Earth bacteria).

Zaz wrote:Not counting Earth, out of the remaining 7 planets' names:
[...]
Only one is not a roman diety.

Huh? All of them are roman deities, or, more precisely, the roman names of the greek/roman gods.

Or, even more precisely, the roman names of the mediterranean/european deities of the early historical times, which we know mostly from the myths written by the greeks and romans.

Yes, I'm reading Robert Graves' "The greek myths", why do you ask?

It's possible the probe you were thinking of that "crashed" into a planet was Beagle 2 (a British spacecraft) rather than Voyager 2. In actual fact its fate and location were unknown and was believed to have crashed until very recently, when images of its landing site were discovered by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in January 2015 showing the lander intact but only partially deployed.

romangoro wrote:

Zaz wrote:Not counting Earth, out of the remaining 7 planets' names:
[...]
Only one is not a roman diety.

Huh? All of them are roman deities, or, more precisely, the roman names of the greek/roman gods.

Or, even more precisely, the roman names of the mediterranean/european deities of the early historical times, which we know mostly from the myths written by the greeks and romans.

Yes, I'm reading Robert Graves' "The greek myths", why do you ask?

As I recall, Uranus is a Greek rather than Roman name. No idea why.

My pseudonym is Ix wrote:

romangoro wrote:

Zaz wrote:Not counting Earth, out of the remaining 7 planets' names:
[...]
Only one is not a roman diety.

Huh? All of them are roman deities, or, more precisely, the roman names of the greek/roman gods.

Or, even more precisely, the roman names of the mediterranean/european deities of the early historical times, which we know mostly from the myths written by the greeks and romans.

Yes, I'm reading Robert Graves' "The greek myths", why do you ask?

As I recall, Uranus is a Greek rather than Roman name. No idea why.

Close, but incorrect. Two of the planets are named after the Titans (basically super gods that came before the Greek/Roman Pantheon, and are its progenitors). Those being Saturn (the Roman name for Kronos, father of the major Pantheon), and Uranus (Roman for Ouranos, the Father of Kronos), although the Romans also called Uranus by the name Caelus.

Apparently the probe I was thinking of was the Mars Climate Orbiter
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
Which crashed in 1999 due to an imperial -> metric conversion error. For some reason, I thought it was more recent (maybe I just heard about it recently)

My pseudonym is Ix wrote:

romangoro wrote:

Zaz wrote:Not counting Earth, out of the remaining 7 planets' names:
[...]
Only one is not a roman diety.

Huh? All of them are roman deities, or, more precisely, the roman names of the greek/roman gods.

Or, even more precisely, the roman names of the mediterranean/european deities of the early historical times, which we know mostly from the myths written by the greeks and romans.

Yes, I'm reading Robert Graves' "The greek myths", why do you ask?

As I recall, Uranus is a Greek rather than Roman name. No idea why.

Woops, my pedantic bad, Uranus is indeed a greek name.

Titans not being gods is more debatable, they were defeated gods, i.e. the gods of the original populations that were conquered by the various flavours of greek tribes, but their cult wasn't completely supressed in classical times.

The fact that they immediately wrote Craigslist off as the answer infuriated me, because that was one that I really confidently knew. This is why I listen in my car, so other people don't hear me talking to the radio...

Yeah, yeah, whatever it's pedantic, but this is the pronunciation for Kuiper Belt.

http://visual.merriam-webster.com/sounds/astronomy/celestial-bodies/solar-system/26020.aif

I was surprised there was any doubt about the Harry Potter question, I was/am so into those books. I was certain the probe was Voyager 2, but oh well.

I always get Voyager 1/2 mixed up. Voyager 2 launching first didn't help.

I stayed at the hostel part of the ocean island inn.

Best hostel in Victoria.
.......I really miss BC beers.

Dedwrekka wrote:Yeah, yeah, whatever it's pedantic, but this is the pronunciation for Kuiper Belt.

http://visual.merriam-webster.com/sounds/astronomy/celestial-bodies/solar-system/26020.aif

Yeah, I was screaming that at the screen every time she said it...

Great idea for a LR cast! I love trivia. It turns out I know a lot more about Henry VIII's marital life and Hogwarts than I do about current events and penises.

I guess I was thinking internal rather than external on the butt question because my thought was Rectum Anal Canal and Sphincter/Anus which are the last three portions of the digestive tract.

Also I think Paul was thinking of Xena/Planet X now known as Eris which is the largest dwarf planets but is not in the Kuiper belt.

Master Gunner wrote:I always get Voyager 1/2 mixed up. Voyager 2 launching first didn't help.

Yeah, we got the Voyagers mixed up as well.

It was a little weird listening to this after participating in the quiz with these questions the week before. I felt bad for my team not acing the Solar system round but is not my area of expertise but we did end up winning the quiz. We also did not get the Kuiper belt bonus question as we though Sedna is a Kuiper belt object when it is not - it is thought to be a member of the inner Oort cloud and it is only a minor planet candidate.

Playing along at home, I remembered Sedna had a highly eccentric orbit and its classification was still up in the air, so I went with Eris for that question. I'd heard of Haumea and Makemake before, but only a couple times - they don't quite have the hype of other outer-body objects.