[ohwellhere]

My 9 year old daughter told me last week that Uranus had rings, and I told her I really didn't think so, are you thinking of Saturn? And she said nope, they both do. What a weird bit of knowledge to get wrong, even at 9, so I looked it up. She was delighted to have taught me something.

[jinushaun]

That’s crazy to hear. To me, after Saturn, Uranus is the most famous planet with rings because it’s vertical instead of horizontal. That’s the defining feature of Uranus.

[onetimeuse92304]

The defining feature of Uranus is that its axis of rotation is at almost right angle to the axis of rotation of Solar system.

The rings just conform to that axis of rotation along with moons and such.

Also, rings are thought to be relatively recent feature of Uranus (on the order of hundreds of millions of years).

[ykonstant]

For me it is precisely because I always had in mind the "featureless blue sphere" picture in mind, and never bothered to look deeper. Goes to show how important images are in the public sphere.

[User23]

To me, after Saturn, Uranus is the most famous planet with rings because of toilet humor.

As an aside, either get or borrow a decent telescope and see the rings of Saturn and the Galilean Moons for yourself. It’s a really neat experience and gives you a direct personal shared experience with the birth of modern astronomy.

[dustincoates]

It's exactly why Uranus was my favorite planet growing up. It was such an outlier, which, if I dig farther into my psyche, probably aligned well with my self view as the only kid in my class who geeked out on space.

[tnel77]

Whenever my children teach me something, it makes us so happy. They, for teaching their dad. Me, for learning something from such a special little person. It’s just the best.

[nate]

This is my favorite part of my day. Yesterday we were just having dinner talking about god knows what when my 9 year old drops something into convo about The Homestead Act and how many acres you could by and how they had to be developed and all these bullet points about it I haven't retained when I may have read about it so many years ago. It was delightful.

Now, there was also the part about her thinking the Mexican–American War was in 1989. Which is Taylor Swift's birthday, her favorite artist. Which is hilarious on so many levels.

[mykowebhn]

Neptune has rings as well, as does Jupiter.

[manicennui]

I highly recommend checking out what we learned about Saturn's rings from Cassini. One example: https://science.nasa.gov/resource/the-tallest-peaks-2/

[EdwardDiego]

Woah, that's amazing.

[divbzero]

Yes, all four gas giants in our Solar System have rings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_system#Ring_systems_of_pl...

[antognini]

They are very faint and difficult to detect. They weren't even observed directly when they were discovered. They were originally discovered when astronomers noticed that they occulted light of background stats.

[Log_out_]

Occluded

[matthoiland]

My daughter said there are 5 oceans ... I said she was wrong, then we looked at a modern map. Who forgot to send out the memo about the Southern Ocean?

[blindriver]

My kid, after watching some YouTube videos on prehistoric man, told me that the theory of the Missing Link was wrong.

I was like, “Wait, what? When did that happen?” Apparently it was disproven for decades and I never knew. I felt like the old people who held onto their old beliefs that I felt such disdain for. He also went on to tell me that the brontosaurus didn’t exist either and I had enough.

[wholinator2]

I don't know but if you find out could you put me on the mailing list? Or i guess i could have a child but one of those seems a lot easier.

In all honesty, is there any place where i can view the curriculum that children in my area are being taught? They don't tell us about those changes but they might put it somewhere. I, for one, think the news should do something useful and teach us the updates from time to time. Could you imagine if all that politicking was instead useful scientific information?

[patwolf]

Same. That to me felt more shocking than losing Pluto as a planet.

[z3phyr]

Neptune also has a ring.

Jupiter also has ring, but it is not apparent.

[Pxtl]

Actually all 4 gas giants have rings, they're just much smaller and less visible than Saturn's. Jupiter and Neptune's rings are very slight, compared to Uranus' substantial ones and of course Saturn's gaudy decoration.

[alexchamberlain]

Next she'll tell you that Pluto isn't a planet and there are at least 5 other dinosaurs than T-Rex, diplodocus and raptor...

In all seriousness, it's really quite interesting to see what has changed in 30 years.