On Saturday, December 22, 2018 at 10:43:57 AM UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 20:38:42 -0800 (PST), Scott Kozel
wrote:
On Friday, December 21, 2018 at 11:20:12 PM UTC-5, RichA wrote:
They were re-classified as "ice-giants" instead of "gas-giants" like Saturn and Jupiter. Jupiter and Saturn have atmospheres that become virtually liquid the deeper you go, but this article seems to imply there may be solid surfaces on Uranus and Neptune. This is the first I've read about it.

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-big-sp...-lopsided.html

"Uranus was named for the Greek god of the sky. Its name often generates
juvenile humor when it is wrongly pronounced like a body part. (It's correctly
pronounced YUR'-uh-nus.)"

Then why is the element named after the planet pronounced yur-AIN'-e-um?
Because the most recognized pronunciation for the planet is yur-AIN'-us.

Some scientists were the ones who changed the pronunciation because of the
scatological jokes about it. Unfortunately their pronunciation is worse --
it sounds like "urine".

Which is, of course, why scientists by the year 3000 renamed the
planet. To Urectum.

This blog comment may be the best explanation that I have seen --

"Uranus was changed to "URINE-us" in 1986(? - maybe '85) when one of the space
probes was preparing to do it's fly-by. Newscasters around the country realized
that three weeks of "your-anus" would never work, especially when also tossing
in the reference to a "deep space probe". The pronounciation change was
justified with the Latin pronounciation information. I blame Tom Brokaw."