Millions of miles away sits a giant gas queen, and here on Earth, the pop girls are noticing and putting a ring on it. Over the span of barely a month, three musicians have released songs that serve as respective odes to Saturn: “Deeper Well,†by Kacey Musgraves; “Saturn,†by SZA; and “Saturn Returns Interlude,†by Ariana Grande. They’re less about the planet’s spectacular atmosphere and more, let’s say, about what its orbit represents in astrological terms. That would be a Saturn return, which is the time it takes for the planet to land in the same spot in the sky when you were born (approximately 29.4 years). Existential crises, professional and personal upheavals, and life changes hit you like a cosmic kick in the ass at the tail end of your third decade of life, so the astrologers say. But what about the academics who actually study this stuff?
Pamela Gay, an astronomer and senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute, has a few ideas about why Saturn became the “It†girl of the music season: “It was really bright last summer, and NASA is doing a good job at popularizing our planets.â€
There’s going to be a contingent of people who dismiss this phenomenon altogether, so let me ask first: What’s the strongest astronomy-based argument that a Saturn return has a legitimate impact on people?
Over the course of our lives, we see pictures of Saturn cropping up in the news. It seems like every summer we’re hearing, Saturn is brighter in the sky. It’s closer to Earth than it is any other time of the year. Getting to see an entire Saturn cycle means that you get to see those rings edge on, which is where they’re headed right now. We get to see the rings arrayed and tilted as much as they ever get tilted. We get to actually watch an entire Saturnian year, including changing storms.
Some people might not be aware of, say, Oh, wow, I’ve never seen Saturn do that before. It occurs throughout their life, but one day it changes. Saturn is doing that thing I remember from when I was a little kid. There’s a certain nostalgia, even for a planet. Since the Hubble Space Telescope went up in 1990, it’s been out there constantly tracking what Saturn looks like each year. Now we’ve seen more than an entire year of Saturn’s life.
Why do you think Saturn takes all of the glory for a return? Is Jupiter or Uranus not as compelling of a disruption to someone’s life?
They’re really not. When we look at Jupiter, it’s always busy. This is the world that has flare for miles and days. With all of those little storms decorating its face — is it bigger or smaller with the great red spot? — Jupiter is always there outperforming with looks. The outer worlds, with Uranus and Neptune, have some storms, but for the most part they’re just big old pale-blue dots. That’s really all we’re going to see when we look at them with our own telescopes.
Now, Saturn? Out there with its rings? It’s changing its appearance from year to year. You can see it even with a small backyard telescope. Galileo could see that with the really terrible telescope he built by hand. There’s something breathtaking about seeing those rings. Most of the year, Saturn is kind of a beige world hanging out and going, I’m beige. But then when the seasons kick in, you get these beautiful white bands and storms spinning up. You can see this world suddenly change with how it appears, how these storms form and literally wrap themselves all the way around this planet.
I want to try to better understand the timeline. Kacey Musgraves sings that “everything started to change†when she turned 27. Is the math correct on that?
Saturn’s year is 29 and a half years, so 29.4 years if you want to get specific. It’s a long cycle. The specifics of when exactly a season starts or stops will not be noticeable to the human eye. For 27 years, it’s not all the way there. But it’s close. It’s like one day in November when you realize, Oh, shoot, the sun just isn’t coming back up and the days are way too short.
Can you be in a Saturn return for nearly a decade? Kacey is 35 now.
All of us like to hang on to the past every now and then. Just like winter, Saturn’s return can only last so long. The rings are going to start changing their tilt again. The only way you miss that Saturn’s return is over is to fail to look. That may just mean Kacey is failing to reflect on how much things have changed.
Ariana Grande repurposed some audio from an astrologer’s YouTube video for her song. I’m curious how an astronomer such as yourself interprets this type of planetary language. Here’s a quote that piqued my interest: “Saturn comes along and hits you over the head and says, ‘Wake up.’ It’s time for you to get real about life and sort out who you really are.†Is this logic you can compute?
Lots of astronomers spend a whole lot of time going: Why do you people follow astrology? It turns out, when we talk to our neuroscientist colleagues, they’ve got answers. The human brain isn’t developed until we’re in our late 20s. The Saturn return corresponds to when people have a fully cognitive development in place, fully have a sense of right and wrong in place, and fully have the ability to deal with things like delayed gratification. That’s when we finally have that ability to look back at life and go, Oh, I did things I regret. There’s a whole lot of coming to terms with ourselves when our brains are developed like that.
It’s not just that you’re seeing Saturn back the way it was. Astrology sometimes accidentally stumbles upon the truth for entirely wrong reasons. Always talk to your collaborators across the hall in other fields. Saturn’s return is one of those random places in astrology where neuroscience has the answer.
SZA’s song focuses a lot on how she should embody the energy of Saturn to be a happier person, and how “there’s got to be more†than what Earth can offer. Kacey also refers to the “dark energy†within people. Strictly from an atmospheric perspective, does Saturn possess something unique compared to the other planets?
Saturn’s atmosphere is this great, big ball of calm, except in the changing seasons, when it’s going from winter to summer. In the spring and fall, things get messy. If I personally could be nice and calm for the entirety of winter and summer, I would consider that an improvement to my personal energy. Maybe we should all aim to be a bit calmer like Saturn is — except it gets there through massive temper tantrums. I guess it’s better to be a little bit off throughout the entire year than saving it all up for the spring and fall.
Do you find any of these songs to be more authentic than the others?
I really liked SZA’s concept of getting ourselves to Saturn as a better place to be, because, let’s face it, all of us are periodically like, I’m done with this planet and ready to be somewhere else. Saturn has these amazing moons that have some of the best potential for life, outside of Earth, within our solar system. Saturn’s atmosphere itself? Not so great. The surface of Titan? That amazing moon has a super-thick atmosphere. It has methane and ethane and seas on its surface. It even has river deltas. It’s a world like Earth. It could be that there’s life out there, looking back at us and wishing it could get to Earth. Although there’s probably only single-cell organisms out there, so there’s not much thinking going on.
SZA also writes about “floating away.†We’re discovering exoplanets all over the universe. We’re waiting for it to make noise and for it to say, Hey, there’s life out here. We don’t know if it will. We have absolutely no idea how common or uncommon life is in this universe. I like that idea of waiting for the universe to make some noise. It’s a cool idea.
One of Kacey’s lyrics is how she’s no longer getting high from her “gravity bong.†What would be the safest and most efficient way to smoke weed in space?
Oh, man. Edibles are the way to go, because the atmospheric filters that you have in space aren’t that great. You can only deal with that skunky smell for so long. Pack yourself up some good gummies and prepare to not smoke.
I find it amusing that three prominent female performers, all within the span of a few weeks, have released odes to the planet. Is there anything out in the universe right now that could explain this overlap of timing?
The only thing I can think of is: It takes time for a song to go from being created to being released. Last August, Saturn was high in the sky, and going into the fall we could see it hanging out beautifully. It got a lot of news coverage, especially from NASA. With all of the amateur astronomer paparazzi out there telling its story, Saturn got into the way we talk and think, and it apparently infected the minds of these musicians. People talk about ideas being contagious and how memes go viral. It seems like this very large world became a virus that infected the lyrics of people looking to write songs last fall.
Did you personally experience a Saturn return when you were younger?
Absolutely, yes. I had this moment of, I’m not going to be an astronomer. I’m going to be a journalist. I worked at Astronomy Magazine for about a year and then went, No, what am I doing? And I ran back home to academia. Although today I’m a little bit of both. I guess you can say I’m still experiencing my Saturn return.