Ice giants Memes

The meme brilliantly illustrates NASA's planetary exploration priorities using the drowning kid meme format. At the top, we see Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn getting all the attention (the kids playing in the pool), while poor Uranus and Neptune (the skeleton at the bottom) are completely forgotten. It's the perfect metaphor for how NASA has sent multiple missions to the inner planets and gas giants, but hasn't returned to Uranus or Neptune since Voyager 2's brief flyby in the 1980s. The ice giants are literally left to die at the bottom of NASA's priority list! The skeleton waiting for a mission approval that may never come is just too real for planetary scientists specializing in the outer solar system.

Scientists spend decades studying distant planets through sophisticated telescopes, only to immediately devolve into seventh-grade humor when Uranus is involved. The repetition of "I am a mature adult" serves as the internal monologue of astronomers desperately trying to maintain professionalism while staring at two spherical images of the ice giant. Spoiler alert: they failed spectacularly. The scientific community's collective maturity remains inversely proportional to the number of Uranus jokes in circulation.