Posted on 03/27/2007 11:10:24 AM PDT by anymouse
One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole.
Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon.
The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity.
"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."
The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds.
At Saturn's south pole, Cassini recently spotted a freaky human eye-like feature that resembles a hurricane.
"It's amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn's poles," said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at the University of Arizona. "At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different."
The hexagon appears to have remained fixed with Saturn's rotation rate and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26 years ago. The actual rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain, which means nobody knows exactly how long the planet's day is.
"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and perhaps the interior," Baines said.
I thought those were only on Uranus.
i have had no problem resisting GS cookies,i want a CUPCAKE!
Wow, very cool... This one is logged in my writer's inspiration files now...
Those klingons come from the Dingleberry Galaxy
Hmmmm, perhaps you are right. If it was a pentagon then Katrina was Rumsfeld's fault too.
Looks alot like a chocolate cake the ex made that crashed while in the oven.
your's is the best post on here.
but now, where or what are the forces causing this. i.e. i don't see 6 other round things.
A You Tube video of sound waves arranging salt grains into geometric patterns.
Lol! Okay, I get it! I did exclude fractals in my original post though. I promise I won't suggest otherwise again! =)
It's the aliens of course...the ones who built the face on mars.
ping
Actually, Richard Hoagland has been talking about this sort of phenomenon for years as part of some theory of "hyperdimensional physics".
BTTT
klingons are around uranus not saturn
The hexagonal close pack is what causes this. When deformable "things" are close packed, hexagons result. The thing, or item that's close packed in this case is a convection cell. If you've ever made coffee and didn't stir it so well, then let it sit motionless while it cools, you'd see hexagonal structures, especially if there was some powder like cocoa in it.
In this pic there are 2 components to the cloud. They don't mix very well. That's most likely, because the lighter stuff is condensing significantly. Nevertheless the dark stuff, that appears like voids, does not mix and is expanding and flowing out of the clouds. It is less dense and is coming out of the cloud with a much higher velocity. That means there's an effective tension in the bulk of the white stuff, which is the eqivalent to being "pushed" by the dark stuff. The direction of the convections in the pic are up and out, and as the stuff moves outward it slows and resists the outward flow of the stuff moving out from the center. The stuff that makes up the voids is probably hot normal atmosphere, that resulted when the plumes of cloud material condensed as it shot up. The condensation results in a large release of heat to the atmosphere.
Interesting.
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