Paging Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
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.
Paging Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
Space ping.
Absolutely. 6 nearly equal sides is hard to get naturally, unless this is a giant fractal.
apocolyptic stuff in the sky pings.
i think it looks like the icing on a cupcake, but that's probably just because i gave up sweets for lent : )
are you thinking...Six...Six...Six...?
The scientists are simpletons/
It's a screw on lid!
Yawn. Wake me when they discover an octagonal shape.
Not until you mentioned it.
snowflakes
Saturn warming?
Ugh ... I had a bad case of that, once. They gave me some heavy-duty antibiotics, and it cleared right up.
Maybe we found the aliens sooner than expected. I always wanted to meet the Vulcans or Klingons.
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It's where the Atlanteans moved their intergalactic headquarters after their islands sunk. ;)
did you just ping me?
It kind of looks like the Burger King ice cream lid that they removed because it offened Muslims because it looked like it said Allah.
The Mohammedans might just riot of this one.
It looks like a giant sweet roll. This proves it-we are somebody else's food!
How bizarre
How bizarre, how bizarre
Everytime I look around
Everytime I look around
Everytime I look around
It's in my face
Obviously, Saturn is preparing to go to war with Earth. We have our Pentagon, they have their Hexagon. They must be irritated that we are warming the solar system, enough to start hostilities.
"My God...it's full of stars!"
Interplanetary crop circles.
LOL
So did my office. It's been brutal!
It looks so vague, but I can see it, how odd.
They come in peace. They just want to take Dennis Kucinich back to his home planet.
ah ah ahh... I said "Unless its fractal". Snowflakes form in fractal formations =)
Katrina's eye had a hexagon. Therefore the hexagon on Saturn has to be Bush's fault.
and there are like cookie crumbs dusting the icing and some little red hots on there too... ; )
Not all of us are hung up on Saturnism.
Oh just go have a candy bar, for crying out loud.
lol.
Yeah, but in Base-11, it becomes a giant Pi symbol.
hehe ... actually it's full of THESE!
http://www.lanceradvanced.com/Models/Images/attacker.jpg
sugar deprivation can be an ugly thing... LOL!!!
It is the most efficient shape for packing/stacking. It provides the most area for a given perimeter. Bees use it:
These are made by living things of course, but perhaps there's a similar physical reason why this shape is occurring.
I wonder if the governor of some western state is going to claim that the hexagon was put there by space monsters.
What's a fractal? Hope it's not like a henway!
HA! - I was thinking Rama....
I had one of those on my butt once - what a relief when it popped!
I'm sure glad I don't have to give up snake handling for Lent. My snake Sparky would get lonesome.
the DEVIL lives there!!!!!!
I see Mother Teresa's face.
It's obvious that this woman is over sixty.
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