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Turbulence in Saturn's Atmosphere
neutron_p writes "Today an image of turbulence in the atmosphere of Saturn has been unveiled. This image was taken with the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft camera. This pattern is an example of a 'Kelvin-Helmholtz instability', which occurs when two fluids of different density flow past each other at different speeds. This phenomenon should be common on the gas-giant planets."
Because it's posted in the science section of Slashdot and a tremendous amount of us geeks keep an eye on all things space and science related?
The fact that we're in the middle of learning/confirming/discovering stuff about our own solar system is both News For Nerds and Stuff That Matters.
What do you expect, baseball highlights?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There is a scant possibility that the phenomenon has not been observed before Actually, if I'm not too much mistaken, it hasn't on Saturn. The Voyager pictures all show pretty even, orderly cloud bands with relatively clean edges. You'd expect turbulenc, yes, and if it wasn't there, it's time to throw out everything we know about fluids, but it just takes much more detail to reveal it than any of our earlier spacecraft could provide.