Huge Storms Converge on Jupiter

tpoker writes to tell us NASA is reporting that the two biggest storms in the solar system are about to collide on Jupiter. From the article: "Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The behemoth has been spinning around Jupiter for hundreds of years. Storm #2 is Oval BA, also known as 'Red Jr.,' a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin."

Comments

Nice job, editors!

[grogdamighty]

The summary is spot on! (Ba-dum, chink!)

But seriously, did anyone else think that Hollywood is going to use this as the background for The Perfect Storm II?

Re:Nice job, editors!

[raehl]

The summary is spot on! (Ba-dum, chink!)

Except for the whole basic math thing.

If one object is two earths wide, and another object is one earth wide, the 2nd object is one FOURTH the size of the first, not one half.*

* Assumes objects are of the same shape and the shape is uniform in one dimension. Which should be pretty good assumptions in this case.

Re:Nice job, editors!

[Kagura]

... able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin."

Mmm... incestulicious!

Collide?

[thePig]

From the article "There won't be a head-on collision. and the storms' outer bands will pass quite close to one another.
I guess the summary was a little bit of a hyperbole. Esp. for an event that happens every two years.

Re:Collide?

[jbrader]

You're right, but they're expected to come closer this time then they have in the past.

Re:Collide?

[helioquake]

No, they aren't closer. It's the same as the last two encounter.

What signifies about this particular encounter is that the small oval is thought to be intensified its strength recently (when its color changed from grey to red) and that just *might* cause a bit more interesting interaction between these two storms (when they pass by closely). It's a pure speculation based none other than intuition of scientists. Not based on a hydrodynamic simulation; just a wild ass guess on their part.

Of course, they wouldn't say that. That'd make this whole thing, well, boring.

Re:Collide?

[Tablizer]

What signifies about this particular encounter is that the small oval is thought to be intensified its strength recently (when its color changed from grey to red)...

Biggest damned mood ring I've ever seen.

Re:Collide?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Not based on a hydrodynamic simulation; just a wild ass guess on their part.

Fluid dynamics, particularly on such a massive scale as storms on a planet like Jupiter, is still largely a matter of wild ass "guess"timates. With good reason.

The basic equations of fluid mechanics, the Navier-Stokes equations, are a second order, non-linear system of partial differential equations. Atmospheric gases are also compressible flows. Couple this with aerosols, rotation of the planet, and mondo awkward boundary conditions due to the surface curvature; it's lack of a crust; and the lack of a defined "end" of the atmosphere, finally sprinkling a generous dose of chaos theory in to account for sensitivity to initial conditions.... and you've got a problem that is to all intents and purposes, completely unsolvable.

And that's "just" the fluid dynamics problem. And the continuum hypothesis isn't the only way to solve it. You could use Lagrangian mechanics if one were so inclined.

And these are just theoretical issues. We haven't even spoken about the practical difficulties. First and foremost, throw hope for an analytic solution out the window, because it's not going to happen. You've got to go with a numerical solution. Which brings up the next question of which numerical techniques to you use, and how accurately do you use them. You've got to factor in time, cost and cpu ability. You'll have to parrallelise the whole deal, and make sure it's accurate enough to remain stable for long enough to predict but you want but quick enough so that you'll get your answer before the actual event happens.

And last, but by no means least, once you've got that data, how do you analyse it? How do you even present it? Remember, we're talking about 3d vortices here, embedded in a globe. How do you make sense of it all. What points are of interest? What events are key? What can you learn from all this? What size font should the image titles have? How will you make a paper out of all this!?

Faced with such an operation, you're often better off performing a simulation when faced with a fluid mechanics problem, or in the case where simulation is impossible such as with Jupiter, just make a wild assed guess, sit back and enjoy the show.

Re:Collide?

[Orp]

Congratuations. You've just described what I go through trying to simulate tornado-producing thunderstorms. Even the "how do I present the results" part. Something I deal with on a day to day basis. As far as presentation goes, I like raytracers to present scalar data and feature-detection software to find vortices. Throw in stereo viewing, animate the sucker and at the very least you've got some cool pictures and movies.

Re:Collide?

[VoidEngineer]

I agree with you on most all accounts. What I would mention, however, is that meteorologists already do -pretty much exactly what you're describing. Weather simulations for earth effectively have to deal with everything you've just described; from chemical reactions in the atmosphere, to rotation fo the planet, to the awkward boundary conditions due to surface curvature, chaos theory, and the like. And you know what? Meteorologists will readily admit that the problem is mostly unsolvable. And furthermore, they have exactly the same numerical analysis solutions that you've described; and they have to resort to using supercomputers specifically designed to model weather simulations. If one looks at the most commonly investigated computer problems, historically, you pretty much wind up with weather, nuclear bombs, and chess.

That being said, we enjoy a good 5 days of prediction of weather patterns nowdays. I remember when I was a kid, and the computers weren't nearly as powerful, and we only had 2 or 3 days of prediction. Now we have fairly good predictions for up to 5 to 7 days.

Sure, initial parameters are different for Earth and Jupiter, although the problem isn't as intractable as you make it out to be. Societally, we have alot of collective experience modeling the types of problems you've described, and it would really only be a matter of modifying the initial parameters of our weather simulations to match those of Jupiter.

Something which I, for one, expect somebody at NASA to have done already.

Re:Collide?

[jmichaelg]

Societally, we have alot of collective experience modeling the types of problems you've described, and it would really only be a matter of modifying the initial parameters of our weather simulations to match those of Jupiter.

Codswallop.

Hurricane forecasts on earth diverge the further out you get. None of them called the right turn Katrina pulled in the Gulf of Mexico before she first hit Florida. On 8/25/05, this was the forecast:

This forecast is rather difficult since one of the more reliable models...the GFS...shows that the cyclone barely touches the East Coast of Florida before moving northward....while the outstanding GFDL moves Katrina south of due west across extreme South Florida and the Keys as a very intense hurricane. The GFDL scenario would be very dangerous for South Florida. This appears to be unrealistic at this time but because of the good past performance of this model...we must pay close attention to future model runs.

Notice New Orleans isn't even mentioned?
Those models had thousands of data point samples to work with including multiple flights into the heart of the hurricane and they still couldn't agree, let alone accurately forecast what happened to New Orleans. Those 'initial parameters' you so blithely dismiss have to be very accurate to make 24 hour forecasts, let alone forecast what's going to happen a month from now on a planet for which we have exactly zero weather buoys.

Blows as hard as the older cousin...

[eric_ste]

And she could swallow earth.

At 350Mph, that's what I call a massive blow job...

The Environmentalists Are Right.

[bombadier_beetle]

Clearly, this is evidence of Jovial warming.

Re:The Environmentalists Are Right.

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Jovial warming

What, is that supposed to fill us with conviviality and good cheer? ;)

Re:The Environmentalists Are Right.

[aonifer]

Jovial warming + Big Red Spot = Santa Claus!

Oh, great.

[HisMother]

the two biggest storms in the solar system are about to collide on Jupiter.

Crap. There go my weekend plans.

looting martians

[legomad]

Martian looters will be shot on sight.

ahh

[ezwip]

Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin. Ahh yes, I dated them in highschool.

I would love to see it happen

[w33t]

I LOVE astronomy. I think it is simply the most profound thing that we have been able to take the eye and stretch it to points beyond imagination. To look out into the cosmos is so humbling and awe-inspiring. Truly if one science has shown us simple magnificent beauty it is astronomy.

Now having said that I will say that only one thing makes astronomy better - seeing these object in motion! Galaxies and nebula seem so unreal in hubble's photos - it's hard to fully comprehend what exactly they are - what they are really like. But when you view those precious few object we have been able to capture in motion, to me it is exquisite! Somehow, to me, it makes them that much more real, more tangible. And that is truly the dream of the soul - to somehow touch, taste, smell that which is so beautiful :)

I hope these astronomers string together this phenomenal convergence into a movie!

Jupiter's storms in motion
Solar flares

Do you have any other cool astronomical movie links?
--
Music should be free

Re:I would love to see it happen

[Tablizer]

I LOVE astronomy. I think it is simply the most profound thing that we have been able to take the eye and stretch it to points beyond imagination...

If I was a god I think I would want to piss you off for being too poetic. I would have both spots rotate behind Jupiter as usual, and then *nothing* come about the other side when they should rotate back into view. Zilch spots and zilch hints about where they went. It would be so much fun to F with people's brains. I wouldn't physically hurt my subjects, just puzzle the sh*t out of them for the shear fun hell of it. (I suppose the real gods knew this and that is why I am just a mortal. Curses, foiled again.)

-T-

What I want to know...

[wtansill]

is what FEMA intends to do about this?

Re:What I want to know...

[Fex303]

What I want to know is what FEMA intends to do about this?

Nothing for the next couple of years. Once they collide, everyone will insist that no-one could have predicted it.

I'm sure there's a joke about horse shows here somewhere, too...

Wise Man Say

[isecore]

When it blows on Jupiter, better cover Uranus.

I think we'll be sure to hear...

[darkrowan]

... that our local news source will be running around the clock coverage of 'Jupiter Storewatch 2006'

Extraterrestrial weather reports?

[howlingfrog]

I don't care about weather reports for cities 500 miles away, so why should I care about weather reports for a planet 500 million miles away???

Re:Do the editors think we are that dumb?

[afaik_ianal]

If the great red spot is twice as wide as earth is, then its radius is 12,756.3 km and the earth's is 6378.15. That means that the great red spot is an area of approximately 510950815.6266 square kilometers and the earth's cross section has an area of approximately 127737703.90665 square kilometers.

But now you can throw your maths right out the window, because you're using the wrong formula. From Wikipedia, "The Great Red Spot's dimensions are ~24-40,000 km × 12-14,000 km". It's not circular, sorry.

At it's smallest size (which I understand it is close to at the moment - It has halved in size over the past 100 years), it is almost exactly 2 Earths wide, and is also 2 times the Earth's cross-section in area.

Umm...

[Davus]

a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin."
I'm not sure what intergalactic law is, but over here, we call that "statutory rape".

Re:Umm...

[alienmole]

Dude, you're on Slashdot. If you were some bimbo news anchor on MSNBC you could get away with saying intergalactic. But this isn't even interstellar! It's in our own solar system, for crying out loud. The word you want is "interplanetary". Hey, and don't thank me - I kill jokes for free.

Discrimination, I tell you

[patio11]

Why does Slashdot always accuse Martians of looting but when Earthlings do it its merely "copyright infringement"? Discrimination, that's why. Why the prejudice against the Martians? If you prick them, do they not ooze?

Re:Discrimination, I tell you

[Jesus_666]

No, it's entirely justified. You see, when the Interplanetary Crime Organization was formed the duties for planet-wide disaster related crimes were divided on a per-planet basis: Martians conned us into giving them a monopoly on looting, people from Mercury and Venus pillage and those from the outer planets commit insurance fraud. Earth was a bit late to the game and now we're stuck with gratutious copyright infringement.

In case you're wondering which planet-wide desaster allows us to infringe Earth copyrights at the moment just take a look at the software, movie and music markets.

Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..?

[popo]

What kind of strength/magnification do you need to see Jupiter in that resolution?

Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..?

[Tablizer]

What kind of strength/magnification do you need to see Jupiter in that resolution?

You are not going to get Hubble or Voyager level views. Many amatures now digitally enhence their images such that you see more in the photo than what the eye would see in the scope. One fairly recent technique is to take hundreds of digital images and then digitally average and realign the detail. The Earth's atmosphere wiggles and sometimes acts kind of like a magnifying lens. If you can capture these magnification spots when they occure and add them up, you get a nice photo.

Anyhow, I would guess that you need at least an 8-inch reflector or 5-inch refractor to see the two spots with recognizable detail. It also depends on sky conditions and viewer training. It takes a while to train the eye to see detail on planets thru a scope.

Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..?

[alienmole]

The answer is in the article - the photo was taken with an 11-inch telescope. If you're flush with cash, just go get one of these (Meade 12"), although you'll need to use it well outside of any big urban area, light pollution around cities kills viewing conditions. (You can get a similar scope for less money if you take more of a DIY approach, but then you have to learn much more about it. Scopes like Meade and Celestron are for people who just want to spend the money and get the results.)

Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..?

[helioquake]

There is a simple rule of thumb about magnification. It goes like this:

If your telescope is 10inch (~ 250mm), then your maximum magnification achievable with your telescope is up to 250 times. You can increase the magnification as much as you like (by the choice of an eyepiece), but it doesn't mean a damned thing when you go beyond 250x for the 10in telescope (it's like examining a photo on a magazine with 10000x magnifying glass; i.e., it's meaningless). For a 6inch telescope (~ 150mm), the max is 150x or so.

A 3in telescope is enough to see the Great Red Spot. For the small oval, it'd take a bigger telescope, I'd guess.

Premature

[Tablizer]

The New Horizons probe will visit Jupiter early next year. If the merging waits another half year then NH could give us a nice look.

New Horizons is heading toward Pluto, but will use Jupiter to kind of "slingshot" it faster toward Pluto. NASA doesn't want to pay for bigger rockets, so they cheat by stealing a small slice of Jupiter's orbital momentum. Let's hope Big Jup doesn't find out, because he is really really big and strong.

Re:Global Warming

[MosesJones]

but the utterly non-scientific way it is presented in the media

You don't have to watch Fox.

converge vs. collide

[anno1602]

converge, converged, converging, converges

1. To tend toward or approach an intersecting point: lines that converge.
2. To come together from different directions; meet: The avenues converge at a central square.
3. To tend toward or achieve union or a common conclusion or result: In time, our views and our efforts converged.
4. Mathematics. To approach a limit.

So, according to that definition, if these two storms are about to collide, they have to be converging now. So the converging is in the present, the colliding in the fututre. Given what the words mean, there are no temporal issues.

Re:Global Warming

[MichaelSmith]

Clearly the only possible explanation is human involvement!

There was that RTG on Galileo...

Re:WOW!

[Makarakalax]

So I'm not alone in finding it sad that slashdot rarely has anything other than unfunny jokes attached to science articles?

Obligatory Futurama

[lbmouse]

Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you."

On all counts

[guet]

Societally, we have alot of collective experience modeling the types of problems you've described, and it would really only be a matter of modifying the initial parameters of our weather simulations to match those of Jupiter.

The problem being that Jupiter does not have a constellation of satellites collecting data 24/7 and a huge number of ground-stations recording weather conditions at regular intervals all round its surface.

Without that data, what would you plug into your simulation, guesses?

Mod parent up...

[sean.peters]

This is a very important point. We're talking about a simulation of a chaotic system. It has to be fed ground-truth data - lots of it - on a regular and frequent basis, or it will diverge rather quickly from reality. And with no weather stations, etc, on Jupiter, there's no way to gather the data.

Sean

When was the last time a probe survived Jupiter?

[lightning_queen]

There is one major difference you seem to disregard in your comparison between Earth and Jupiter. On Earth, we know most of it's topography, we know what it's core, shell, and atomosphere consist of, we know how it spins and the general dynamics of its weather (with some exceptions, of course, but for the most part). With Jupiter, we know very little about it other than what we've been able to speculate. We speculate that it's a still-born star, so we speculate it has a mass similar to that of a small star. From our knowledge of what small stars consist of and what kind of gravity required to keep certain elements in an atomosphere, we can speculate the contents of Jupiter's atomosphere. We've even been able to see the top few layers with The Galileo Project, but the surface, if there is one, is still a mystery. So, not only do we not know what the surface is like, or how it affects the surrounding clouds and storms, but we're not even sure there is a surface. And we certainly don't know if these storms go all the way down to the surface. Who's to say the core even rotates? Or rotates at the same speed or in the same direction as everything else? This one's going out on a limb, I know, but space can already easily break many of the scientific laws that we've established (light itself breaks several of these), so who's to say that what goes on in the depths of a stillborn star goes against everything we consider to be logical?

Meteorologists say that it's practically an unsolvable problem, and that's on a planet which they already know a lot about. With a planet such as Jupiter, there's simply too many unknowns. Everyone knows that the more unknowns you have in a problem, the harder it becomes to solve. The problem here is that, for Jupiter, the problem/formula is almost entirely unknowns.