Hubble Discovers Dark Spot on Uranus

TheDawgLives writes "Just as we near the end of the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean, winds whirl and clouds churn 2 billion miles away in the atmosphere of Uranus, forming a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States."

Comments

Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Kimos]

Must... resist... bad... jokes...

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Lazerf4rt]

I challenge anybody to post a +5 Insightful comment about this story. It can't be done!

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[strider44]

Don't worry, your post will get there. I admit I burst out laughing as soon as I read the headline but if you want something mildly insightful I might as well fill in something while I have the time.

Is it any surprise that there's a dark spot on Uranus? Jupiter has a couple of huge cyclones raging on in there, so does Saturn. Both the planet's black spots are bigger than Uranus' anyway. Uranus is a gas giant, since there's going to be some wind going on there I'm not exactly shocked that huge cyclones have formed.

Enormous cyclones I think are just a side-effect of gas giants. I don't think it's anything to get excited about.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Directrix1]

"forming a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States" ... tub girl ... 'nuff said. Now on to the insightful posts...

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Hoi Polloi]

It is impressive that even with the feeble solar energy it receives there is still enough to power massive cyclones.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[robertjw]

Yeah. Stupid global warming!

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[draxredd]

are you implying that the sun don't shine on Uranus ?

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Lazarian]

Uranus is different from the other planets in the fact its axis is tilted almost ninety degrees - for two periods of its 84 year orbit one half of the planet is always pointed away from the sun. From the picture it looks like right now its equator is perpendicular towards sunward. Even though its distance means it would recieve little solar heat, it does have a large surface area. I would think that right now any heat would be more or less evenly distributed because of its rotation. But it would be interesting to see if heat transport would make the atmosphere more violent when one side of the planet is always bathed in sunlight while the other is in the dark, about twenty years from now. Maybe Uranus might have violent/calm /violent phases as it travels around the sun during its "year".

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[roseblood]

Gravitational heating left over from the formation of the planets and radioactive decay both provide for heat in the cores of the planets in our solar system. For alot of detail on this subject you can look here

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[linuxguy1454]

OK, time to salvage this from all the jokes.

From the image, it looks like the spot could be 19.5 degrees north of the equator. Years ago, I read a paper by Richard C. Hoagland, author of The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever (1987). Although a lot of his paper seemed like wild speculation to me, I remember one "message" he deduced from the so-called area near the "face on Mars." There is a characteristic of planetary dynamics which produces an anomoly at 19.5 degrees north or south lattitude, depending on the magnetic pole of the planet. This is related to the rotating molten core of the planet.

Jupiter's famous red spot is a 19.5 deg. south lattitude. Hoagland predicted a spot on Neptune at 19.5 degrees lattitude before the Voyager discovered it. On earth, Hawaii's Mona Loa volcano, the world's largest and continuously active volcano, is at 19.5 deg. north lattitude. (The Hawaiian islands were all made by passing over the spot where Mona Loa is now.) Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system, is at 19.5 deg lattitude. The "face on Mars" is 1/3 of the way around from Olympus Mons, at 19.5 deg. lattitude.

So the spot on Uranus (not on mine!) has nothing to do with solar energy. It is an artifact of planetary dynamics.

As an additional note- if you place a tetrahedron (a triangular pyramid) inside a shpere so that it's tip touches the north pole and it's 3 base points touch the insides of the sphere, they touch at 19.5 degrees south lattitude.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Convector]

Even more odd is the fact that Uranus seems to lack any significant internal heat generation like the other gas giants have. I don't know if the reason for that has ever been resolved.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[CheshireCatCO]

Holy too much sig. fig., Batman! None of the Great Red Spot,the Great Dark Spot, and the Great White Spot are at 19.5 degrees south latitude on their respective planets. Their latitudes vary around 20 degrees south, but 19.5 is putting way too much precision on it. (If Hoagland insists on being that precise, then you have to accept that the numbers disagree with the data.) Plus, the Great Dark Spot disappeared a while ago. How does that fit in with the theories? And how does he base his prediction on the existence of Sunspots at 19.5 degrees latitude (they exist everywhere up to ~ +/-30 degrees on the Sun) and the "great dark spot" of Uranus which didn't even exist when he claimed to be basing his predictions off of it. (Voyager looked. The planet was basically featureless at that time.)

Really, if you want to go looking at around 19.5 degrees latitude (north or south, which is it?), you're going to find stuff. Especially when you go looking for storms which tend to form in the tropics and when you consider that the majority of the area of the planet lies between + and - 30 degrees latitude.

Hoagland is a crackpot, pure and simple. I invite anyone to go to his site and read his stuff, you'll quickly see what I mean. (He thinks that Iapateus is a dodecaheadron and will split apart, for example.) But he does do fascinating things with Photoshop.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[RealGrouchy]

I'm not refuting you, since I'm not qualified to. But it absolutely bakes my noodle that planetary features would always occur at 19.5 degrees south lattitude. What forces could possibly be happening to make planets all end up with significant features at the same point?

First, he said 19.5 degrees north or south.

Second, 19.5 degrees is not a point, it's a line/locus. He's not saying that Slartybartfarst always signs on the same point on the canvas.

Third, I find your "I can't think of an explanation for these facts, therefore we would do best to ignore them" argument to be scientifically insulting. PP mentioned a geometric phenomenon that is potentially significant (astronomy is closely tied with geometry).

When you say "I'm not refuting you, but..." you reall mean to say "this is fud, but..."

A better refutation would have been to ask the following questions:

- Is this just a selective set of planetary features? (I doubt it, since these are the most prominent ones on various planets, earth excluded)

- Has our observation of planets been selective to this latitude? (We've known about Jupiter's spot for a long time, and we've scoured Mars, and we know lots about Earth)

- Are the facts presented by the parent--namely, are these features at the latitudes specified--true? (I'm too lazy to check)

Pay attention to what has been said, then ask questions, then look for the answers. How well you have done that determines whether the tingling in your head feels like pain, or like knowledge.

- RG>

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[linuxguy1454]

Hoagland doesn't explain the 19.5 degree thing, he basically says that it seems to be a result of unexplained planetary dynamics for which nobody seems to have a theory for. What is more weird than the 19.5 thing is how he claims to have figured it out, be we won't go into that. The pyramid thing is just an attempt by him to provide some sort of mathematical law expressed in geometric terms that appears to be related to these unknown planetary dynamics. Like using geometric principals to explain Keplar's orbit theory. There are lots of physical phenomena that are defined by mathamatics. Why does E = M * C^2? Why F = M * a? It's just the way Mother Nature made it. It's that way so that the universe all fits together, I guess.

oblig.

[Kreigaffe]

Insert butt joke [here]

(insert insert joke [here])

any way to forecast this?

[jeffs72]

"forming a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States."

I'd like to know when this will happen so I can move to, say, Canada.

Re:any way to forecast this?

[diamondsw]

"forming a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States."
I'd like to know when this will happen so I can move to, say, Canada.

I'd get a move on, since it's already engulfed 50% of the US as of 2004...

OMG

[turnipsatemybaby]

They've found Klingons on Uranus!

In Related News....

[w3weasel]

Due to the decades of jokes involving the name of this planet, and in light of the fact that a change in pronunciation during the 80's did nothing to curb the lowbrow humor, the same panel of scientists who removed Pluto from our solar system, have deciced to rename Uranus. Henceforth, this planet shall be referred to as Urectum.

Re:In Related News....

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Isaac Asimov pointed out that the pronunciation 'urinous' is not really an improvemnet.

Found a what on the what now?

[0xdeadbeef]

Farnsworth: 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?

Farnsworth: Urrectum. Here, let me locate it for you.

well...

[jimstapleton]

I guess it didn't loosten it's asteroid belt fast enough when it got to the big dipper...

Please lay off the Uranus jokes

[theskipper]

It just makes you look desperate for a +5 funny.

The poor planet has been the butt of far too many attempts at humor.

Re:Please lay off the Uranus jokes

[Stupidfat]

Hopefully we can get past all this and everything will come out alright in the end.

Re:Please lay off the Uranus jokes

[Hoi Polloi]

Someday we'll wipe away all of these blemishes on Uranus.

Re:Please lay off the Uranus jokes

[nacturation]

The poor planet has been the butt of far too many attempts at humor.

No shit.

hurricane in uranus

[somersault]

now that's a bad case of wind..

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure, but is "wpot" not supposed to have two t's?

Re:Terrorists!

[voice_of_all_reason]

Protip: If the terr'ists learn how to cast "dark vortex" and "magic missile," they win. Hands down.

Re:Hurricane season

[stupidfoo]

Clearly, global warming is causing this lack of hurricanes and major storms.

Why not? It gets blamed for everything else.

in other news..

[mottie]

One camp of scientists believe the dark spot is raised in elevation and are thus vying to name it "the turtlehead" whereas another group believes that it is actually a hole, and is fighting to name the spot "puckered starfish". More to follow.

Re:A dark spot...

[MrNaz]

Dammit I should have read the other posts first. Scratch that, I really should have PREDICTED the other posts and not made a joke that was bound to have been made once for every meter between here and Uranus.

Tee hee!

Uranus is a gas giant...

[Anonymous Coward]

and it has a dark spot... I wish I could say I am mature enough not to laugh, but I'm not.

Re:Uranus is a gas giant...

[metamatic]

It's true, Uranus really is full of methane gas. Look it up.

Re:Uranus is a gas giant...

[JohnnyLocust]

I hope the Futurama prophecy comes true, and they rename that damn planet to Urectum. These childish jokes just aren't very becoming.

Re:Hurricane season

[ronanbear]

The pirates are working, praise be to his noodly appendage!

Can't... resist...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Isn't the Hubble supposed to be pointing away from Earth?

Re:Is this really a joke?

[Dachannien]

Yes, but is that the P. Fry from Earth, or the P. Fry from Hovering Squid World 97-A?

Um, no...

[spun]

No, no, no. I am not going to look up Uranus to see if it is full of methane gas. I'm not falling for that one again.

Thanks for getting me slapped!

[spun]

I was so excited by this fascinating story that I went out and told our cute secretary, "Hey, guess what? There's a dark spot on Uranus and it's large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States!" Somehow, I don't think she knew what I meant...

Less obvious...

[SnowDog74]

Higher resolution imagery demonstrated that the spot was comprised of millions of rectangular objects of unknown origin, each with dimensions of 1 x 4 x 9.

I, for one, welcome our new universal and infinite intelligence.