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?

[draxredd]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.