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Cassini Observes Hurricane-Like Storm On Saturn

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the go-go-little-spacebuggy dept.

Aglassis writes "The Cassini spacecraft recently observed a hurricane-like storm on the south pole of Saturn. What makes this storm particularly interesting is that this is the first time that a clearly defined eyewall has been seen outside of the Earth in the Solar System. Neither the Great White Spot of Saturn nor the Great Red Spot of Jupiter have had an observable eyewall. NASA, JPL, and the Space Science Institute have released a short movie of the motion around the eyewall (mirrored at YouTube)."

6 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. That Bush! by whoop · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Ya see, Bush is so mad about the elections he's putting hurricanes on the Saturnurians now. What next, blizzards on Venus??

  2. Hammer, Feather, Freefall on the Moon: Revisited by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    "Fall heavy towards the moon, and the moon falls also towards you." -- Nietzsche

    Hammer and feather are dropped simultaneously from equal heights (as measured by distance from the center of the moon), separated laterally by a distance substantially less than the moon's diameter. Both hammer and feather experience force from the moon's gravity proportional to their mass, and hence both accelerate at the same rate. Meanwhile, the moon is also accelerating towards the other two objects, but unevenly so: the hammer exerts a greater gravitational pull due to its greater mass. The moon is therefore subject to a torque, causing it to accelerate more rapidly towards the hammer.

    The hammer is first to hit the ground.

    Anyone who denies this truth is a spatially absolutist lunocentric whose refusal to recognize the validity of hammer/feather mechanics places him wholly beyond the help of Galilean metaphysics. Such hammer/feather rejectionists ought to be banished to the stars, for their own good and for the good of not only hammers and feathers but all subjugated smaller objects, everywhere, who find themselves victims of this scientifically perpetrated emassculation.

    --
    a756f345ec354225c08ff1a10a43162a

  3. Saturnian SUV's by WED+Fan · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Obviously, this has something to do with global warming. Is the SUV's driven by left-wing soccer moms in Seattle? Or do the folks on Saturn have SUV's? Could it be the Sun has something against the rest of the solar system is just plain getting hotter? Ask Mars, he's warming up as well.

    Man is a pissant when it comes to contributing to global temperatures. We are distracting ourselves from more important things that we can control, like poverty, hunger, disease, wars, and those "Head On" commercials.

    Let's stop the environmental-tilting-at-windmills and fix the things we can fix. Let's expend our energies and limited electorate-goodwill where we can truly be effective.

    --
    Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
  4. Re:You can look a hurricane right in the eye by gfxguy · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    5,000 miles wide -- unlike anything ever seen spotted on Saturn.


    And just like Katrina, it must be global warming.
    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
  5. Why Upgrade On Old Hardware? by EXTomar · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Seriously, if you have hardware that is working fine with Windows XP or Win 2k3 Server, what possible reason do you have for taking a risky manuver like the Vista "upgrade"? A saner "migration plan" is to use the machine as is till it fails.

    Contrary to what Microsoft wants you to believe, if your machine functions today it suddenly will not "suck" the day Vista comes out. Stay with what works *now* instead of doing untested upgrades.

  6. tr0llkore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Your ow8 towel in for memb3rship.