Slashdot Mirror
Cassini Probes the Hexagon On Saturn
Riding with Robots sends us to a NASA page with photos of a little-understood hexagonal shape surrounding Saturn's north pole. "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet." This structure was discovered by the Voyager probes over 20 years ago (here's an 18-year-old note on the mystery). The fact that it's still in place means it is stable and long-lived. Scientists have no idea what causes the hexagon. It's nearly big enough to fit four earths inside — comfortably larger than Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The article has an animation of clouds moving within the hexagon captured in infrared light.
Except for Titan. Attempt no landing there.
I'm the stranger...posting to
But maybe someone can. I'm fuzzy on the details, but I'm sure I recall a story in the last year or so of someone (I think it was in Holland or Belgium?) spinning or stirring water at high speed in a vaccuum or some other odd pressure environment, and getting a wierd, six-way figure in the vortex when viewed from above?
Sorry, no time to search out the details, but maybe the mechanics of that might lend themselves to analyzing this?
-Styopa
I heard it a little different...
Guy goes to prison. First night, all the prisoners are in their cells for lights out, when the silence is broken by someone one calling out "23!" And everyone laughs. A few minutes later the silence is broken again by a voice calling out "37!" And gain everyone laughs.
Guy pokes his cellmate, "What's that about?" "Oh, that's the lifers. They've been here so long, told the same jokes so many times, they just call them out by number."
Guy ponders this for a momment and decides to test the waters. He calls out "18!"
Silence. Not a single laugh. Cellmate shakes his head, "some guys just can't tell a joke."