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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.
The Saturn North Pole? Isn't that where Saturn Clause lives? Maybe he has something to do with it.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Wasn't there a story here within the last six months or so about spinning a bucket of water at the right speed and having it form geometric forms, including a hexagon?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
space bees
Design for Use, not Construction!
With Fife Symington coming forward and saying that the Phoenix Lights from 1997 were actually an "other worldly craft" - how much longer can we believe ourselves to be alone in the universe?
It's obvious to me, as a trained ufologist, that this is not a natural phenomenon. This hexagonal structure was BUILT by intelligent life.
Perhaps the universe is just poorly anti-aliased
The original generic sig.
When God created Saturn, he used a low polygon count to speed up the rendering process.
Last time I checked, all hexagons had six sides...
I agree, the only logical conclusion is that Saturn has been colonized by giant space bees who have made it their honey comb hive.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Superman had to abandon his Earth-based Fortress of Solitude, which was starting to melt due to global warming, not to mention all the annoying scientific expeditions coming by to drill for ice cores. He figured he'd try Saturn's north pole for a change. The commute's a bit longer, but there's less traffic.
Saturn is the sixth planet out.
A hexagon has six sides.
There is a second hexagon inside the first. Another six sides.
6-6-6
Hmmm, that number kind of has a ring to it. And so does Saturn.
Coincidence?
... it's a nut holding the rings in place. You can even see the bolt.
Do you have *any* idea how hard it is to find a parking space for that thing where some yob's not going to key it or deflate the tires or poke at it with a spectrograph? :(
I should have got the next model down, then I could have pretended it was just another moon, but nooooooo, I had to get the hexagonal UltraSUV because it was "different" and had more legroom.
Hm, wonder if that guy who owns Mimas would do a swap. His camo paint job looks *so* much less convincing after those stupid films.
Well, everybody knows that: honeycomb big, yeah, yeah, yeah. If only these scientists had just taken the time to watch Saturday morning cartoons, or Futurama.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"almost looks like a human eye."
Looks more like Saturn is giving us a Goatse, spreading wide for the camera.
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Both words, Jupiter and Jewish start from 'J' and hexagon can be used to depict the star of David. The mystery is solved and Jupiter should really be renamed into Jewpiter. Oh, and it's closed on Saturdays. The official anthem is 7:40
You can't handle the truth.
Or, its warning sign placed there by the Vogon Constructor Fleet
One wonders if this is similar to what is occasionally seen in hurricanes: polygonal eyes. (If interested, do a Google search on "polygonal eyewalls" and get a pretty nice synopsis of the literature on the topic.) It isn't terribly out of the range of possibility that simple theories like these may be enough to explain a lot of this phenomenon. And, yes, polygonal eyewalls in real hurricanes can be very persistent, if the vortex itself doesn't change much and proper balances are maintained. On a planet like Saturn, I would imagine that things don't change too much even from year to year, so the whole pattern could persist for decades if unperturbed.
--Jellisky
Fritjov Capra ( this guy's an absolute legend, by the way ) had an interesting section on hexagonal structures like these in his book, Web of Life. He was talking about Dissipative Structures, discovered by Ilya Prigogine.
... ie you could run a pen through them and disturb them, and they'd immediately revert to these perfect hexagons. It was fascinating reading - thoroughly recommended for people interested in biology, physics, and philosophy.
In the experiment that was being described, a small dish of water was heated up uniformly from below. At a certain point, these hexagonal structures emerged. Hot water would rise from the bottom of the dish, travelling in a pipe directly through the middle of the hexagon ( forming a point in the middle that you could see ). When the water hit the surface, it spread out cooled, and then travelled back down to the bottom, creating the sides of the hexagon. Apparently they were getting multiple hexagons, and they were incredibly stable
AT field detected on Saturn's surface ! Code Orange ! Launch all EVA units, and someone go fetch me the Longinus Spear !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
If our solar system contains so many mysteries, imagine what the rest of the universe holds.
Imagine the scientific excitement if you were aboard a vessel like the Galaxy Class USS Enterprise from Star Trek (NCC 1701 D), approaching Saturn and seeing live the phenomenon, then staying there for a while to study it and comprehend it!
Exploration of space is the most important goal for humankind. Earth provides a very limited experience, and in a few 100 years it will be totally explored. If we want to understand the universe, space is the final frontier.