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Jupiter's Third Red Spot
Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the solar system's largest (and longest-lived) storm, was joined by another in 2006, dubbed Red Spot Junior. Now a third red spot near the first two has been photographed by the Hubble space telescope. This is a storm about half the size of Earth. Here's a photo of the new storm (it's the one on the left). From New Scientist: "No one knows for sure what gives the three spots their red color. But one theory is that especially violent storms dredge up material from deeper in Jupiter's atmosphere, such as phosphorus-containing molecules, which undergo chemical reactions that turn them red when exposed to sunlight."
See.... now i was gonna say that jupiter must have a spreading case of Melanoma... I'd get that checked out, it could be malignant
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
the smallest of the 3 is on a collision course with the largest. they should merge in August.
Actually, wo do have some idea of when it first appeared. It formed somewhere between 178 and 343 years ago. (Really, a few relevant wikipedia pages should be required pre-posting reading for every /. science article.)
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Fundamentally, one would project a frequency-tunable laser beam onto the Red Spot and read the "reflected" results. The different substances in the target absorb light at very specific frequencies: if a sufficiently powerful laser is used to illuminate the Red Spot (and sufficiently sensitive sensors to read the reflected results), it would be relatively simple to analyze the data and determine the composition of the cloud.
The big problem is that Jupiter is a long way away--at least 17 light-minutes, IIRC. Jupiter also emits infra-red and radio-frequency EM radiation, which may interfere with the test. And even if we have a powerful enough laser, I'm not sure we have powerful enough sensors to pick out the reflected laser light amidst the reflected sunlight.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Um...did you actually read the article to which you point? As opposed to skim? If so, you'll notice that the first recorded observations of the Great Red Spot are, by a strange coincidence, around the time of the invention of the telescope. What does that tell you?