The Shrinking Giant Red Spot of Jupiter

schwit1 (797399) writes "Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot — a swirling storm feature larger than Earth — is shrinking. This downsizing, which is changing the shape of the spot from an oval into a circle, has been known about since the 1930s, but now these striking new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images capture the spot at a smaller size than ever before."

Comments

Global warming

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Must be global warming...

Re:Global warming

[Savage-Rabbit]

Must be global warming...

Nah, the Neocon delegation must have reached mount Doom and burned the communist manifesto so the great eye of Sauron will now shrink until it disappears and Jupiter implodes thus purging the threat of environmentalism from the face of the universe forever.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

You might laugh, but I have heard people use similar astronomical events as proof against the anthropogenic cause of the recent warming. "Ice caps are melting on Mars!" etc. etc.

We will likely discover soon that the red spot is shrinking because in fact, it's jupiter's face and he is palming it at the the stupidity of the gullible.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather pay that than the current "save the highly profitable oil companies" subsidy

Re:Global warming

[huge]

No, it's not downsizing, it's just restructuring overlapping functions after all the mergers.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Call Al Gore. He can't do anything about it, just like the rest of us, but at least he can make a slideshow that passes for a movie

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, because the fact that other planets in the same solar system are experiencing similar warming(if such is indeed the case) has absolutely no value in interpreting why this planet is doing the same. It's not like they all have something in common, such as receiving the bulk of their energy from the same source.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

Yes, because the fact that other planets in the same solar system are experiencing similar warming(if such is indeed the case) has absolutely no value in interpreting why this planet is doing the same

Are you saying we can't (and aren't) measuring the output of the sun directly? Why would proxies be a better measure? Detail please.

Re:Global warming

[Curunir_wolf]

I'd rather pay that than the current "save the highly profitable oil companies" subsidy

The mods on the 2 comments above really demonstrate the hive mind / political / religious attitudes of the typical Slashdot mods.

The saddest part is, even though the /. crowd is generally more intelligent than most other Internet discussion sites, yet even here the lie that "big oil" is getting "subsidies" is not corrected, but repeated (this is how a lie becomes unquestioned by the shitizens).

Basically, Percentage Depletion is the oil and gas industry’s version of a depreciation deduction for its main asset, which is the oil and natural gas in the ground, commonly known as its reserves. Every industry of any kind is allowed a depreciation deduction on its assets under the U.S. Tax Code, but, far from being a “subsidy” for “big oil”, this tax treatment was in fact repealed for all integrated oil companies, i.e., ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, etc., in 1975, and is today available only to independent producers and royalty owners. So repeal of this extremely long-standing, completely common tax treatment would have no effect on “big oil” at all, and would in fact hit small producers and royalty owners harder than anyone else.

Another great example of the specious mischaracterization of these tax treatments is the Manufacturer’s Tax Deduction, more commonly referred to as Section 199. The Section 199 provision was enacted by congress in 2004 as a means of encouraging manufacturers to relocate overseas jobs to the U.S., and is in no way specific to or limited to the oil and gas industry. In fact, the oil & gas industry’s ability to take advantage of this provision has already been singled out for limitation – in 2008, Congress reduced the industry’s deduction under this provision to 2/3rds of what other manufacturing industries are allowed to deduct.

The tax code contains a couple of credits related to the oil and gas industry – the Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Tax Credit, and the Marginal Well Tax Credit. Far from being “subsidies” to “big oil”, these tax credits are used almost exclusively by small to mid-size independent producers who tend to become the operators of marginal oil and gas fields as they age and are divested by the larger companies. The EOR credit was implemented in 1990, and the Marginal Well Credit was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994.

Finally, let’s talk about Intangible Drilling Costs (IDCs), another feature of the federal tax code that will enjoy its’ 100th birthday in 2013. Basically, IDCs are the costs incurred by the oil and gas industry in the drilling of its wells. Since drilling wells is the only means of finding oil and natural gas, IDCs essentially amount to what any other industry would be able to deduct as a part of its cost of goods sold, a concept of accounting and tax law as old as the tax code itself. Independent producers and royalty owners are allowed an election to either a) expense these costs in the year they are incurred, or b) amortize them over a 5-year period. Again, most media reports commonly characterize this as a “subsidy” for “big oil”, as does the Obama Administration. The truth is that “big oil” – the ExxonMobils, Chevrons, Shells and BPs of the world – benefit much less from this tax treatment, it having been severely limited to them by congress in 1986, and again in 1992. And the truth also is that IDCs are not a “subsidy” to anyone engaged in the oil and gas business.

Bottom line: Despite the Administration’s rhetoric that has been so widely repeated in the press, the tax treatments in question are not “subsidies” that are in any way outside of the mainstream of tax treatments commonly available to all U.S. industries. Rather than being mostly a benefit to “big oil”

Re:Global warming

[Curunir_wolf]

No, its climate change...er, I mean climate disruption. Yeath, that's it.

Climate Chaos. Get with the program!

Re:Global warming

[argStyopa]

You're right, how incomprehensibly silly to point out that increasing temperatures observed on multiple planets in our solar system might suggest that the Earth's warming is primarily due to something other than yuppies driving SUVs.

I mean surely it's absurd that the SUN has something to do with climate change, right?

Re:Global warming

[therealkevinkretz]

My first thought was: too bad they didn't find out in time to include it in the most recent AAAS report.

Re: Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

The real hidden subsidy is the global security provided by the US military to security European energy supplies and which hides the true $300/b cost.

Re:Global warming

[Greyfox]

That'd work if it was a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" (Rand Paul's precioussss.)

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

You must understand that if I, as a college educated individual, do not engage in name calling, my social status and opportunities will become imperiled. Therefore, in order to maintain said status, I have no choice but to call you a RANDROID.

What is learned in all post-secondary educational environments, except Hillsdale College and Harding University:

0. Man is a collectivist animal.
1. Money belongs to government.
2. Critical thinking means agreeing with collectivists.

This sums up the Slashdot readership.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

King of Pain in the @$$, eh?

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

If other planets are observed to be experiencing a similar warming to that being observed here, it seems likely that the warming is caused by something which all of the planers have in common. Whether or not that something can and is being otherwise monitored. If your explanation for earth's warming does not take into account the warming taking place at the same time on other planets(assuming that such warming is occurring), it is likely to be false.

Re:Global warming

[dryeo]

Except it was always some planets were getting warmer with the largest number being 4 which is half the planets. The real test of if its solar induced would be the planets (and nearby moon) without an atmosphere and all those were not getting warmer.

Re:Global warming

[dryeo]

It is silly when most of the planets were not getting warmer.

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

But that is irrelevant to the point made by the poster I replied to. He dismissed the idea that warming on other planets might have relevance to warming on earth.

Re:Global warming

[JudgeFurious]

Exactly. At some point Jupiter will conclude that the red spot is no longer part of it's core business model and outsource it to some smaller planet where it will cost less to maintain it. I understand Neptune is a very economical alternative.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be named "Save Jupiter!" Because we all know that the extinction of the Giant Red Spot will be Planet Jupiter's downfall, just like the extinction of mankind will be the end of Planet Earth!

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have a mechanism for the heating, and hence can't say if the causing factor is monitor-able or not, how do you include it in your model? Peer pressure? It seems reasonable to ask if we can model the increase in temperature on other planets, although Earth based models might not be generic enough to use the same models for Earth as for other planets. But otherwise models have to go off of principles we know and measure. Which in these cases are at least pretty basic in principle, just applied to large, complicated system.

Re:Global warming

[Belial6]

Because they are not proxies in this case. No one is suggesting that the earth's temperature should be measured by measuring the temperature on another planet. If the temperature is rising on other planets in a similar fashion as the earth (if such is indeed the case), it wouldn't be a way to measure earth's temperature. It would be an extremely strong indication that either your current direct measurment of the sun's energy is broken, you are measuring the wrong energy being expelled by the sun, or there is likely another astronomical energy source that is affecting the planets.

Warming on other planets (if such is indeed the case) does not answer the question of whether there is AGW on Earth. It would just invalidate the argument that we have ruled out N(atural)GW.

Re:Global warming

[Belial6]

No. A lack of atmosphere would not be a point to prove the sun wasn't causing warming. The sun spews out all sorts of energy besides direct heat. Something as simple as solor wind and our magnetophere could make a differece in warming. I'm not suggesting that it actually does make a difference, but claiming a lack of atmosphere helps in declaring the sun to be unrelated is clearly a critically flawed idea.

Re:Global warming

[david_thornley]

No, he didn't. He said that we can track solar activity independently of observing other planets, and therefore that it's better data than looking at other planets. He didn't say they were irrelevant, just that the only obvious relevant factor can be observed directly. He seems to have assumed that solar activity would be the only common factor linking warming and cooling of planets. Offhand, I can't think of another likely candidate. If you can, please let us know.

Re:Global warming

[Cl1mh4224rd]

If other planets are observed to be experiencing a similar warming to that being observed here...

There is no reliable evidence that this is even happening. What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system?

Re:Global warming

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Warming on other planets (if such is indeed the case) does not answer the question of whether there is AGW on Earth. It would just invalidate the argument that we have ruled out N(atural)GW.

Yes, it would; but it's not the case. At least not to the extend that denialists claim, or in any way that even hints at a common cause: What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system

Re:Global warming

[ArmoredDragon]

Eh are you trying to tell us that the red dot that Indians have on their heads shrink and expand along with the red dot on Jupiter?

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the inhabitants of Jupiter have similarly over-industrialized their world, and did not listen to their past Vice President.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what someone working for big oil would say...

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

The poster I initially replied to said: "You might laugh, but I have heard people use similar astronomical events as proof against the anthropogenic cause of the recent warming. "Ice caps are melting on Mars!" etc. etc. " He never once mentioned other ways of tracking solar energy. I have seen the arguments he is referencing and they were a bit more sophisticated than "Ice caps are melting on Mars." I do not know if they were true, but the argument was that temperatures were rising on Mars (and other planets) in an amount comparable to temperature rises observed on earth. If multiple planets in this solar system were experiencing similar temperature increases at the same time, the most likely explanation is that said temperature rise was caused by the same thing on all of those planets. If your measurements of the forces which you believe to be possible causes does not explain those temperature rises, it suggests that either your measurements are faulty or there is some other force at work on all of those planets.
Someone arguing that that data is relevant may be mistaken about the data, but the argument is not laughable.

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

Not relevant to my point. The poster thought the argument was laughable even if the facts were correct.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

Because they are not proxies in this case. No one is suggesting that the earth's temperature should be measured by measuring the temperature on another planet.

They are proxies for measuring the output of the sun, which we already measure directly.

. If the temperature is rising on other planets in a similar fashion as the earth (if such is indeed the case), it wouldn't be a way to measure earth's temperature. It would be an extremely strong indication that either your current direct measurment of the sun's energy is broken, you are measuring the wrong energy being expelled by the sun, or there is likely another astronomical energy source that is affecting the planets.

But no such changes have been observed, making this point moot. Secondly, nobody has stated a plausible reason to doubt that pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the troposphere will cause it to warm, as predicted 150 years ago and now observed, directly and indirectly. So if some (curiously unobserved) change in the sun's output or some oogie boogie radiation from deep space were causing the other planets to warm, we wouldn't conclude that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere of our own planet doesn't make it warm - we've already observed that it does, indirectly and directly.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

If other planets are observed to be experiencing a similar warming to that being observed here, it seems likely that the warming is caused by something which all of the planers have in common.

And if there are no such observations, we can stop pretending.

Re:Global warming

[Belial6]

There are two problems with your response. First, the name calling. Second, your link is to a trolling site. Read the post and its responses. They don't argue from a position of fact. They argue using a 'ends justifies the means' format to 'win' their argument.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

it IS laughable, because

(a) there are no such observations

(b) The impact of CO2 in the atmosphere has been directly and indirectly observed.

For some reason, the anti-science crowd continues to miss the point. to disprove the theory that increased quantities of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere will net positive energy to that system they need to address the radiative properties of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) directly. Otherwise, a warming trend from increased concentrations is inevitable. Physics - it's a bitch.

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

Again, you have missed the point, but then that is not surprising. The point I made was that if the facts were as those were arguing, they were making a good argument. The original poster did NOT say their facts were wrong, he said the logic of their argument was laughable.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

You're right, how incomprehensibly silly to point out that increasing temperatures observed on multiple planets in our solar system might suggest that the Earth's warming is primarily due to something other than yuppies driving SUVs.

It would be silly to speculate on that, absent being able to provide any such observation to prove it, and absent an explanation as to why increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are NOT causing warming, per the long accepted greenhouse gas theory established 150 years ago.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

Again, you have missed the point, but then that is not surprising.

Hardly likely, since I made the point, and thus get to say what the point is.

No increase in the Sun's output has been observed. There have been no observed climate changes on other planets coincident with the period of warming on earth. No plausible explanation has been proffered as to how adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has zero effect, contrary to experimental and direct observation.

It is thus a stupid argument that implies the people that proffer it are stupid.

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

And this is why people do not trust the global warming alarmists: they cannot tell the difference between an argument based on bad logic and one which is based on incorrect facts. Such a failure suggests that both their logic and their facts are flawed.

Re:Global warming

[dryeo]

While the solar wind might interact with Earths magnetosphere, it would not act on Mars (the chief planet that was referenced as warming) as there is no magnetosphere.
Usually the people referencing the planets are getting warmer did claim it was the Sun putting out more energy which would include heat, both directly as infrared and as other radiation. It is true that in the '90's the Sun was more active and some estimates put its affect on global temperature as high as 1/3rd, now we're in the opposite cycle with a less active Sun and we should be in a colder climate.
Of course long term the Sun is warming up and in a billion or so years the Earth will become uninhabitable unless moved.

Re:Global warming

[dryeo]

When its half the planets (Pluto was in the list as it was still considered a planet IIRC) and for 2 of them it was understood what was driving the warming, namely orbital mechanics. Both Pluto and Mars have very elliptical orbits, Pluto had just passed its closest point and was still warming much as the Earth gets the warmest after the longest day and Mars is shifting where in its orbit summer happens. Sort of like the Earth where the southern hemisphere summer happens when the Earth is closest to the Sun.
I never could find a reference for Saturn and Neptune getting warmer but both output more heat then they receive from the Sun through processes that are not completely understood. The test would have been Uranus, the only outer planet that doesn't put out more heat then it receives so if it was solar forcing Uranus should have shown the warming.
As the other poster says, it is simpler to observe the Sun then make inferences from what is happening to planets.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

You apparently live in a fantasy world where scientists want or need you to trust them when they state facts underpinned by observation. It would, of course, be better if you were rational and took scientific findings at face value, but if you choose not to, that is entirely your responsibility and you will be held liable for that choice.

I use the word 'liable' in the sense that sometime in the future when the consequences of climate change start to hurt inevitably many will be asking who is responsible for the fact that no timely action was taken? At which point those who indulged in speculative fantasies and chose to promote those fantasies had better lawyer up.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that when an argument is both based on incorrect facts, and unsound, there is no point in arguing about why it is sound or not and pointing out that it is based on incorrect facts shows it is moot so we can move on.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

If your measurements of the forces which you believe to be possible causes does not explain those temperature rises, it suggests that either your measurements are faulty or there is some other force at work on all of those planets.

No, that is a false dichotomy, such data does not suggests it has to be one of those two options. It can strongly suggest that there are different mechanisms at play for different planets, which wouldn't be surprising considering how different the chemistry and atmospheric cycles are on each planet. To say it suggests there still has to be a connection is fallacious.

"Hey, I've heard an American families are increasingly having less disposable income because they have to spend more money paying interest in debt, didn't you say you were short on money recently?" "Yeah, but I have no debt currently." "But you aren't taken into consideration the majority of other American families, you must have some debt you don't know about."

Re:Global warming

[Belial6]

If you notice, I was specifically clear that I was not arguing any specific mechanism or outcome. I was just pointing out a flawed hypothisis. This is one of the reasons so many people are sceptical. Those that are trying to convince us of AGW do not listen to what is being said. They frequently repeat arguements that are non-sequitor to what was stated.

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

So, you are making the point that the facts the argument was based on were not correct (or were better explained by other explanations). That is a valid response, but it does not make the original argument "laughable". It just makes it wrong.

Re:Global warming

[Attila Dimedici]

What "timely action" would you suggest that we take? All of the actions which I have seen proposed would have a devastating impact on freedom and world economies, but the scientists have told us they would have insignificant impact on the warming which they claim is coming. Of course, the people proposing these actions are generally people who fly all over the earth to tell us that we should not fly so much.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

No increase in the Sun's output has been observed. There have been no observed climate changes on other planets coincident with the period of warming on earth.

That's a b.s. argument either way. Mercury doesn't have an atmosphere, Venus is so hot that you wouldn't expect to see a change, Mars climate is dominated by its ice cap cycle, and beyond Mars, the sun has almost no effect on temperature anyway.

No plausible explanation has been proffered as to how adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has zero effect, contrary to experimental and direct observation.

It has had an effect: it's gotten a bit warmer. That's all. Not a disaster, and not a disaster in the making.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists are a diverse bunch of people with many ideas and theories. Many of those are wrong, some of them are right.

The problem isn't with trusting scientists or their results, the problem is that global warming alarmists pick and choose the theories and results they like to support the political agenda they prefer, and on top of that misrepresent those results.

Re:Global warming

[Reziac]

The third is that their solar irradiance chart is a fair match for observed temperature trends...

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

can we get back to the J-spot now?
I mean, if it keeps on shrinking and becomes invisible to the naked eye, as a man, I won't be able to find it anymore...

Monolith!

[gigne]

all these planets are yours except europa

Re:Monolith!

[sysrammer]

ybmti

Re:Monolith!

[Vinegar Joe]

Uranus is mine!!!

Re:Monolith!

[InsultsByThePound]

I heard it's getting bigger all the time as well as it's frame, so you are welcome to it.

Re:Monolith!

[jfdavis668]

Aren't we about to attempt a landing on Europa?

Re:Monolith!

[jfdavis668]

Quick, organize a mission to the Tycho crater, it's our only hope!

Re:Monolith!

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's come to this. People can't even be bothered to get a quote from one of the most awesome science fiction films ever made right. Or even capitalise it.

Re:Monolith!

[boristdog]

I haven't heard that since I did a nickle in Leavenworth.

Re:Monolith!

[Chordonblue]

Also in reference to the 2010 movie, after reading the title to this article, all I could here was Curnow screaming, "It's shrinking, IT'S SHRINKING!!!"

Re:Monolith!

[Anonymous Coward]

TMI

Re:Monolith!

[Anonymous Coward]

And then you guys bitch when I insist on still calling Pluto a planet? When the hell did fucking Europa get promoted? Who authorized it? Because I sure did not!

Re:Monolith!

[Anonymous Coward]

piiiiiiiiiiIIiIIIIIII-iiiiiIiiiiIIIIIiIIII-iiiIiiiiiiIIIIIIIiII-iIiiiiiiiiIIIiIIIIII-iiIIiiiiiiIIIIIIiiII...

Re:Monolith!

[Anonymous Coward]

"All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there."

Re:Monolith!

[CSHARP123]

What are you going to do with it? It is dark as hell you know. Not much sunlight

Re:Monolith!

[Anonymous Coward]

*worlds

Re:Monolith!

[RockDoctor]

Quick, organize a mission to the Tycho crater, it's our only hope!

To the standard Slashdot-isms of RTFA and RTFS, I think we can add RTFB or WTFF too.

It's all about gravity

[Vinegar Joe]

The average Jovian's carbon footprint is much heavier than a Terran's.

Re:It's all about gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

The average Jovian's carbon footprint is much heavier than a Terran's.

I think it's not so much gravity, but rather the division by zero in your calculations.

The big red eye is closing...

[Emmi59]

The big red eye is closing. May be Jupiter is tired watching us destroying Earth...?

Re:The big red eye is closing...

[peragrin]

Or the Sun is getting ready to fire a plasma lance(solar flare) at us. The red eye is a count down when it disappears they fire.

I have always wondered what would happen if an earth sized object(like one of it's many moons) crashed into Jupiter? what would the resulting crash look like? The heat would last for a century or two as well. Enough heat to alter the winds of jupiter? I am probably wrong.

Re:The big red eye is closing...

[Wansu]

Now a big brown eye will appear.

Re:The big red eye is closing...

[RockDoctor]

I have always wondered what would happen if an earth sized object(like one of it's many moons) crashed into Jupiter?

Ganymede, the largest, is 2634 km in radius ; Earth is 6371 km in radius. Ganymede has 0.41 of the radius of Earth and a smidgin over 7% of the volume. Since the Earth has considerable compression of it's interior due to it's size and density, the mass ratio is greater : just 2.5% (1/40th) of Earth's.

But yes, an Earth-like object (if you could find a spare one ; I'd be reluctant to use Venus, because moving it is likely to make an unholy mess for us and Mercury) would certainly make a big bang. but since it'd be about 0.3% of the mass of Jupiter, I don't think it would really do a lot of long-term harm to Jupiter. After a million years or so, you probably wouldn't be able to tell it had been there.

Could you blow the atmosphere off? No, I don't think that is remotely credible. You could create a mess in the top 50,000km or so (~4 Earth diameters) of the atmosphere, but the rest would probably not notice directly. The messed-up region would be sheared into the rest of the atmosphere on a pretty short timescale - a few thousand revolutions, a terrestrial year or so. But the internal heat engine would resume domination pretty quickly once the energy had been distributed more-or-less evenly.

Transiting an Earth-sized object through the plane of Jupiter's satellites would make a big mess though. You might strip out several of them, depending on the exact trajectory.

Hubble Rules!

[thephydes]

Another testament to one of the most amazing "machines" ever created. Hubble is a truly awesome telescope, and the pictures that come from it continue to amaze and astound us.

Re:Hubble Rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another testament to the fact that we are exploring space just fine from our computer chairs. No one actually had to be in space to take those pictures.

Re:Hubble Rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers are garbage and will be wiped out in 2021. DUH

Slide rulers are the only technology capable of getting us to mars you ignorant idiot....

Re:Hubble Rules!

[S.O.B.]

I agree that we can learn a lot using telescopes and autonomous/semi-autonomous robots but nothing captures the imagination quite like one of us actually going there.

Re:Hubble Rules!

[jfdavis668]

Computers are a passing fad

Re:Hubble Rules!

[newcastlejon]

No one actually had to be in space to take those pictures.

Apart from when Hubble was launched or when it needed repairs.

Re:Hubble Rules!

[Solandri]

Just to put some perspective on this, the Shuttle was designed to launch NRO spy satellites. The entire reason its cargo bay was as large as it was was so it could carry a spy satellite into orbit. Hubble was also designed to fit in this bay, so coincidentally ended up being almost the exact same size as a spy satellite.

Since the Shuttle began operating, 16 such spy satellites have been launched into orbit (not all aboard the shuttle - some go into polar orbits and are launched from Vandenberg AFB). 13 KH-11, 2 Misty, 1 EIS. So that's basically 16 Hubble-like satellites for spying vs. 1 Hubble for exploration (though to be fair there have been 5 service missions to Hubble). And I'm not including the spy satellites which used film and were operational until the 1980s. The NRO even donated two Hubble-sized optical assemblies (main and secondary mirrors) believed to be from unused or canceled spy satellites to NASA.

This probably comes across like an anti-NRO rant. I don't mean it that way - the NRO is simply doing the job it's been tasked with by our politicians. I'm just pointing out that our mistrust and suspicion of each other consumes a helluva lot more of our time and money than our desire to explore and discover new things (not created by other people).

Must be global cooling...

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know it shrinks when it gets cold.

This downsizing

[oodaloop]

downsizing

In my organization, we call it rightsizing. Of course, we didn't call it that while we were expanding.

Better question

[jfdavis668]

What has keep it going all these years?

Re:Better question

[Guppy06]

There's not much to stop it and disrupt the circulation (e.g. mountains).

Re:Better question

[Waccoon]

Fluid simulations have shows that vortexes spinning in the opposite direction of a planet's rotation tend to continue spinning in a stable manner, and will eventually consolidate into a single vortex. Vortexes spinning with the planet's rotation will dissipate.

I assume something similar explains the hexagonal shape of the storm at the pole of Saturn.

Re:Better question

[Anonymous Coward]

What has keep it going all these years?

Right wing propaganda... with all that hot air

2001

[docwatson223]

Didn't Arthur C. Clarke write about this - like right before the Monolith ignited Jupiter? ;)

Rate of shrinkage

[Zocalo]

For those that don't RTFA it seems like the rate of shrinkage has dramatically accelerated in the last few years - the extent of this being something that probably ought to be included in the summary. It was ~23,500km across when the Voyager probes imaged it in 1979/1980 and is down to ~16,500km in the latest Hubble image, yet the current rate of shrinkage is quoted at almost 1,000km/year since 2012. That makes me think it's behaving like many Terrestial storms and it's going to blow over and dissipate quite quickly, which could mean that it could be gone entirely before the end of the decade. While it was never going to be around indefinitely I'm still somewhat stunned at the notion that I'm probably going to outlive something that has always seemed like a permanent fixture and a defining feature of Jupiter akin to Saturn's rings.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[StripedCow]

Interesting. Makes me wonder, what is they age of the feature?

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[Anonymous Coward]

Things my kids will never learn about in school....first it was the planet Pluto, now it's the great red spot of Jupiter. Hopefully Saturn will still have will still have rings for a few years.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[Noryungi]

Interesting. Makes me wonder, what is they age of the feature?

Oldest reports of the Red Spot on Jupiter have been tentatively dated (roughly) to the late 1600s. It was studied by Cassini (the original astronomer, not the satellite of the same name). It's been studied extensively since the early 1800s. So we are talking about a storm raging on Jupiter that has been going on for 400+ years at least.

Think about this: that storm -- 3 times to size of the Earth at its biggest -- has been visible from the Earth for 400+ years. With winds hundreds of kilometers an hour running inside.

And now it's dying, and we may be witnesses to an amzing events in the coming years. Thinking about it gives me chills.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not clear if the storm seen in the 1600s is the same as the one we're seeing now. It's only been continuously watched since 1878.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[wonkey_monkey]

Think about this: that storm -- 3 times to size of the Earth at its biggest -- has been visible from the Earth for 400+ years.

Ah, but Jupiter rotates. How do you know it's the same spot each time?

Maybe Jupiter is blushing because it knows we've been looking at its bum.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[Anonymous Coward]

It might not actually be shrinking.

To me it looks more like it may be changing the composition of the material actually IN the spot, thus the apparent change is an illusion.

The 2014 image shows two such swirls in the equatorial zone that are only slightly smaller (the band they are in is smaller too) - yet their color is white.

Suppose that all that is happening is that the colored material is just precipitating out...

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[gstoddart]

So we are talking about a storm raging on Jupiter that has been going on for 400+ years at least.

And, to put that into perspective, Jupiter is likely, what, several billion years old?

To expect that this has been a permanent feature of Jupiter is thinking on human timescales.

On astronomical timescales, this may well be a transient blip.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[StripedCow]

Even if it didn't rotate, how do you know it's still the same spot?

Its atoms could be renewing themselves every X planck time units.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably one of the most interesting planets to look at anyways. Saturn has its rings, but the planet that we see almost looks like a piece of sanded wood - it's just so smooth and peaceful in most cases. It had a storm in 2011, but that ran its course in short order. Uranus is similar, as it is mostly quiet, but its defining feature is being on its side; its auroras happen along its equator. Neptune has violent weather similar to Jupiter, but it lacks the kind of bands of gases that Jupiter displays so prominently. Heck, Neptune even has its own dark spot of a storm, though I doubt as many people are aware of it as the red spot on Jupiter.

Jupiter, however, is always a swirling torrent. The different bands of colors are always mixing and mingling. It's a bit sad that we'll lose the red spot that has identified that planet for as long as we - as individuals - have known it, but Jupiter will still have its own identity in its colored bands and erratic vortexes.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoemaker–Levy 9?

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes all astronomers should quit analysing the red spot with spectrographs that can measure velocities and readily identify an "edge" to the spot at which velocities merge into the relatively laminar flows of the usual cloud systems, along with identifying what the spot is composed from in the first place. An AC on /. has spoken and it just looks like the composition of the material is changing!

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[johnsie]

I never read the aticle... I only come for the funny comments, and sometimes someone posts an interesting link. Not much on this article. Some uranus jokes and people talking about how crap space travel has become. Sending radio controlled cars to planets instead of people.How many mars missions to look for water? Hopefully the next generation will be more interested in cool space stuff.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[RockDoctor]

And, to put that into perspective, Jupiter is likely, what, several billion years old?

It's (to a close approximation) the same age as the Earth. And the most recent estimate for that which I've committed to memory is a rather convenient number : 4567 million years. No, seriously.

Since assembly of the Earth (and it's probable giant impact and the formation of the Moon from the impact debris) is modelled to have taken several millions of years, that numerical coincidence is pretty likely to have been within the duration of that assembly, to the timescale of the events themselves.

Reloading

[Anonymous Coward]

It is getting ready to fire.

Cosmetics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jupiter finally found out about Clearasil!

That monolith the Chinese found?

[INT_QRK]

This have anything to do with that monolith the Chinese rover found on the moon? (...just thought I'd start that roomer.)

Re:That monolith the Chinese found?

[INT_QRK]

make that "rumor"...too early and it's raining

Re:That monolith the Chinese found?

[Anonymous Coward]

or even "rumour". Let's be all British about this. Stiff upper lip and all that

Cure for cancer

[Racerdude]

If we go there we could find the cure for cancer... or, well, at least melanoma

living under a racist corepirate nazi wmd cabal

[Anonymous Coward]

cleansing they call it http://rt.com/op-edge/159384-uk-budget-defense-bilderberg/

The economy is worse than I thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Jupiter is downsizing.

Exactly to the word what my last girlfriend said

[Anonymous Coward]

I told here the cold does that to men. She didn't buy it. I told her it's normal as a man hits 30. She didn't buy it. I told her to suck it. She didn't buy it.

Downsizing? Really?

[wonkey_monkey]

Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot — a swirling storm feature larger than Earth — is shrinking. This downsizing...

Or "shrinking" as it is usually known...

C'mon. I know "downsizing" has a specific and vaguely useful meaning but it is generally a pretty dumb-sounding word.

Its use here rankles me almost to a similar degree as hearing a comedian being introduced as a "funnyman."

Re:Downsizing? Really?

[Sockatume]

Either way, its meaning has nothing to do with the reduction in the size of an object.

Climate Disruption!

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget Global Warming! It's (queue the scary music)... CLIMATE DIIISSSSSSRRRRUUUUPPPTTTTIIIOOOONNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gather all your politicians! Post on all your Social Media Sites! Humans, the cancer of The Most Holy Sacred Blessed Mother Earth, have now impacted Jupiter! It's too late for Mama Earth, but we can still SAVE JUPITER!

Oh, the HORROR of it all!

incorrect - 40 astronauts required to date.

[ferret4]

5 crews of 7 astronauts have gone into space on repair missions, including the first mission to repair Hubble's faulty lenses that would have rendered it useless. Add to that the 5 astronauts that took Hubble into space in the first place and you have a total of 40 people in space. Some of those 40 may possibly be the same across 6 missions, I'll let you research that yourself.

Re:incorrect - 40 astronauts required to date.

[johnsie]

Got better things to be doing, sorry

Damn, I feel old.

[B33rNinj4]

Pluto isn't a planet, and now this? It's a sad day indeed.

Re:Damn, I feel old.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at astronomic history you'll find that concepts come and go quickly. If you would have told Einstein that there were separate galaxies back when he was picking up his Nobel prize he would have been astounded.

Re:Damn, I feel old.

[iggymanz]

Depends if Einstein read of the work-in-progress in astronomy, Hubble did see other stars in Andromeda in 1919 using the 100 inch Hooker telescope, but gathered data and invented a way of measuring distance to other galaxies (using certain types of variable stars) over the next 10 years, finally publishing in 1929

Shrinkage?

[mu51c10rd]

Maybe it just got out of the pool...

#bringbackourspot

[T.E.D.]

Next we'll see pictures of a whole bunch of different celebrities holding up white cards with #bringbackourspot written on them.

My first guess would be Madonna, since her cheek seems to have lost a spot sometime around 1992. Also, Lady Gaga seems to keep losing hers and finding it again on another part of her face. So they can empathize.

Re:#bringbackourspot

[Anonymous Coward]

And they'll be just as effective as the ones holding signs that read "Bring back our girls."

Hubble needed fixin'

[kilfarsnar]

Another testament to the fact that we are exploring space just fine from our computer chairs. No one actually had to be in space to take those pictures.

Didn't they have to do a space walk to repair or adjust the telescope because it was taking blurry pictures? It seems someone did need to be in space for us to see these pictures!

You mean they have climate change there TOO!!??

[marcgvky]

Wow, must people anthro climate change there, too!!!

Re:You mean they have climate change there TOO!!??

[iggymanz]

no, it's just weather, which on gas giant large storms lasting decades to centuries are quite normal

Can we send Al Gore and the IPCC to investigate??

[marcgvky]

That should free the rest of us up, to live out the next 20 years without them destroying our lives and economies.

Humans caused this

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw on a conspiracy website this morning that this shrinking is being caused by the Galileo satellite that we crashed into Jupiter, and that the mission of this satellite was not to study Jupiter, but to eliminate the spot, which is thought by the Illuminati to interfere with their mind control rays.

Outsourced

[dts3]

Global warming is just a clever attempt by Jupiter to outsource it's Giant Storm(tm) to the third-world planet known as "Earth"

Many Large Storms

[JMandingo]

Looking at that photo linked in the article, I just realized that there are many other large storms visible on Jupiter. There are three large off-white ones just above the red one that are comparable in size. They do not stand out as much because they lack the striking red color and instead blend into the surrounding clouds. There is a little orange one at bottom left. I wonder if those other storms have persisted as long as the big red eye?

You can watch it on the Internet!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Boy, we haven't seen a giant dark spot that large that the public has seen start shrinking since Kim Kardashian had anal bleaching.

Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Globalclimatewarmingdisruptionchange.

Call Dave Bowman!

[jpellino]

This time make sure his trusty cyberpal has a kill switch.

It eats smaller spots.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

What has keep it going all these years?

As I understand it (I DON'T study this, but just recall previous articles):

The Great Red Spot is a big storm. It happens that the dynamics of storms on Jupiter is such that they move east/west at different speeds, and when they collide they combine. So Jupiter usually has a big Borg storm that has been growig by assimilating little storms more than it has been shrinking by "blowing out".

I have also read that such storms, though very long-lived, have died out even in the geologically-short period Jupiter has been observed, and new ones grown up later - not necessarily in the same hemisphere.

I haven't heard of a situation where there have been two or more of them - either one each in the northern and soutern hemisphere or two in the same hemisphere at different lattitudes. But observation of Jupiter is young in terms of the length of its weather cycles.

Similarly, Earth's ocean currents are also apparently "weather" - exhibiting positive feedback and chaotic behavior, not just a constant response to heat sources, sinks, and seabed geometry - but with an even longer time scale than Jupiter's storms.

Re:It eats smaller spots.

[PPH]

There are also some theories that the spot causes and is a result of some chemical changes in the Jovian atmosphere. I believe it is cooler and a 'high pressure' weather phenomena. Some chemical phase changes may occur at some point which discourage energy transfer to/from the spot as well as an effect something akin to surface tension. Where the compounds inside the spot are attracted to ech other more strongly than to those of the rest of the atmosphere.

Re:It eats smaller spots.

[aix tom]

Well, there seems to be Red Spot Jr." ready to take over business from the old fellow. ..... Or maybe they do a merger later on....

My God

[stonecutter2]

It's full of stars.

Someone explain this to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a storm on say Jupiter or Neptune (black spot) exist for a long period of time?

Most storms on Earth blow over (no pun intended) after a day or two...

Simple

[slapout]

It started dieting and working out and lost a few pounds.

Sadly

[p51d007]

You won't change most of their minds....they've had over 20 years of indoctrination in government schools, colleges & universities, not to mention the bias in the media.

tourism down

[Tablizer]

There goes Jup's tourism industry.

1974 for comparison:

[Tablizer]

Look how wide it was in 1974, when Pioneer 11 flew by:

http://wisp.physics.wisc.edu/a...

This has been known for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Even amateur astronomers for years--5> 10? 20?--have noticed this. I've been once for about 15 years, and have never seen what some have referred to as the great beige spot. (I did say I'm a good amateur astronomer). Not only is it getting smaller, the red colour is fading.

Solargenic Global Warming vs AGW

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

So, in the equation predicting global warming, the coefficient for "anthrogenic" causes on Jupiter is probably 0.0000 while the "solargenic" coefficient is not zero. But the solargenic coefficient on Earth should be similar to the solargenic coefficient on Jupiter (adjusting for usual square-distance laws), the scientifically interesting question is what is the ratio of these two coefficients on earth? The politically interesting question does not care about this aspect of the science, only about the absolute non-zero-ness of the anthrogenic coefficient.

Arguments

[cwsumner]

It's amazing how many arguments reduce to the people arguing about the meaning of words!
Maybe we should start with defining our terms? 8-)