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The Shrinking Giant Red Spot of Jupiter

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-small dept.

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."

2 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hubble Rules! by S.O.B. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
  2. Re:Rate of shrinkage by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.