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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."

17 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Global warming by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    Must be global warming...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Global warming by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
    2. Re:Global warming by KeensMustard · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  2. Monolith! by gigne · · Score: 5, Funny

    all these planets are yours except europa

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    Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
    1. Re:Monolith! by Vinegar+Joe · · Score: 5, Funny

      Uranus is mine!!!

      --
      "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
  3. It's all about gravity by Vinegar+Joe · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    --
    "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
    1. Re:It's all about gravity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

  4. Hubble Rules! by thephydes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    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.

      --
      Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
  5. Must be global cooling... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We all know it shrinks when it gets cold.

  6. This downsizing by oodaloop · · Score: 3, Funny

    downsizing

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

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  7. Better question by jfdavis668 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What has keep it going all these years?

  8. Rate of shrinkage by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    1. Re:Rate of shrinkage by Noryungi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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      The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
    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.
  9. incorrect - 40 astronauts required to date. by ferret4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. Damn, I feel old. by B33rNinj4 · · Score: 4, Funny

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