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Bizarre Hexagon On Saturn May Be 180 Miles Tall (space.com)
Iwastheone shares a report from Space.com: The weird hexagon swirling around Saturn's north pole is much taller than scientists had thought, a new study suggests. Researchers have generally regarded the 20,000-mile-wide (32,000 kilometers) hexagon -- a jet stream composed of air moving at about 200 mph (320 km/h) -- as a lower-atmosphere phenomenon, restricted to the clouds of Saturn's troposphere. But the bizarre structure actually extends about 180 miles (300 km) above those cloud tops, up into the stratosphere, at least during the northern spring and summer, a new study suggests. The hexagon, which surrounds a smaller circular vortex situated at the north pole, has existed for at least 38 years; NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft spotted the sharp-cornered feature when they flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981, respectively. Scientists started to get much more detailed looks at the hexagon in 2004, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting the ringed planet. But Cassini's hexagon observations were pretty much confined to the troposphere for a decade after its arrival; springtime didn't come to Saturn's north until 2009, and low temperatures in the stratosphere continued to compromise measurements by the probe's Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) instrument for another five years.
The formation of a stratospheric hexagon appears to be tied to the warming brought on by the change of seasons, the research team wrote in the new study. Indeed, Cassini spied a vortex high above the south pole during its early years at Saturn, when that hemisphere was enjoying summer. (Saturn takes 30 Earth years to orbit the sun, so seasons on the ringed planet last about 7.5 years apiece.) But the southern stratospheric vortex wasn't hexagonal. And neither, for that matter, is the vortex that spins around the south pole lower down, in the tropospheric clouds, the researchers said. "This could mean that there's a fundamental asymmetry between Saturn's poles that we're yet to understand, or it could mean that the north polar vortex was still developing in our last observations and kept doing so after Cassini's demise," study lead author Leigh Fletcher, of the University of Leicester in England, said in a statement.
The formation of a stratospheric hexagon appears to be tied to the warming brought on by the change of seasons, the research team wrote in the new study. Indeed, Cassini spied a vortex high above the south pole during its early years at Saturn, when that hemisphere was enjoying summer. (Saturn takes 30 Earth years to orbit the sun, so seasons on the ringed planet last about 7.5 years apiece.) But the southern stratospheric vortex wasn't hexagonal. And neither, for that matter, is the vortex that spins around the south pole lower down, in the tropospheric clouds, the researchers said. "This could mean that there's a fundamental asymmetry between Saturn's poles that we're yet to understand, or it could mean that the north polar vortex was still developing in our last observations and kept doing so after Cassini's demise," study lead author Leigh Fletcher, of the University of Leicester in England, said in a statement.
Nice to see the giant bees have made a start on their honeycomb.
Tallest hexagon in the Solar System, folks. Taller than under Obama -- or even Lincoln. Really tall... tallest *ever*.
[ You... just... wait. :-) ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
FFS America, it's time to leave the awful Imperial units behind, just like the British Empire has.
Nobody's going there anytime soon or using it for anything at all.
This isn't a problem with US scientists, as the published paper uses SI units throughout, no "miles" anywhere. The problem is space.com, dumbing down its science reporting to prevent its readers' brains from exploding, or something like that.
Well I beg to differ with that perception. American readers who are interested in the sciences can handle SI units just fine, it's only people with no STEM interest at all who curl up into a fetal position whenever their brains turn on. Don't paint everyone with that brush.
The solution is simple: give space.com a wide berth, or send them negative feedback about their mishandling of science.
Let's just be honest and to the point. That is an advanced super weapon directed at earth, designed to wipe out humans once we discvoer their colony at Saturn.
I thought seasons (on Earth) are caused by the wobble on the axis of rotation, not it's position within the orbit around the Sun.
Is this different for Saturn? Does it not wobble, and (therefore) does the distance to the sun determine the seasons instead?
The question is, where does it go? :O
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Go back to your QAnon site son.
Saturn is really just a big alien spaceship!
I tend to rant.
A quote from the History Channel, "I'm not saying it's aliens, but It's Aliens"!
This article summary does not rule out a magnetic field surrounding Saturn.
This funny hexagon can be only the result of one thing: global warming as a result of human CO2 production. Case closed.
Thargons.
This is clearly an attempt to create a Thargoid base on Saturn, or maybe it's one of their ships.
On being asked for a statement, Commander Jameson repeatedly stated "It isn't my fault!".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If only there were other instances of hexagonal shapes in nature - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_Causeway
(Hey cool, my future self visited me just now and told me that you're just going to scoff at these "artificial" stones too.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's a " QAnon site" ??
What they're not telling you, and NASA may well deny a little too quickly, is that they found a gap for some other hexagonal shapes that Cassini was able to drop in for a perfect fit, whereupon the entire layer immediately disappeared.
Queue Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra". Quick! Time is of the essence!
2001 was a fine documentary, but they got the shape of the monolith wrong. Obviously it's hexagonal, because such a shape is better at tiling over curved surfaces than a rectangle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anyone ever seen wind blowing in sharp corners?
It's not an 'anomaly', it's totally ARTIFICIAL, that is, it is not something that was created by NATURE.
Those corners are sharp only when seen from interplanetary distances. Up close, there is plenty of room for natural phenomena to operate.
wtf is all this trippy ass space shit.
1. If you look at the picture, it isn't a sharp corner. The curve radius is bigger then the earth.
2. Hexagons are natural aspects of squishing circles together. We see it in bubbles forming together and what bees make. It appears that there is some sort of outward force fighting the inward forces.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How much experience do you have with methane winds at -180 degrees on a gas giant with high gravity? Just wondering.
Is that a trick question to see whether he's an alien visitor?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I saw a pot at a musuem filled with water and glitter. It was hooked up to a motor which would swirl the glitter water. At just the right amount of swirl, the pattern formed inside was hexagonal. Fluid dynamics, all natural, no aliens involved.
Oh, and for all you foreigners on Slashdot: the US does not use "imperial" measurements. Only the countries that gained their independence from the UK in the 20th Century used those (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc.), as well as the UK, obviously. The US uses "Customary" units which evolved from imperial units but had most of the weirdness removed (rationalized).
I think he wanted you to cite QAnon but misspelled.
When I saw the headline, I knew that half the slashdot comments would be about SI units. Right again.
Enough to need a new pair of pants.
The origin of the hexagon is no real mystery. It was recreated in a laboratory tank 8 years ago. (Link includes a video showing a hexagon forming in the tank). It forms when the spin rates between the inner and outer fluid hit a certain ratio. Normally the speed differential creates a chaotic interface at the boundary layer. But at certain ratios it creates a standing wave which forms a hexagon (well, not really standing since it moves, but in a certain rotational frame it's a standing wave).
It's impressive that the hexagon is that tall, since that implies the wind speeds are consistent through that height.
Next time I'll park the deep space probe in a garage.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Get my family freindly Goat C shirt! ~ CaptainSmork
Might also google "Benard cell".
I solved this mystery several years ago. The answer came after wondering why life is all carbon based. It's because the fabric of spacetime is hexagonal, carbon moves through it with the least decay. Rain drops form hexagonal snowflake because gravitational forces are not felt when it's falling through the fabric of spacetime.
Signed Nathan Brazil
You can see hexagonal bernard cells on the surface of the sun.
-excerpted from
http://milesmathis.com/venus2....
"...Here is what Stephen Smith says in a Thunderbolts press release:
"For many years researchers studying the issue have known that beams of electricity flowing through plasma
produce a central column surrounded by concentric cylinders. The cylindrical current filaments exhibit long-range
attraction and short-range repulsion braiding that result in evenly spaced vortices surrounding the column. As the
filaments rotate around one another, a preferred hexagonal cross-section forms within the innermost column.
Hexagonal craters can be seen etched into the surfaces of planets and moons. Weather patterns, such as
hurricanes on Earth, also exhibit hexagonal âoeeyesâ that defy conventional explanation."
So again, we see an explanation with very little content. According to the EU model, Saturn shows a
hexagon because plasmas show a hexagon. But that begs the question, âoeWhy do plasmas show
hexagons?â The EU explanation is somewhat more complete than the mainstream explanation, since it
links planetary structures to the E/M field, which is of course correct. But the hexagon is then only
somewhat less mysterious, since we still don't know why plasmas create them.
If you have studied my nuclear diagrams, you know why the charge field creates hexagonal structures:
the nucleus is hexagonal. All charge fields are hexagonal at the ground level, that is, so if we scale
them up without destroying the shape, we should expect to see the hexagon. The only reason we don't
see it more often is that the local or atomic field isn't scaled up evenly. Either the larger body isn't
perfectly spherical (as one example), or the body isn't homogeneous (as another). What we need to
maintain the hexagon is a homogeneous field in a homogeneous and symmetrical body, and that rarely
happens, especially at large scales. Apparently, on the north pole of Saturn it is happening, and that is
what we are seeing. Once you have a diagram of the nucleus, the hexagon isn't mysterious at all..."
http://milesmathis.com/venus2....
You maybe interested to know that there is an indirect relationship between the metre and the foot.
This relationship moderated by the cubit. More specifically the Egyptian Royal Cubit (ERC). If you set unity as one foot then the relationship between a foot to a cubit is expressed in the ratio of 1:(e-1) (Euler-1).
Interestingly the relationship doesn't end there. If you take a one metre pendulum and swing it 15 degrees from the resting point (i.e through 30 degrees - but no more because the amplitude changes), the pendulum has a frequency of one second. The base of the triangle it forms at the metre mark equals 1 ERC. This is interesting because 1 ERC=0.523 metres which is pi/6=0.523 radian=30 degrees. So pi/6 metres = 1.717 feet = e-1 = 1 ERC. Something else that is interesting is that 1km*phi = 1 mile (+-10metres).
There is much more than this and to really bring the relationship between these measures together 1 metre + 1 ERC = 5 feet, +1 foot = 6 feet. I think that what these numbers tell us is that the unit of measure we are using are constants (of measure perhaps) and maybe not as arbitrary as we may think. Obviously these are things you can test yourself quite easily.
Bringing us back to the topic 1:pi/6 is the two dimensional relationship of a hexagon in a circle.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
As l like to point out to our friends who pop a gasket every time someone dares to mention a non-metric unit of measure, The official metre id defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 second
You maybe interested to know that there is an indirect relationship between the metre and the foot.
This relationship moderated by the cubit. More specifically the Egyptian Royal Cubit (ERC). If you set unity as one foot then the relationship between a foot to a cubit is expressed in the ratio of 1:(e-1) (Euler-1).
Interestingly the relationship doesn't end there. If you take a one metre pendulum and swing it 15 degrees from the resting point (i.e through 30 degrees - but no more because the amplitude changes), the pendulum has a frequency of one second. The base of the triangle it forms at the metre mark equals 1 ERC. This is interesting because 1 ERC=0.523 metres which is pi/6=0.523 radian=30 degrees. So pi/6 metres = 1.717 feet = e-1 = 1 ERC. Something else that is interesting is that 1km*phi = 1 mile (+-10metres).
There is much more than this and to really bring the relationship between these measures together 1 metre + 1 ERC = 5 feet, +1 foot = 6 feet. I think that what these numbers tell us is that the unit of measure we are using are constants (of measure perhaps) and maybe not as arbitrary as we may think. Obviously these are things you can test yourself quite easily.
Bringing us back to the topic 1:pi/6 is the two dimensional relationship of a hexagon in a circle.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.