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NASA's Jupiter Mission Juno Reveals Giant Polar Storms (bbc.com)
NASA's Juno mission to the gas giant Jupiter has reached its halfway mark and has revealed new views of cyclones at the poles. The BBC reports: As it orbits the planet every 53 days - Juno performs a science-gathering dive, speeding from pole to pole. Its sensors take measurements of the composition of the planet, in an effort to decipher how the largest world in our Solar System formed. Mapping the magnetic and gravity fields should also expose Jupiter's structure.
But images from JunoCam -- a camera that was intended to capture images that could be shared with the public -- has already given us some surprising insights. "When we made our first pass over the poles, we knew we were seeing a territory on Jupiter we had never seen before," said Dr Candice Hansen, from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona. "What we did not expect was that we would see these orderly polygons of cyclones; huge storms - twice the size of Texas."
But images from JunoCam -- a camera that was intended to capture images that could be shared with the public -- has already given us some surprising insights. "When we made our first pass over the poles, we knew we were seeing a territory on Jupiter we had never seen before," said Dr Candice Hansen, from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona. "What we did not expect was that we would see these orderly polygons of cyclones; huge storms - twice the size of Texas."
Why is this surprising? Saturn has a hexagonal pattern near its north pole. This arises from strong horizontal wind shears and the resulting barotropic instability. The result is that the flow breaks down into periodic vortices. This can be demonstrated in lab experiments and we observe it on Earth at other scales of motion. The eyewall of a hurricane frequently isn't circular, but tends to break down into a pentagon shape with five persistent mesovortices. The same process is responsible, just at a different scale of motion. The real question for me is what's different about Saturn's south pole that prevents this same process from occurring there.
Global Warming strikes again!
What does this even mean? How many Arizonas is that? Are we talking edge to edge laid out, and if so which orientation? There's a damn reason Europe went with the metric system and not the Texas system.
what the heck, who wants to die broke? what if there's a sky high cover charge in the 'new' new world? with this killer app you can invest in your gut feeling about who/what is going down first/next/hardest.. then wager on the comeback odds? as an app shareholder you may vicariously participate in the herding of legal beagles towards ultimate domination of the end of us..
next; hobbyist whiners advocate for timeout re; our poopslide into who knows where
these desperate attempts to justify cost of these missions by hastily claiming non existent new discoveries is counter productive.
The Juno mission has already reported solar storms on Jupiter in the past, in April, and images/video of them, including some earlier stuff from November of 2017.
Not to sound like I'm undermining the idea of learning more about Jupiter, but are they just going to report this every single time Juno goes by the poles?
Jupiter is undergoing climate change.