Huge Storms Converge on Jupiter 205
tpoker writes to tell us NASA is reporting that the two biggest storms in the solar system are about to collide on Jupiter. From the article: "Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The behemoth has been spinning around Jupiter for hundreds of years. Storm #2 is Oval BA, also known as 'Red Jr.,' a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin."
Nice job, editors! (Score:5, Funny)
But seriously, did anyone else think that Hollywood is going to use this as the background for The Perfect Storm II?
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:3, Informative)
Except for the whole basic math thing.
If one object is two earths wide, and another object is one earth wide, the 2nd object is one FOURTH the size of the first, not one half.*
* Assumes objects are of the same shape and the shape is uniform in one dimension. Which should be pretty good assumptions in this case.
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:1)
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:5, Funny)
Mmm... incestulicious!
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:2)
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:2)
My problem with so-called "environmentalists:" When (at least partial) solutions are offered, like wind farms (re: nantucket sound wind farm), incinerators (burn trash to produce electrical power - proposed in the old Quonset Navy Base in Rhode Island, and one here in the Greater Boston area) get knocked down, moden nuclear power plants g
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:2)
These storms are so strong,
How strong are they?
They could actually make Al Gore move.
Thank you, slashdot! Tip your waitress! Help her back up!
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:1)
No, sorry. The cross section of Earth is very nearly circular. The Great Red Spot is very eliptical, being only about half as high as it is wide. In this case, something that is approximately twice as wide as Earth, also has approximately twice the area.
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:2)
Re:Nice job, editors! (Score:2)
Maybe... (Score:2)
Collide? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess the summary was a little bit of a hyperbole. Esp. for an event that happens every two years.
Re:Collide? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Collide? (Score:1)
Which means that we'll get something like this [wikipedia.org]:
A shear line is an area in a low pressure trough, usually in the tropics, within which wind direction changes significantly over a relatively short distance. The area is marked by an increase in cumuluform clouds, often including towering cumulus, and rainshowers. It may become more active with thunderstorms, and the turbulence and circular motion of winds may assist in the formation of a trop
Re:Collide? (Score:5, Informative)
What signifies about this particular encounter is that the small oval is thought to be intensified its strength recently (when its color changed from grey to red) and that just *might* cause a bit more interesting interaction between these two storms (when they pass by closely). It's a pure speculation based none other than intuition of scientists. Not based on a hydrodynamic simulation; just a wild ass guess on their part.
Of course, they wouldn't say that. That'd make this whole thing, well, boring.
Re:Collide? (Score:2, Funny)
Biggest damned mood ring I've ever seen.
Re:Collide? (Score:5, Informative)
Fluid dynamics, particularly on such a massive scale as storms on a planet like Jupiter, is still largely a matter of wild ass "guess"timates. With good reason.
The basic equations of fluid mechanics, the Navier-Stokes equations, are a second order, non-linear system of partial differential equations. Atmospheric gases are also compressible flows. Couple this with aerosols, rotation of the planet, and mondo awkward boundary conditions due to the surface curvature; it's lack of a crust; and the lack of a defined "end" of the atmosphere, finally sprinkling a generous dose of chaos theory in to account for sensitivity to initial conditions.... and you've got a problem that is to all intents and purposes, completely unsolvable.
And that's "just" the fluid dynamics problem. And the continuum hypothesis isn't the only way to solve it. You could use Lagrangian mechanics if one were so inclined.
And these are just theoretical issues. We haven't even spoken about the practical difficulties. First and foremost, throw hope for an analytic solution out the window, because it's not going to happen. You've got to go with a numerical solution. Which brings up the next question of which numerical techniques to you use, and how accurately do you use them. You've got to factor in time, cost and cpu ability. You'll have to parrallelise the whole deal, and make sure it's accurate enough to remain stable for long enough to predict but you want but quick enough so that you'll get your answer before the actual event happens.
And last, but by no means least, once you've got that data, how do you analyse it? How do you even present it? Remember, we're talking about 3d vortices here, embedded in a globe. How do you make sense of it all. What points are of interest? What events are key? What can you learn from all this? What size font should the image titles have? How will you make a paper out of all this!?
Faced with such an operation, you're often better off performing a simulation when faced with a fluid mechanics problem, or in the case where simulation is impossible such as with Jupiter, just make a wild assed guess, sit back and enjoy the show.
Re:Collide? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Collide? (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, we enjoy a good 5 days of prediction of weather patterns nowdays. I remember when I was a kid, and the computers weren't nearly as powerful, and we only had 2 or 3 days of prediction. Now we have fairly good predictions for up to 5 to 7 days.
Sure, initial parameters are different for Earth and Jupiter, although the problem isn't as intractable as you make it out to be. Societally, we have alot of collective experience modeling the types of problems you've described, and it would really only be a matter of modifying the initial parameters of our weather simulations to match those of Jupiter.
Something which I, for one, expect somebody at NASA to have done already.
On all counts (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem being that Jupiter does not have a constellation of satellites collecting data 24/7 and a huge number of ground-stations recording weather conditions at regular intervals all round its surface.
Without that data, what would you plug into your simulation, guesses?
Mod parent up... (Score:3, Informative)
Sean
Re:On all counts (Score:2)
Surface? I think this is defined as the depth in the jovian atmosphere where the pressure is @ 1 bar...
Jupiter is a gas giant and therefore the atmospheric conditions probably (Discl.: I am not an planetary atmospheres scientist...!) need to be known to a depth which is obscured from the view of the usual
Re:Collide? (Score:3, Informative)
Codswallop.
Hurricane forecasts on earth diverge the further out you get. None of them called the right turn Katrina pulled in the Gulf of Mexico before she first hit Florida. On 8/25/05, this was the forecast:
When was the last time a probe survived Jupiter? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Collide? (Score:2)
You can get a MEEEEELLion dollars if you make some headway on the Navier-Stokes Equations [claymath.org]. They are a superbitch. I love that these equations were described 200 years ago and we know they describe fluids better than any other representation we have dreamt up, but they are totally unworkable. It's like magic.
Blows as hard as the older cousin... (Score:5, Funny)
At 350Mph, that's what I call a massive blow job...
Re:The difference between like and love (Score:2)
The Environmentalists Are Right. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Environmentalists Are Right. (Score:5, Funny)
What, is that supposed to fill us with conviviality and good cheer?
Re:The Environmentalists Are Right. (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, great. (Score:5, Funny)
Crap. There go my weekend plans.
Re:Oh, great. (Score:1)
And I thought I was a sucker for buying Florida swamp land.
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
(insert rim-shot here)
looting martians (Score:5, Funny)
Discrimination, I tell you (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Discrimination, I tell you (Score:3, Funny)
In case you're wondering which planet-wide desaster allows us to infringe Earth copyr
Re:looting martians (Score:2)
Jovebeast #2: Jove Bush doesn't care about Martian people!
--Rob
ahh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ahh (Score:1, Funny)
Ahh, so you admit to being a pedophile (Red Spot Jr., 6 years) and a fetishist (Red Spot, >300 years.)
Re:ahh (Score:2)
Ahh, so you admit to being a pedophile (Red Spot Jr., 6 years)
I like the way your mind works.
I would love to see it happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Now having said that I will say that only one thing makes astronomy better - seeing these object in motion! Galaxies and nebula seem so unreal in hubble's photos - it's hard to fully comprehend what exactly they are - what they are really like. But when you view those precious few object we have been able to capture in motion, to me it is exquisite! Somehow, to me, it makes them that much more real, more tangible. And that is truly the dream of the soul - to somehow touch, taste, smell that which is so beautiful
I hope these astronomers string together this phenomenal convergence into a movie!
Jupiter's storms in motion [spaceflightnow.com]
Solar flares [nasa.gov]
Do you have any other cool astronomical movie links?
--
Music should be free [w33t.com]
Re:I would love to see it happen (Score:1)
You do know there are depraved geeks around here dont ya?!
Re:I would love to see it happen (Score:1)
--
Music should be free [w33t.com]
Re:I would love to see it happen (Score:2, Funny)
If I was a god I think I would want to piss you off for being too poetic. I would have both spots rotate behind Jupiter as usual, and then *nothing* come about the other side when they should rotate back into view. Zilch spots and zilch hints about where they went. It would be so much fun to F with people's brains. I wouldn't physically hurt my subjects, just
What I want to know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What I want to know... (Score:1)
Re:What I want to know... (Score:2)
I hope FEMA re-hires Michael "Heck of a job Brownie" Brown to head up the onsite command center.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sure there's a joke about horse shows here somewhere, too...
Re:What I want to know... (Score:1)
Re:What I want to know... (Score:2)
Not a whole heck of a lot. Standard Operating Procedure.
Wise Man Say (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Futurama (Score:3, Funny)
Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you."
Re:Wise Man Say (Score:2)
I think we'll be sure to hear... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I think we'll be sure to hear... (Score:2)
Anticipating looters already, are we?
Extraterrestrial weather reports? (Score:3, Funny)
I don't care about weather reports for cities 500 miles away, so why should I care about weather reports for a planet 500 million miles away???
Re:Extraterrestrial weather reports? (Score:2)
Flamebait? (Score:2)
Flamebait? It's a joke, people!
Re:Our Protector (Score:2)
Jeezus H. Christ! It was a joke! If I wasn't interested in astronomy, I would have just skimmed past the headline on the front page. I just thought it was funny that the article was essentially giving us a weather report for an uninhabited area.
Re:Our Protector (Score:2)
Jupiter's huge, but not _that_ huge. Failed star? Not quite. Were it some 200x it's current mass, sure, I'd call it a failed star. But it's not; it's just the largest gas giant in the system. We've found worlds 60x it's size.
And it's no "protector of the inner worlds." Anything entering the system from outsi
Temporal issues... (Score:2)
Body: NASA is reporting that the two biggest storms in the solar system are about to collide on Jupiter.
(emphasis added)
Let's not jump the gun here... try to make subject/title lines more accurate please!
converge vs. collide (Score:2)
So, according to that definition, if these two storms are about to collide, they have to be converging now. So the converging is in the present, the col
Umm... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure what intergalactic law is, but over here, we call that "statutory rape".
Re:Umm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Umm... (Score:2)
You give me any of that juris-my-diction crap, and you can ram it up your ass.
Re:Umm... (Score:2)
Re:Umm... (Score:2)
I blame the Beastie Boys. Who knows how many young minds were ruined by that "intergalactic planetary, planetary intergalactic" lyric?
At this point we should just hope that nobody thinks Jupiter is in "another dimension".
Re:Umm... (Score:2)
Well now, that does depend on how jurisdiction is handled in the universe at large. Galactic Troopers can pull you over for exceeding warp 10 pretty much anywhere, but they refuse to hand out parking tickets in planetary systems, leaving that up to local enforcement. But, as the offence is taking place entirely on Jupiter (it's not Jupiter trying to engulf one of its own moons in some incestuous cataclysm), it wouldn't
Neocons will rule the solar system (Score:2)
Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:3, Interesting)
What kind of strength/magnification do you need to see Jupiter in that resolution?
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:5, Informative)
You are not going to get Hubble or Voyager level views. Many amatures now digitally enhence their images such that you see more in the photo than what the eye would see in the scope. One fairly recent technique is to take hundreds of digital images and then digitally average and realign the detail. The Earth's atmosphere wiggles and sometimes acts kind of like a magnifying lens. If you can capture these magnification spots when they occure and add them up, you get a nice photo.
Anyhow, I would guess that you need at least an 8-inch reflector or 5-inch refractor to see the two spots with recognizable detail. It also depends on sky conditions and viewer training. It takes a while to train the eye to see detail on planets thru a scope.
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:2)
Summing to decrease noise is a technique that may be used in pretty much all digital signal acquisition. We do it in MRI sometimes too.
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:2)
That isn't done currently.
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:2)
Deconvolution works by modeling the effect of things like a not quite perfect lens and trying to correct for them. That's what they did with Hubble before they added an actual lens to correct the problem.
When people used to use film photography with telescopes the longer your exposure the dimmer objects you could see. CCDs changed all that. Electronic image sensors are VERY
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:2)
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:2)
Re:Pretty Sweet "Amateur" Telescope ..? (Score:3, Informative)
If your telescope is 10inch (~ 250mm), then your maximum magnification achievable with your telescope is up to 250 times. You can increase the magnification as much as you like (by the choice of an eyepiece), but it doesn't mean a damned thing when you go beyond 250x for the 10in telescope (it's like examining a photo on a magazine with 10000x magnifying glass; i.e., it's meaningless). For a 6inch telescope (~ 150mm), the max is 150x or
Premature (Score:2, Interesting)
New Horizons is heading toward Pluto, but will use Jupiter to kind of "slingshot" it faster toward Pluto. NASA doesn't want to pay for bigger rockets, so they cheat by stealing a small slice of Jupiter's orbital momentum. Let's hope Big Jup doesn't find out, because he is really really big and strong.
WOW! (Score:1)
Re:WOW! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
In fact, while on the topic of remniscising about the "old" Slashdot, let me also lament the total and complete disappearance of links to cool hacks/pet-projects done by regular folk in their spare time. Now all the Toys stories we seem to get are about, well, toys that you can buy, as opposed to those people have built (or could build). With the result that Slashdot discussions in general seem to have atrophied from being informed, to something of a worldwide whinefest on techn
Blowing, swallowing and cousins... (Score:2)
KABOOM! (Score:2)
Has Jupiter been ignited? (Score:2)
Re:Has Jupiter been ignited? (Score:2)
An Inconvenient Truth About Jupiteral Warming (Score:2)
Global warming (Score:2)
Blows just as hard as its older cousin... (Score:2)
Yeah, my girlfriend had a cousin like that, too!
Bruce
More evidence of global warming (Score:2)
Okay, maybe not. But, hey, it sounds good!
Re:Typo (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Do the editors think we are that dumb? (Score:1)
What are you complaining about
The original quote was written by a NASA PR rep. And he/she was writing it to the general audience in the U.S, not for slashdotters.
Re:Do the editors think we are that dumb? (Score:1)
Really?
Thanks for letting me know, see I am kind of new here and it could have taken me a long time to figure that out!
Re:Do the editors think we are that dumb? (Score:2)
Re:Do the editors think we are that dumb? (Score:2, Interesting)
But now you can throw your maths right out the window, because you're using the wrong formula. From Wikipedia, "The Great Red Spot's dimensions are ~24-40,000 km × 12-14,000 km". It's not circular, sorry
Re:In Soviet Jupiter... (Score:2)
Re:Global Warming (Score:3, Funny)
You don't have to watch Fox.
Re:Global Warming (Score:2)
Re:Global Warming (Score:3, Funny)
There was that RTG on Galileo...
Re:Global Warming (Score:2)
The point is statistical anomolies happen all the time, with or without human involvement.