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Cassini Probes the Hexagon On Saturn
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Mar 27, 2007 03:37 PM
from the monoliths dept.
from the monoliths dept.
Riding with Robots sends us to a NASA page with photos of a little-understood hexagonal shape surrounding Saturn's north pole. "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet." This structure was discovered by the Voyager probes over 20 years ago (here's an 18-year-old note on the mystery). The fact that it's still in place means it is stable and long-lived. Scientists have no idea what causes the hexagon. It's nearly big enough to fit four earths inside — comfortably larger than Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The article has an animation of clouds moving within the hexagon captured in infrared light.
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A Symmetrical Cosmic Red Square 152 comments
Remember the hexagon surrounding Saturn's north pole? Now for our delectation Ano_Nimass Coward sends us to Space.com for a look at a nebula with near perfect bilateral symmetry surrounding a dying star. The so-called Red Square ranks among the most symmetrical objects ever observed by scientists. "If you fold things across the principle diagonal axis, you get an almost perfect reflection symmetry," said the leader of a study of the object, recently published in Science. A possible explanation for the structure's glow, if not its shape, was advanced in a paper appearing in PNAS, which attributes the glow of a similar object — dubbed, confusingly, the Red Rectangle — to exotic space-hardened organic molecules called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. PAHs are normally unstable but may occur in places like the nebula in question, in nanostructured clusters that are extremely stable and radiation hardened.
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Possible Clue On Saturn's Hexagon? 70 comments
permaculture sends us to nature.com for a description of new (and old) research that might possibly shed some light on the origin of the hexagon around Saturn's north pole. Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have spun buckets of water, in much the same way Isaac Newton did, and photographed geometrical whirlpools developing. As the buckets are spun up, central holes develop that are first elliptical, then triangular, then square, pentagonal, and hexagonal. A UT Austin researcher is quoted as saying it's unlikely this process is behind the Saturn mystery.
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Cassini's Primary Mission Ends, Two-Year Extension Begins 46 comments
wooferhound points out recent news that the Cassini probe has completed its original four-year mission and is beginning a two-year extended mission, which was authorized earlier this year. Cassini's first mission brought us a treasure trove of information about Saturn and its various moons. The new mission will target two of those moons in particular for further study: Titan and Enceladus. Quoting:
"The spacecraft is extremely healthy and carries 12 instruments powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Data from Cassini's nominal and extended missions could lay the groundwork for possible future missions to Saturn, Titan or Enceladus. [The two moons] are primary targets in the two-year extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission. This time period also will allow for monitoring seasonal effects on Titan and Saturn, exploring new places within Saturn's magnetosphere, and observing the unique ring geometry of the Saturn equinox in August of 2009 when sunlight will pass directly through the plane of the rings."
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Mysteries Swirl Around Cyclones At Saturn's Poles 67 comments
Riding with Robots writes "New images of Saturn from the robotic spacecraft Cassini are shedding new light on monstrous storms that swirl at both poles of the ringed planet. 'These are truly massive cyclones, hundreds of times stronger than the most giant hurricanes on Earth,' said one mission scientist. Cumulus clouds twirl around the vortices, betraying the presence of giant thunderstorms lurking beneath. But the storms do not disturb the bizarre hexagonal cloud formation previously reported."
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North Pole? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:North Pole? (Score:5, Funny)
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Darl McBride, CEO
Mumble mumble Hexagon mumble mumble Aliens! mumble mumble Jack Thompson
Parent
Re:North Pole? (Score:5, Funny)
A guy gets invited to a hunting lodge one evening, and on his arrival, everyone is having a few beers and taking it easy. Suddenly, one of them stands up and says, "27". Everyone has a bit of a laugh and they clap appreciatively. Another person stands and says, "48." Again this is met with laughter and a few guffaws.
The visitor is perplexed and asks his host, "What's going on here?"
His host replies, "Oh, these guys have known each other for years, so long now that they know all their jokes. So, to save time , they numbered them."
"Oh!" the visitor says.
"Did you want to have a try at it?" says the host.
With much trepidation, the visitor stands up and says, "96."
Well, it brought the house down. Grizzled old men are rolling about, clutching their sides laughing, gasping for breath. This goes on for nearly ten minutes.
"Wow! They really liked that one!" says the visitor.
"I'll say!" said the host, wiping a tear from his eye, "They hadn't heard that one before!"
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't care if it was a joke; I'm using this idea everywhere.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:North Pole? (Score:4, Informative)
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/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Goatse? (Score:4, Funny)
Looks more like Saturn is giving us a Goatse, spreading wide for the camera.
Parent
Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Informative)
Original article [nature.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why such speculation is somewhat useless.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When Michael Faraday was asked "What good is electricity?" he replied, "What good is a baby?"
Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Informative)
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it must be (Score:5, Funny)
Re:it must be bees (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:it must be bees (Score:4, Funny)
Well, everybody knows that: honeycomb big, yeah, yeah, yeah. If only these scientists had just taken the time to watch Saturday morning cartoons, or Futurama.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Lens feature? (Score:2)
Well, is it? Were the camera lenses made in the same way?
intelligent life (Score:5, Funny)
It's obvious to me, as a trained ufologist, that this is not a natural phenomenon. This hexagonal structure was BUILT by intelligent life.
Re:intelligent life (Score:5, Funny)
It looks like this is the moment that years of hard work at the Correspondence College of Tampa prepared you for. Congratulations. (end obscure Simpsons reference).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But let's not waste any opportunity in jumping to conclusions, because, as everyone knows, there are no [scottcamazine.com] straight [aliki.co.uk] lines [juniata.edu] in [howstuffworks.com] nature [olegvolk.net].
Why is it all the UFO freaks have no grasp of science? Why does that follow?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's obvious to me, as a trained slashdotter, many people are unable to understand sarcasm.
Re:intelligent life (Score:5, Funny)
What are we to make of Lando's cloud city?
THINK ABOUT LANDO FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE YOU RACIST
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hummm... can "intelligent" life change the structure of an atmosphere? Doesn't sound so smart to me....
--
Go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
bad mapping (Score:2)
damn. you win again, polar coordinates [www.mta.ca]
"My God, it's full of stars." (Score:3, Interesting)
old hardware? (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing to see here... (Score:3, Funny)
Mystery Solved (Score:5, Funny)
A truly bizzare hexagon (Score:5, Funny)
Last time I checked, all hexagons had six sides...
Re:A truly bizzare hexagon (Score:5, Funny)
I once divided by zero and nothing happened, so now I'll try to create a seven-sided h
Parent
Re:A truly bizzare hexagon (Score:5, Funny)
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Fortress of Solitude (Score:3, Funny)
I see pattern (Score:5, Funny)
Saturn is the sixth planet out.
A hexagon has six sides.
There is a second hexagon inside the first. Another six sides.
6-6-6
Hmmm, that number kind of has a ring to it. And so does Saturn.
Coincidence?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's actually just the top of the bolt that's holding the planet together. It keeps spinning because the other end is stripped.
Re:I see pattern (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
Gah, they found it! (Score:4, Funny)
I should have got the next model down, then I could have pretended it was just another moon, but nooooooo, I had to get the hexagonal UltraSUV because it was "different" and had more legroom.
Hm, wonder if that guy who owns Mimas would do a swap. His camo paint job looks *so* much less convincing after those stupid films.
Easy enough, Jupiter is Jewish (Score:4, Funny)
Sign of intelligent life (Score:4, Funny)
Or, its warning sign placed there by the Vogon Constructor Fleet
Polygonal eyewalls in hurricanes... (Score:4, Informative)
--Jellisky
Just a sine wave wrapped around a circle? (Score:3, Insightful)
It may only appear straight because it's the distance from the center of a curved surface, so that the curve of the wave, and the curve of the surface cancel out.
It's a Dissipative Structure (Score:5, Interesting)
In the experiment that was being described, a small dish of water was heated up uniformly from below. At a certain point, these hexagonal structures emerged. Hot water would rise from the bottom of the dish, travelling in a pipe directly through the middle of the hexagon ( forming a point in the middle that you could see ). When the water hit the surface, it spread out cooled, and then travelled back down to the bottom, creating the sides of the hexagon. Apparently they were getting multiple hexagons, and they were incredibly stable
AT field ? (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like a Benard cell? (Score:3, Interesting)
One reason why we should explore space... (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine the scientific excitement if you were aboard a vessel like the Galaxy Class USS Enterprise from Star Trek (NCC 1701 D), approaching Saturn and seeing live the phenomenon, then staying there for a while to study it and comprehend it!
Exploration of space is the most important goal for humankind. Earth provides a very limited experience, and in a few 100 years it will be totally explored. If we want to understand the universe, space is the final frontier.