Cassini Probes the Hexagon On Saturn

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.

North Pole?

[ArcherB]

The Saturn North Pole? Isn't that where Saturn Clause lives? Maybe he has something to do with it.

Mmmm, elves...

[kale77in]

The Saturn North Pole? Isn't that where Saturn Clause lives? Maybe he has something to do with it.

Yes, that'll be Saturn Claus, devouring a few stray elves [usc.edu] now that the kids are gone. It's most likely a big hexagonal bloodstain...

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[ArieKremen]

No, that's the nuts and bolts of planetary engineering

Re:North Pole?

[Walt Dismal]

Look here, it's time to become efficient. Efficiency is the key. So let us unify and number our memes:

Meme 023AD01: "I, for one, welcome our new (variable1)-bearing (variable2) overlords."

Meme 0567GS02: "In Russia, (variable1) (variable2)'s YOU!"

Meme 2983KL99: "Step 1. (variable1) Step 2. (variable2) Step 3. PROFIT!"

In the future, please use the simple and short MemeCode. This will allow us to operate more efficiently, increase profits and shareholder value, and also confuse the hell out of anyone new to Slashdot. Thank you.

Darl McBride, CEO

Mumble mumble Hexagon mumble mumble Aliens! mumble mumble Jack Thompson

Re:North Pole?

[ColaMan]

Reminds me of that old joke:

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!"

Re:

[WombatDeath]

2983KL99( "Invoke demonic portal on Saturn", "???" )

I don't care if it was a joke; I'm using this idea everywhere.

Re:

[Old Wolf]

I didn't write it down -- it was too large to fit in the margin.

Re:North Pole?

[ConceptJunkie]

I think Godel proved it doesn't have a code.

/. story about spinning water?

[spun]

Wasn't there a story here within the last six months or so about spinning a bucket of water at the right speed and having it form geometric forms, including a hexagon?

Re:

[Janek Kozicki]

yes, exactly my thoughts too. There was a story about that. He who finds the link gets the karma :)

Re:/. story about spinning water?

[sfcfagwdse]

Here's one: http://www.physorg.com/news66924222.html [physorg.com]

Re:/. story about spinning water?

[Rei]

The curious thing, though, is that the south pole is very different -- almost looks like a human eye [space.com]. I wonder what sort of rotational effect could cause such an asymmetry between north and south poles?

Goatse?

[Seoulstriker]

"almost looks like a human eye."

Looks more like Saturn is giving us a Goatse, spreading wide for the camera.

Re:

[Gilmoure]

Just some corporate branding by Firaxis [firaxis.com].

Re:/. story about spinning water?

[samkass]

Typing "spinning water hexagon Slashdot" into Google turned up this article [slashdot.org]

Re:/. story about spinning water?

[greg_barton]

You mean, specifically, "Swinney, meanwhile, thinks that the process is unlikely to apply to large-scale flows such as that on Saturn, but might be relevant to smaller-scale phenomena such as tornadoes." [slashdot.org]

Original article [nature.com]

Re:

[SatanicPuppy]

Eh, the mechanism probably wouldn't hold, but the fact that these shapes can be generated in a liquid by a rotating body is pretty suggestive, when we see the same thing writ large. Seems like it has to be the expression of a somewhat similar physical phenomenon, though how the hell we'll test it I have no idea.

Re:

[greg_barton]

...though how the hell we'll test it I have no idea.

Which is why such speculation is somewhat useless.

Re:

[radtea]

Which is why such speculation is somewhat useless.

When Michael Faraday was asked "What good is electricity?" he replied, "What good is a baby?"

Re:

[dr_strang]

I guess this puts a whole new meaning to the term 'swirly'.

Re:/. story about spinning water?

[omnilynx]

Another related possibility is spherical harmonics [wikipedia.org], similar to what happens in the sun. The planet would be effectively resonating like a 3D drumhead. If that's true, there should be other points on the surface that exhibit similar phenomena.

Re:

[spun]

That link made my brain hurt. I wish I knew more math. Can spherical harmonics make a six sided figure? It didn't look like it from the wiki page, but aside from the pictures, I'd have no way of knowing.

That spinning water thing seems like a plausible explanation, though, as some parts of a gas giants atmosphere spin faster than others. Different rotational speeds in the band just below the pole might act like the wall in the bucket and cause a similar geometric effect.

Re:

[honkycat]

Spherical harmonics form a "complete basis" for functions on a sphere. This means you can represent any suitably smooth function as a sum of these harmonics. Here, "suitably smooth" is my stand-in for a precise mathematical requirement -- probably continuous and continuously differentiable, but I don't remember for sure off-hand. Basically, as long as your function doesn't have discrete jumps in it, you can expand it in spherical harmonics.

Re:

[honkycat]

Oh wait, I'm a moron. They're not a complete basis, except for the angular dependence of solutions to Laplace's equation so the restriction on the function is substantially tighter than I suggested. Never mind. Please mod me -1: hasn't done real math in too long.

Re:

[Somnus]

Systems that show such behavior are always "rigid," and so are forced to be ordered. In the case of a drum head it's the tension and the immobility of the boundary; the sun, the strong fusion-driven magnetic dynamics in play with the strong gravity. In quantum systems like superfluids and Fermi liquids, you get this for "free" due to quantization.

Is Saturn, a neutral, non-nuclear gas giant, similarly constrained? If so, fascinating.

Re:

[omnilynx]

Well, after doing some actual research on this, it looks like there are some possible contributors to spherical harmonics on Saturn, but that probably isn't the source of the hexagonal structure, since a similar structure does not appear at the south pole [aas.org]. Apparently it's probably due to a polar jet, similar to the ripples you see around a bathtub drain.

Re:

[alcmaeon]

You know, the similar stories from Denmark would have been more interesting if they had spun the container instead of putting an agitator into the middle of the water.

Re:/. story about spinning water?

[spun]

Maybe the solid core is acting like the agitator? Perhaps there are rougher features at the northern pole than there are at the southern, explaining why there is no southern hexagon. The article says the hexagon rotates at the same speed as radio emissions from Saturn, which they assume is the same speed as the core rotates.

Re:

[spun]

Oh come on! Sometimes you deserve the karma, you know. But thanks, whoever you are!

Re:

[shawn(at)fsu]

For giggles I read this website. It's like others I've seen. Why do these people with "radical" ideas always think there is tie in for a conspiracy theory?

Thanks for the link though.

it must be

[unfortunateson]

space bees

Re:it must be bees

[saskboy]

I agree, the only logical conclusion is that Saturn has been colonized by giant space bees who have made it their honey comb hive.

Re:it must be bees

[istartedi]

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.

Re:

[srmalloy]

Unless Grant Callin was more prophetic than he would believe and the Hexies of Tharthee (from his novels Saturn Alia [amazon.com] and A Lion on Tharthee [amazon.com]) really exist... in which case there's a plaque down there with information inscribed on it.

Re:

[StikyPad]

A Honeycomb Hideout, if you will.

Actually

[einhverfr]

It is a secret US military presence, designed to be the successor to the Pentagon in the event of a global catastrophe.

OOps, I was not supposed to say that. Are those black suburbans pulling up in my driveway?

No, it's an Angel.

[pavon]

Those crazy Saturnians are trying to initiate the Third Impact!

Lens feature?

[turgid]

Well, is it? Were the camera lenses made in the same way?

intelligent life

[BigHungryJoe]

With Fife Symington coming forward and saying that the Phoenix Lights from 1997 were actually an "other worldly craft" - how much longer can we believe ourselves to be alone in the universe?

It's obvious to me, as a trained ufologist, that this is not a natural phenomenon. This hexagonal structure was BUILT by intelligent life.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[CommunistHamster]

Which university does a degree in Ufology?

Re:

[jonadab]

> This hexagonal structure was BUILT by intelligent life.

Did you read the article? It's not a stationary solid structure. It's a long-term atmospheric feature, like Jupiter's great red spot, only shaped like a hexagon.

Re:intelligent life

[stratjakt]

Intelligent life couldn't "build" a long-term atmospheric feature?

What are we to make of Lando's cloud city?

THINK ABOUT LANDO FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE YOU RACIST

Re:

[mdsolar]

Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the late 20th century. -Spock

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-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

Re:

[SatanicPuppy]

Did you minor in bad science-ology? There are about ten links above you who show how the same shapes can be made in liquid water with a spinning plate...this suggests that the spinning of Saturn's core could very well be creating the same effect in the dense atmosphere.

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:

[hxnwix]

Hehe, I like these sarcastic posts. So many people will get it wrong - you are inviting us to draw the inference that, like the Phoenix lights, the hexagon is caused by "flares dropped during a USAF training exercise." Clearly, this makes no sense.

Aliens are therefore responsible for both phenomenon.

Re:

[rbanffy]

It's obvious to me, as a trained ufologist, that this is not a natural phenomenon. This hexagonal structure was BUILT by intelligent life.

It's obvious to me, as a trained slashdotter, many people are unable to understand sarcasm.

Re:

[dubl-u]

It's obvious to me, as a trained ufologist, that this is not a natural phenomenon. This hexagonal structure was BUILT by intelligent life.

It's obvious to me, as a trained psychoceramicist [umich.edu], that anybody who claims to be a "trained ufologist" already has some biases on the topic of what counts as activity by space aliens.

bad mapping

[thhamm]

hexagonal shape surrounding Saturn's north pole

damn. you win again, polar coordinates [www.mta.ca] ...

Better than the 'Face' on Mars

[skywire]

WIth something like this to get excited about, who needs the "Face on Mars"?

Don't tell the crackpots...

[posterlogo]

...at enterprisemission.com. That con artist "Doctor" Richard Hoagland has been scamming gullible people for decades. He's claimed at some time or another that he's behind most of the theories on planetary development that have become paradigms in astronomy now. On the other hand, he also claims the "face" on Mars and other naturally occurring phenomena are alien artifacts (see a nice parody of him at http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html [badastronomy.com] where Phil Plait sees Lenin in a pattern on his shower curt

"My God, it's full of stars."

[raddan]

'Nuff said.

old hardware?

[physicsboy500]

Perhaps the universe is just poorly anti-aliased

Thwarting the Terrorists

[Grashnak]

They may have gotten to our Pentagon, but I damn well double dare them to try and strike at our hexagon!

Nothing to see here...

[fahrbot-bot]

These are just tool marks left by the builders on Magrathea. Nothing to see here; please move along...

Mystery Solved

[erroneus]

When God created Saturn, he used a low polygon count to speed up the rendering process.

A truly bizzare hexagon

[Suzumushi]

From TFA, "This nighttime view of Saturn's north pole shows a bizarre six-sided hexagon"

Last time I checked, all hexagons had six sides...

Re:A truly bizzare hexagon

[Tablizer]

From TFA, "This nighttime view of Saturn's north pole shows a bizarre six-sided hexagon" Last time I checked, all hexagons had six sides...

I once divided by zero and nothing happened, so now I'll try to create a seven-sided h
                   

Re:A truly bizzare hexagon

[StikyPad]

Yeah, but when's the last time you checked?

Re:

[Rhinobird]

I applaud you, sir. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

You also owe me a new keyboard.

Re:

[Wylfing]

Except in the case of the exceedingly rarely seen 6 2/3-sided hexagon.

Actually, this started me on a certain ultra geeky (and trust me it's ultra) train of thought that went like this: "Hexagon" doesn't really mean "six sides." I imagine the editors probably thought a significant number of readers wouldn't know what a "hexagon" is and so added "six sided" to clarify. So, thinks I, there's a fair share of ignorance of word origins, because we're talking about the Greek hexagonos, which has two parts, hexa a

Simple

[Jedi Holocron]

It is a giant ice crystal.

Largest snowflake ev'ah....

Fortress of Solitude

[alienmole]

Superman had to abandon his Earth-based Fortress of Solitude, which was starting to melt due to global warming, not to mention all the annoying scientific expeditions coming by to drill for ice cores. He figured he'd try Saturn's north pole for a change. The commute's a bit longer, but there's less traffic.

I see pattern

[Al Al Cool J]

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:

[GooberToo]

I know this is a joke but wasn't it semi-recently published that "666" is thought to be an invalid translation and the correct number is really "616" and/or "665"?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=44169 [worldnetdaily.com]
http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/POxy/beast616.htm [ox.ac.uk]

The above are links from some quick googling. ;) I saw they were topical but didn't actually read them.

Ya I know...it spoils the joke. :(

Re:I see pattern

[Al Al Cool J]

Yes, 616 was the original number of the beast. However he changed it to 666 because it was easier to remember. I think it was the combination on his briefcase or something.

Re:

[Reaperducer]

I thought 665 was the neighbor of the beast.

Re:

[tehshen]

Shouldn't that be 664, then?

Nope

[geekoid]

665 is the guy across the street from the beast.

Re:

[Petrushka]

It's not a case of one's right, the other's wrong. They're variant readings. 666 is standard in most manuscripts; 616 is in one early manuscript and a few other sources; neither reading stands out as obviously superior to the other.

Re:

[dmccarty]

Yeah, sorry, just a coincidence.

It's actually just the top of the bolt that's holding the planet together. It keeps spinning because the other end is stripped.

Dharma Project

[bigredradio]

This is just a big dharma project logo.

Re:

[Shawn Parr]

Nice try, but the Dharma logos are octagons not hexagons.

Obviously...

[ingo23]

... it's a nut holding the rings in place. You can even see the bolt.

Is this

[Some_Llama]

The first Mimzy?

Heh, been seeing that trailer a lot lately and this picture reminded me of that.

Gah, they found it!

[Fweeky]

Do you have *any* idea how hard it is to find a parking space for that thing where some yob's not going to key it or deflate the tires or poke at it with a spectrograph? :(

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.

Bad UV mapping

[Have Blue]

Guess the machines never thought we'd get that far away from the city. At least it's not a skybox.

Hexies

[ek_adam]

It's the hexies from Saturnalia. [amazon.com]

Easy enough, Jupiter is Jewish

[roman_mir]

Both words, Jupiter and Jewish start from 'J' and hexagon can be used to depict the star of David. The mystery is solved and Jupiter should really be renamed into Jewpiter. Oh, and it's closed on Saturdays. The official anthem is 7:40

Sign of intelligent life

[ajnsue]

intelligent life beyond or solar system erected a giant stop sign indicating where it wants mankind to just slow down before it gets any big ideas about immigrating and lowering the galactic minimum wage.

Or, its warning sign placed there by the Vogon Constructor Fleet

Space puns galore

[sh4na]

The comment threads on this one definitely break some sort of record on number of puns per line. Nice to see such deep, significant scientific discussion! :)

You think this is funny??

[Gorimek]

I don't think I've ever seen a story with such a high fraction of joke comments!

Jet Streams?

[Lars T.]

Those pattern look kinda like the Jet Stream patterns.

Well, look what a little Googleing brought up [nasa.gov]:

West explains: "This dark spot is trapped by a polar vortex--a jet stream that encircles Jupiter's north pole." Fast-moving winds in the vortex act like an atmospheric wall, keeping the Dark Spot corralled at high latitudes. Similar vortices encircle Earth's polar regions. Our planet's Arctic vortex is disrupted somewhat by northern land masses, but the Antarctic vortex is better organized. It plays a key r

Yawn.

[BlackGriffen]

From TFA (picture cap): "This nighttime view of Saturn's north pole shows a bizarre six-sided hexagon feature encircling the entire north pole."

Call me when they've found a five sided hexagon!

Polygonal eyewalls in hurricanes...

[jellisky]

One wonders if this is similar to what is occasionally seen in hurricanes: polygonal eyes. (If interested, do a Google search on "polygonal eyewalls" and get a pretty nice synopsis of the literature on the topic.) It isn't terribly out of the range of possibility that simple theories like these may be enough to explain a lot of this phenomenon. And, yes, polygonal eyewalls in real hurricanes can be very persistent, if the vortex itself doesn't change much and proper balances are maintained. On a planet like Saturn, I would imagine that things don't change too much even from year to year, so the whole pattern could persist for decades if unperturbed.

--Jellisky

Markovian gate

[chiph]

Uh-oh. Nathan Brazil is probably in the neighborhood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_at_the_Well_ of_Souls [wikipedia.org]

Well World prototype

[Tjp($)pjT]

It is a remanent of a Marovian [wikipedia.org] prototype. Look for more to be found with different ecologies nearby. Besides, nature as well as D&Ders prefer hex formations. Well at least in wilderness areas. And Fullerenes.

Just a sine wave wrapped around a circle?

[Kaenneth]

I loaded the image into Gimp, centered it, and did a reverse polar-rectangular conversion. When I superimposed a sine wave, it was a fairly good match.

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

[vandan]

Fritjov Capra [wikipedia.org] ( this guy's an absolute legend, by the way ) had an interesting section on hexagonal structures like these in his book, Web of Life [fractal.org]. He was talking about Dissipative Structures [viawest.net], discovered by Ilya Prigogine.

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 ... ie you could run a pen through them and disturb them, and they'd immediately revert to these perfect hexagons. It was fascinating reading - thoroughly recommended for people interested in biology, physics, and philosophy.

What's really bizarre

[FuzzyDaddy]

One of the captions says :

...shows a bizarre six-sided hexagon...

Now a hexagon WITHOUT six sides would REALLY be bizarre.

AT field ?

[Yvanhoe]

AT field detected on Saturn's surface ! Code Orange ! Launch all EVA units, and someone go fetch me the Longinus Spear !

Looks like a Benard cell?

[treeves]

as seen here: http://www.etl.noaa.gov/about/eo/science/convectio n/RBCells.html [noaa.gov] Not sure how the rotation affects/interacts with those.

One reason why we should explore space...

[master_p]

If our solar system contains so many mysteries, imagine what the rest of the universe holds.

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.

Re:

[gmuslera]

Who says monoliths must be rectangular?

Anyway, would be funny if after they send a probe there the NASA engineers exclaim "Its full of stars!"

Re:

[C0rinthian]

Can a hexagon follow a 1:4:9 ratio?

Re:

[Visceral Monkey]

Wait, you mean the planet moving thing from the book? Excellent book..deserves a sequel.

Re:

[Gilmoure]

I only make margaritas, you insensitive clod. But just for you, I'll make some this evening and look into the blender.

Re:

[Khaed]

you should start to worry when geometric

Great. A planetary goatse.

Re:

[Petrushka]

No, GP was right: Kubrick. Check the book, it's different from the film.