Mysteries Swirl Around Cyclones At Saturn's Poles 67
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."
Solved (Score:3, Funny)
Extraterrestrials upping up the ante... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can't help it... (Score:5, Funny)
If it were cyclones around Uranus, would it be a moon then?
Re:How about earth's natural disasters? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait...
Re:How about earth's unusual shapes? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, yes, apparently they do [wintersteel.com]
Re:How about earth's unusual shapes? (Score:1, Funny)
Case in point: Tang.
Re:How about earth's unusual shapes? (Score:5, Funny)
Do they come with unusual cloud formations?
The hexagonal clouds are not a mystery. They in fact prove that there are legislators somewhere else even dumber than the ones we choose for ourselves. Obviously the government of Saturn has declared the value of PI to be exactly 3 and the clouds are only obeying the law.
Sheesh.
Re:That looks like "ringing" to me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How about earth's natural disasters? (Score:5, Funny)
Ah yes, because every problem can be solved faster by throwing more people at it! Why, if only we could convince 9 women to team up, they could have a baby in just 1 month!
That's just tessellation (Score:4, Funny)
The hexagonal clouds are no mystery. You see, Saturn is far away. It was never meant to be looked at up close. The Designers just didn't bother to waste a lot of polygons on it to approximate a sphere. It's just a low-poly model with some texturing tricks to hide the edges.
If we want to see it in higher resolution we have to get our spacecraft new graphics cards, that's all.