The Shrinking Giant Red Spot of Jupiter

schwit1 (797399) writes "Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot — a swirling storm feature larger than Earth — is shrinking. This downsizing, which is changing the shape of the spot from an oval into a circle, has been known about since the 1930s, but now these striking new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images capture the spot at a smaller size than ever before."

Hubble Rules!

[thephydes]

Another testament to one of the most amazing "machines" ever created. Hubble is a truly awesome telescope, and the pictures that come from it continue to amaze and astound us.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

You might laugh, but I have heard people use similar astronomical events as proof against the anthropogenic cause of the recent warming. "Ice caps are melting on Mars!" etc. etc.

We will likely discover soon that the red spot is shrinking because in fact, it's jupiter's face and he is palming it at the the stupidity of the gullible.

Re:Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather pay that than the current "save the highly profitable oil companies" subsidy

Re:Hubble Rules!

[S.O.B.]

I agree that we can learn a lot using telescopes and autonomous/semi-autonomous robots but nothing captures the imagination quite like one of us actually going there.

Re:Global warming

[huge]

No, it's not downsizing, it's just restructuring overlapping functions after all the mergers.

Re:Rate of shrinkage

[gstoddart]

So we are talking about a storm raging on Jupiter that has been going on for 400+ years at least.

And, to put that into perspective, Jupiter is likely, what, several billion years old?

To expect that this has been a permanent feature of Jupiter is thinking on human timescales.

On astronomical timescales, this may well be a transient blip.

Re:Global warming

[KeensMustard]

Yes, because the fact that other planets in the same solar system are experiencing similar warming(if such is indeed the case) has absolutely no value in interpreting why this planet is doing the same

Are you saying we can't (and aren't) measuring the output of the sun directly? Why would proxies be a better measure? Detail please.