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Space Science

Jupiter's Great Dark Spot 234

Posted by chrisd from the places-to-visit-on-vacation dept.
Edball writes "For more than a century astronomers thought that the Great Red Spot was the biggest thing on Jupiter. Not anymore. Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have revealed something at least as large, The Great Dark Spot."
In related solar system news, pajamacore writes "Space.com reports that the first extrasolar planet to have its atmosphere detected is having its gas envelope boiled off by heat and blown away by tidal forces. At present, the planet is 70% the size of Jupiter but its orbit is closer to its parent star than Mercury's is to our own Sun. It should be a treat to eventually see the planet's core and maybe it'll clue us in a bit to gas giant formation."
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Jupiter's Great Dark Spot More

Jupiter's Great Dark Spot

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  • So I guess mankind may as well send a spaceship there and find out about the all-mighty monoliths preparing for sparking life in Europa.

    • Didn't you hear about the radiation belt? The new theory is no life on Europa

      Jason
      ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]

      • Re:Oh My God! It's full of stars! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by umofomia ( 639418 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:51AM (#5501409) Journal
        Didn't you hear about the radiation belt? The new theory is no life on Europa
        I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possiblity of life on Europa. The fact is that there are types of organisms on Earth that thrive in a radiation-filled environment. On Earth, wherever there is liquid water, there is life, even under the most extreme circumstances. Underneath Europa's thick layer of ice, most evidence points to there being an ocean of liquid water, so I wouldn't be surprised if life is found there.

        • Beside Europa (Score:4, Informative)

          by jsse ( 254124 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @05:18AM (#5501645) Homepage Journal
          Don't forget there are two other moons have been known to have similar subterranean worlds. Very strong evidence has been discovered to support the idea of subterranean oceans beneath the surfaces of two other Galilean moons, Ganymede and Callisto. While these would be colder, there is also far less radiation to wory about. With some luck, any of these three worlds may well host life, weither microbial or maybe something more complex.

        • Life on Jupiter? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by nairolF ( 315683 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:17AM (#5501874) Homepage
          Okay, so mod me down for offtopic, but one thing that has always bothered me is, why don't people seriously (i.e. besides science fiction) consider the possibility of life of some form inside a gas giant? Sure, there is no liquid water, hence probably no "life as we know it", but if there are other forms of life as we don't (yet) know it, wouldn't this be an even greater discovery?

          What is needed for life (of any reasonable definition) to evolve in an environment, is that arbitrarily complex structures can form in such an environment. Basically, the environment must be "interesting". Nothing ever happens on the surface of our moon, so we don't expect life to evolve there. On the other hand, all kinds of cool chemical reactions can occur in liquid water - as has happened here on Earth. But what about Jupiter's atmosphere? There certainly are interesting molecules floating about - in fact the "Great Dark Spot" is conjectured to be a cloud of hydrocarbon droplets. There is plenty of energy - kinetic (storms), electric, magnetic, some solar as well as plenty of radioactivity. What's more, the environment is HUGE. You have all ranges of pressure from near-vacuum to something ridiculously dense in the core, and everything in between. Is it possible for some region inside Jupiter to have what it takes for life to evolve? And, since there are other sources of energy besides solar, this might happen in the dark depth, where we will never find it. Maybe there's a whole civilization deep in there that we're not aware of.

          Does this remind anybody else of the Slylandros in StarControl 2?

          • Re:Life on Jupiter? (Score:3, Informative)

            by BDew ( 202321 )
            The standard objection to this is convection. While there certainly are levels in Jupe's atmosphere where the temp and pressure could possibly sustain life as we know it, Jupe's atmosphere is incredibly turbulent in the radial direction. Anything in the "pleasant" zone would quickly be thrust up into the outer layers or sink into the crushing layers.

            That said, I wouldn't give up on life there either...
          • I remembered there was talk of life being able to exist in the atmosphere of venus, sustained by water droplets. There are a few chemicals in the atmosphere that are considered unlikely to be made without some sort of catalyst, such as a microbe. here is a link http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/space/161604 2

    • Actually, they're completely wrong (Score:4, Funny)

      by xeeno ( 313431 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @09:05AM (#5502103) Homepage
      The biggest structure is the great great white non-spot that surrounds the great dark spot.

  • Looks suspicious (Score:5, Funny)

    by MacroRex ( 548024 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:14AM (#5501288)
    Maybe it's just me, but the dark spot in the center of the animation looks very artificial. It's clearly six-sided until the very end of the animation. Maybe the poor astronomer was bored and just wanted to have some material published for a change, you know, have his fifteen minutes of fame. Or it's the aliens. Always the aliens, dammit.

    • joke, right? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by djupedal ( 584558 )
      The image is artificial (composite of Cassini ultra-violet (UV) images)...and subject to artifacts. Squint and look to the left...that should soften it up just enough to make it look 'real'...

      c'mon...
    • You're looking at the wrong spot. The dark spot is above the center, circled by the blue line. I presume the black mark in the middle of the picture is an artifact of the imaging process.
      • "I presume the black mark in the middle of the picture is an artifact of the imaging process."

        Not at all. Like Earth, Jupiter is hollow. The black spot is the polar entrance to the subjovian realm. The Earth has a similar hole at the North pole but the UN, with help from the Illuminati covered it up. In the near future NASA plans to crash Galileo into the Jovian hole in hopes of collapsing it.

        I learned all of this during my most recent abduction.

        Iz

    • Re:Looks suspicious (Score:2, Informative)

      by NovaChild ( 217455 )
      I actually worked at the Jet Propulsion Laborotory with Dr. West this past summer. The hexagonal spot in the middle is a result of the fact that this is a polar view of Jupiter created by combining 6 frontal images of jupiter. That is, we took six pictures of the front of jupiter, ignored all but the top half, changed the coordinates about, and put them back together to get an approximation of the polar view for that day. Since none of the pictures could actually SHOW the north pole, the area around it is p

  • Leave it alone... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:15AM (#5501290)
    Jupiter's probably very sensitive about it.
    • It is hydrocarbons, right? If people are looking at mining the moon, it might be more efficient to get natural gas out of Jupiter ;-)

      The only question is-- How much energy would be required to get it back to Earth ;-)

  • Dave? Is that you? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:15AM (#5501292)
    They didn't happen to take a close up of it and discover a cloud of spinning blocks, size 1kmx4kmx9km, did they?
  • Looks like someone forgot to wipe the lense properly

  • It's too late! (Score:3, Funny)

    by molrak ( 541582 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:20AM (#5501307) Homepage
    The monoliths are already forming! Now we really need to stay away from Europa.

    Note to self: find someone get to work on that Bowman virus post-haste.

  • Faster better cheaper? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:22AM (#5501316)
    Chalk one up for slow, lame(?) and expensive. Cassini is firmly among the old-school "big budget" NASA projects. The probe cost over 3 billion dollars. Read about that here [floridatoday.com].

    Cassini. Remember that name. You're going to hear a lot about Cassini over the next few years. The knowledge brought to us by that probe will make science headlines for the rest of this decade. Not bad for something that cost 15% of the Federal Foodstamp budget in FY2001.

    • Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Holger Spielmann ( 243913 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:52AM (#5501419)
      Not bad for something that cost 15% of the Federal Foodstamp budget in FY2001.

      Or only three days (<1%) of the current USA defense budget...

      • Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @04:13AM (#5501481)
        Ah yes. The US military. Only 27% [warresisters.org] of the FY2004 budget after waging war in the Middle East. Another excellent bargain.

        Good point! Thanks. :)

        • I know anything defending the military is modded down by default, but I feel I need to get this off my chest. And way to find such an objective source...

          Explain to me how spending money on the military is bad? What else is the federal government supposed to spend our taxes on??

          As far as I'm concerned, the government's 1 and only job is to protect us so that we can live our lives however we choose. It is not the federal government's job to compensate for poor financial planning. It's not the federal

          • Re:Role of Federal Gov't. - Going a bit OT here (Score:5, Insightful)

            by kilonad ( 157396 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @11:00AM (#5502798)
            Spending money on the military is fine, up to a point. When you're spending money on R&D and creating jobs, that's just fine. When you're about to spend half a billion dollars on cruise missiles alone that you'll never get back, that's not as good. Sure, people had to be employed to make those bombs, but what happens when the war is over and they aren't needed anymore? And when all the soldiers come back and look for jobs in the private sector, having fulfilled their military duties? Another flood of unemployment, bad for the economy.

            The government has more jobs than just protecting us. Even so, "protection" is a very vague concept that entails more than just having a strong military. We the people are one in the same as the country, and so to protect us, the country must be protected as well. We don't need to just be protected from invading armies. We need to be protected from falling behind in the world as well, and that means more than just the military. In order to ensure a future for our nation (which is really why you're protecting it in the first place), you must have a basic framework within which people can live. Our people need to be educated in order to remain competitive in this global economy, therefore the government's job is also to provide basic education to its citizens. We need businesses to make and sell products that let us live our daily lives, and we need to be protected in case they grow too big. Therefore the government's job is also to create an economic infrastructure (the treasury and the mint), transportation (so that people have the freedom to travel and goods can get to where they need to be), telecommunications (or at least regulation thereof, so that people have the freedom to communicate with other people, and businesses can get their jobs done), welfare (because a temporarily unemployed person with no income cannot afford to pay bills, and therefore puts no money back into the economy, which does nothing for our nation. after a certain point, they become a drain on the economy, but welfare can be good when done properly), and taxation (because providing all of these services costs money).

          • As far as I'm concerned, the government's 1 and only job is to protect us so that we can live our lives however we choose.

            Just ask yourself when was the last time that the US was actually threatened.
            I'm not talking small incidents (like 9/11), I'm talking threats to the nation's existence; the last time I can think of is WWII.

            If you can be bothered to read the constitution [cornell.edu] then you would realize that America was never designed to have a standing military. The only purpose of the military was to co

            • If you can be bothered to read the constitution [cornell.edu] then you would realize that America was never designed to have a standing military. The only purpose of the military was to combat a real threat to the nation (ie war). If you think about it this way, the US has been in a state of "war" for over 60 years...which seems kind of ridiculous...

              Long gone are the days when any given man with a shotgun could be quickly trained to be the finest of soldiers. War has become so technological that it's now

          • The problem is that there are ways to spend that money that would protect our interests more effectively than the military currently does, ie:

            Border control.
            Subsidizing foreign education (ie avoid having kids in other countries grow up hating us and wanting to blow us up).
            AIDS research (make some attempt to avoid the looming conflicts that are already breaking out in africa, and will likely include india and the former soviet union as well).
            Other disease control measures.
            Fusion/Fission research to reduce o
          • Ok, I've played D&D. Trolls like fire, right???

            My question is... defending us from what? Ourselves? The Future? What palpable threat is the US facing that justifies such an expenditure?

            I'm certainly not begruding them a certain amount of money to keep a decent defensive army equpped and reasonably alert. I'm also in favor of spending more money on R&D, since keeping ahead in the arms race is essential -- and it slowly trickles down to the public sector anyways.

            I just don't see why we have to
      • "Or only three days (

        Actually, no. In 2001, the feds spent ~18% of their money on social programs, just as much as they did on defense.

        On the other hand, the big "winner" by far was Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs with ~36%

    • Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @04:21AM (#5501509) Homepage Journal
      You're going to hear a lot about Cassini over the next few years.

      That is assuming the folks at Lockhead and Boeing can stick to metric. [spaceref.com]

      Man, if I screw up a client's computer, I don't get hired back. Hell, they will usually go so far as to tell their friends and peers not to use me.

      If you are a miliary^H^H^H^H^H^Haerospace contractor and you screw something up you get bonuses and additional contracts.

      • You get additional contracts because who else are you going to hire? The number of large, experienced aerospace companies is tiny and for a while was shrinking every year with all the mergers. Imagine you bought a car from Ford, and you were unhappy with it. Now imagine your only other choices were GM/Chevy (the same company) or Chrysler/Dodge, and you had problems with both of those companies in the past. Who are you going to buy your next car from? You surely won't buy it from some shady guy who made
        • Its worse than that. The government in the past few years the governemnt has actually been encouraging the mergers. The environemtn the governement seems to want is to have two giant def contract houses and a slew of tiny ones that the giant ones farm work out to.

          In the past ten years I have been involved in two situiations that I feel well illustrate the idiocy of the policy. (I've simplified these situiation a bit for the sake of brevity).

          In one case the company I worked for denied contracts because

    • Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FTL ( 112112 ) <slashdot@neil.fras[ ]name ['er.' in gap]> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:21AM (#5501753) Homepage
      > Chalk one up for slow, lame(?) and expensive. Cassini is firmly among the old-school "big budget" NASA projects. The probe cost over 3 billion dollars.

      Cassini is the last of the "billion dollar probes". Others in the series included Terra, Galileo, Magellan and Mars Observer. These probles are a legacy of the 80s. It was the astronomical cost of these probes that made NASA launch the "faster/better/cheaper" programs.

      Cassini predates F/B/C and is the end of an era. We won't see the likes of Cassini again in our life times.

      It's difficult to say which is better, a lot of F/B/C probes (think plastic disposable watches), or a single billion $ probe (think Rolex: takes a licking and keeps on ticking). I think there's room for both types.

    • Either Cassini is really expensive for an unmanned research probe or poor people are being neglected. I mean, space exploration is great, but so is making sure that everyone has food to eat.

      • Re:I don't know how to take this... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 6hill ( 535468 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:35AM (#5501774)
        I mean, space exploration is great, but so is making sure that everyone has food to eat.

        The piddling money we use on space exploration cannot even begin to solve the world's hunger problem. However, there's the odd chance the said space exploration will sometime in the future solve the world hunger problem (from results in zero-gravity growth experiments to terraforming). That slim chance is certainly better than that offered by e.g. our military. I doubt its enormous budget will in any way affect world hunger except negatively.


        • The world hunger problem is about money, not lack of food. Zero-gravity growth experiments and terraforming won't solve that problem.

          • The world hunger problem is about money, not lack of food. Zero-gravity growth experiments and terraforming won't solve that problem.

            But it's not a problem you can just throw money at and expect it to be solved, either. I've known many "hungry and homeless" people who were so because they refused to take direct, personal responsibility for themselves. My kids eat because my wife and I take that kind of responsibility seriously, and we don't have any money. There will always be hungry people who won't e

            • All the ways to earn or get food/money today call for people skills (interview, dress style, filling out forms), being able to show up to work on time and so on. A lot of people just don't have this kind of skills.

              Say I am a big (but non-criminal) guy walking around city block in shabby dress, carrying a sign and asking some random people if I can do some work for them. If someone did ask me to wash their car, carry a heavy bag home etc, I would do it to the best of my ability and bring money to my family

              • Say I am a big (but non-criminal) guy walking around city block in shabby dress, carrying a sign and asking some random people if I can do some work for them. If someone did ask me to wash their car, carry a heavy bag home etc, I would do it to the best of my ability and bring money to my family, if any. But something tells me I might get some handouts but no work. In an agricultural society, on the other hand, my neighbors would make good use of my muscles to plow a field, dig out a tree, move stones and

              • In an agricultural society, on the other hand, my neighbors would make good use of my muscles to plow a field, dig out a tree, move stones and so on.

                There's a solution. Move to a location where there are jobs available.

      • Re:I don't know how to take this... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aallan ( 68633 ) <alasdair.babilim@co@uk> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @10:00AM (#5502376) Homepage

        Either Cassini is really expensive for an unmanned research probe or poor people are being neglected. I mean, space exploration is great, but so is making sure that everyone has food to eat.

        Look, we have enough money and food to feed everyone on the planet decently, we just don't choose to, or our governments don't choose to, or someboday somewhere has decided that we aren't going to...

        The money spent on the space program is a drop in the ocean, and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact there are still people starving to death in the 3rd world. If we aren't going to spend it on feeding people anyway (and lets face it, we aren't) better to spend it doing something to advance science and human knowledge than buying another couple of B-1B bombers, surely?

        Al.
      • There is enough food for everyone to eat.

        There isn't enough infrastructure to move it around efficently.

        And in some cases the leadership of a nation will do things that cause starvation - Robert Mugabe

        Or sometimes it's a mix of the two, like in the DPRK, where food shipments wait on the docks until the Army can rebag the food so the people don't know it's from the US, RoK or Japan.
  • Today's APOD [nasa.gov] has a pic of Jupiter in IR (can't see the pole though).

  • Next up on NASA's list of spots to find.... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The elusive Jovian G-spot. Theory says that the spot must exist, but astronomers have become increasingly frustrated (and think of poor Jupiter!) with their lack of success. Unfortunately, NASA has not the budget to sufficiently explore Jupiter from the inside, where the G-spot undoubtedly lies. Alas, the gas giant has yet to give up its last great secret. Or just give it up.

  • Another spot? (Score:4, Funny)

    by megazoid81 ( 573094 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:33AM (#5501352)
    When will astronomers find Jupiter's G-spot?

  • Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gnovos ( 447128 ) <gnovos@NoSpAM.chipped.net> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:40AM (#5501372) Homepage Journal
    Wouldn't the loss of mass for that planet eventually cause it's orbit to get bigger and bigger? Eventually it would reach some kind of break even point where it's no bigger than the head of small dog, no?

    • Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:4, Informative)

      by drayzel ( 626716 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @05:10AM (#5501622)
      No the orbit would not get bigger and bigger. What force would act upon it? Another object with MORE gravitational force than the planets star would be needed. Mass being stripped off would affect the core though. It is often theorized that Jupiter has a rocky core 8 times the mass of the Earth, yet because of the emense pressure of the surrounding gases it is compresses it to a diameter of 11,000 KM, just smaller than the 12,800 KM diameter of the Earth. The estimated atmospheric pressure is near 70 million atmospheres with a tempature near 22,000 Kelvin. So as the gas is drawn away from the core it would expand and cool (because of a decreased Kelvin-Helmholtz effect). The heavy core would actualy look larger than it was in it's compressed form. This of course would take many many millions of years. I would specualte by that time we'd have discoverd other planets past that particular stage of life. I think a more interesting question would be as to WHY the atmosphere is being yanked by the star? It was thought that Jovian panets would only form at sufficient distances from a stars gravitaional force, otherwise all that Hydrogen and Helium would have been captured by the sun leaving a terrestial planet with a thinner atmosphere if any at all. Has the star expanded to a larger size or has the planet changed orbit? Another interesting factoid about Jupiter. The "Great Red Spot" was first detected in 1664 by Robert Hooke. Other similar but smaller and much more temporary storms are commonly seen. ~Z
      • Another interesting factoid about Jupiter. The "Great Red Spot" was first detected in 1664 by Robert Hooke.
        According to this [wikipedia.org], Giovanni Cassini discovered the Great Red Spot in 1655.
      • I think a more interesting question would be as to WHY the atmosphere is being yanked by the star?

        The artists impression looks like a large comet. Most likely the atmosphere isn't being "yanked off" so much as erroded by the particles and radiation given off by the star.
      • No the orbit would not get bigger and bigger. What force would act upon it?

        Yes it would, actually. The planet it doesn't need a force acting on it to pull it away. The point is that there is less force acting on it to keep it close in. The star and the planet orbit around a common center of mass. If either one of them loses mass, the radius of their orbits around the c.o.m. will get larger.
        • Yes, but when the planet "loses mass", where does that mass go?

          When it gets stripped away, either the solar wind will carry it away from the star, or it will remain in orbit around the star at roughly the same place. From the observations so far, it looks like the mass is staying in roughly the same place - in the orbital path of the planet, which causes it to behave like the "comet's tail" that it essentially is. Therefore, the star, its planet, AND its gas trail will be orbiting one common center of m

      • I'm no astronomer, but wouldn't the force of attraction between Jupiter and the Sun be dependant on the masses sum of their masses. As the mass of Jupiter decreases it so would the force of attraction. As the force of attraction decreased wouldn't the orbit get larger?

        I have all of these question marks because I'm not sure how the reduction in mass would affect the momentum of the Jupiter. Lemme try to work this out before you answer me.

        The gravitational force between the Sun and Jupiter would be ((G

  • I didn't see any "dark spot" (Score:4, Funny)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:40AM (#5501373) Homepage Journal
    I didn't see any "dark spot", and I looked exactly 2 weeks ago!

    Tell me if you see a dark spot.
    Tell me if you see a dark spot [uregina.ca].

    Canon cameras and 6 inch telescopes shouldn't lie.

    Big wink for the moderators.

  • The hot giant (Score:4, Interesting)

    by de la mettrie ( 27199 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:42AM (#5501381)
    As regards the second story of this thread, HD209458b, the mother of all comets:

    This planet is obviously not in a stable configuration. It could mean two things:

    Gas giants can indeed form close to stars, and we are witnessing, by chance, a normal (if very brief in galactic terms) phase of inner-system gas giants. But why could the planet accrete that much gas to begin with without it being blown away? Did the star just begin its mainline sequence?

    Contemporary models of starsystem composition are correct and gas giants do not form close to stars. This means something caused a massive drop in the planet's kinetic velocity, pulling it closer to the star. And this takes some serious power. Now this could be a natural phenomenon (another star passing close by?) but if it were artificially induced, I could think of a reason why: Imaginine a huge semipermanent membrane orbiting the star in an orbit synchronous to the planet's, catching all that precious He3 that is blown off to space. Sure beats mining it out of the atmosphere with scoopships...

    • Re:The hot giant (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fweeky ( 41046 )

      Gas giants can indeed form close to stars, and we are witnessing, by chance, a normal (if very brief in galactic terms) phase of inner-system gas giants. But why could the planet accrete that much gas to begin with without it being blown away? Did the star just begin its mainline sequence?

      Maybe it was a bog standard Hunk-o-rock[TM] ala Mercury, but it turned out to be alergic to sunlight or something, so now it's all bloated.. who wants to volunteer to go out there and give it a shot of adrenaline? :)

      I do

      • Ignoring the remainder of the paragraph, I believe you have higher kinetic energy closer to the star. It's counterintuitive to us since we live at the bottom of a gravity well and it takes a lot of kinetic energy to get into orbit.
      • Granted, the He3-gathering was a very wild guess; though I think this would be a somewhat elegant and relatively low-tech way to get at it if you have mediocre energy tech (fusion bombs for moving planets, but still need He3 for power plants?) and simplistic large-scale engineering tech (Von Neumann approach, obviously)

        And yes, it's "kinetic energy", of course, not "velocity". Hey, I'm a lawyer, not a physicist. And I just noticed I'm rambling...

    • Re:The hot giant (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TrumpetPower! ( 190615 ) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @12:14PM (#5503538) Homepage

      Imaginine a huge semipermanent membrane orbiting the star in an orbit synchronous to the planet's, catching all that precious He3 that is blown off to space.

      Dude. Step away from the crack pipe.

      All that He3 isn't going to have anywhere near enough energy to move a planet. Anybody who can toss gas giants around like softballs isn't going to give a damn about He3&--they'll make their own by the oceanful.

      Cheers,

      b&

  • Not the first one though... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fritz Benwalla ( 539483 ) <randomregs@@@gmail...com> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:51AM (#5501410)

    Voyager 2 found a "Great Dark Spot" on Neptune in the flyby in 1989. It was as big as Jupiter's Red Spot and winds were even stronger. It was pretty unstable and disappeared later though. Less of a storm, and more of an inconsistency in the methane cloud layer, so it didn't have the structure of the Red Spot. Pretty picture here. [solarviews.com]

    Dunno if it's position at the pole will keep the Jupiter one around a little longer. . .

    ----------

  • Which spot is bigger? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VValdo ( 10446 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @03:58AM (#5501439)
    For more than a century astronomers thought that the Great Red Spot was the biggest thing on Jupiter. Not anymore. Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have revealed something at least as large, The Great Dark Spot.

    and

    I was totally blown away when I saw it--a dark cloud twice as big as Earth swirling around Jupiter's north pole," says Bob West

    Hmm. I'm not a space-type expert, but I'd always been told that the Great Red Spot was "easily three times the size of earth [nasda.go.jp]", although it's shrinking [xs4all.nl].

    Maybe it's just a lot smaller now than when I was in grade school.

    W
    • That, or the 'astronomers relative estimates chart' has been updated with modern mappings, and the Earth is considred to be 'bigger' now, than it was before, so... we get the two vs. three (are same) thing.

      You know why women have such bad depth perception? Men are always telling them "...this is 9 inchs!" J-hoke , Son, ...laugh

  • The Core (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LeadfootCA ( 622446 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @04:02AM (#5501453)
    It should be a treat to eventually see the planet's core and maybe it'll clue us in a bit to gas giant formation.

    Lets see, let's asume this planet has the same mass as Jupiter: 1.9 x 10^27 kg. The article states that the planet is loosing at least 10,000 tons a second, so at that rate it would take... 6.02 x 10^12 years for the planet to evaporate. Even if it was spiting out an earth a year (mass earth = 6 x 10^24 kg), it would still take 317 years. I don't think we're going to see the core anytime soon.

  • Feeding Cycle (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zero Sum ( 209324 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @04:17AM (#5501492)
    Possibly the appearance and disappearance are signs of life. Complex molecules get caused by energy input. A population boom in something that feeds on them could cause their disapearance. Just a possibility, but the behaviour described could fit a life induced cycle.

  • Not permanent (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unlike the Great Red Spot, this Great Dark Spot isn't a permanent feature (well, actually, technically neither is the Great Red Spot, but it's supposed to last for a undeterminate amount of time). I remember hearing about other, smaller dark spots popping up on Jupiter before. This apparently is just one of the largest to be spotted.

  • Not anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lars T. ( 470328 ) <[moc.liamelgoog] [ta] [regearT.sraL]> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @04:25AM (#5501525) Journal
    For more than a century astronomers thought that the Great Red Spot was the biggest thing on Jupiter. Not anymore. Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have revealed something at least as large, The Great Dark Spot."

    Not anymore indeed, the article says it has already gone away.

  • Why combine the stories? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zero_offset ( 200586 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:06AM (#5501841) Homepage
    I don't understand why the piece about the extrasolar planet losing its gas envelope was combined with this other piece about Jupiter. Is it just because they're both "pretty far away"?

    If I had been in more of a hurry, I would have completely missed the thing about the gas envelope, which I find very interesting and would have stopped to read, because I already knew about the dark spot on Jupiter and wouldn't have considered it worth my time.

    Were the two stories combined by the article submitter, or was this more weirdness from the /. editors?

  • I've found a high power NASA photo of this phenomenon [2001exhibit.org]. Simply breathtaking.

    I feel sure that something is going to happen.

    Something wonderful. [visualeffects.net]


    blakespot

  • Talk about a sig that speaks for itself.

    Been using it for nearly 3 months now ...

  • Meanwhile, West would be delighted just to see the Dark Spot again. "It's elusive," he says. But he's ready to be blown away ... any time.

    Geez, write a personal or something...

  • So what? Jupiter has spots (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chocolate Teapot ( 639869 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @11:36AM (#5503176) Homepage Journal
    If people keep pointing it out [satirewire.com], it is only a matter of time befor Jupiter starts developing a negative self-image [kidsource.com]. It is then only a matter of time before Jupiter stomps off sulking and slamming doors, taking it's vast gravitational field with it and leaving us to collect our own space junk.

  • Goatse??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Christopher_G_Lewis ( 260977 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @12:46PM (#5503823) Homepage
    Am I the only one who was afraid to click on the link?

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