Jupiter's Great Dark Spot 234
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."
Oh My God! It's full of stars! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh My God! It's full of stars! (Score:3, Informative)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Oh My God! It's full of stars! (Score:5, Insightful)
Beside Europa (Score:4, Informative)
Life on Jupiter? (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
That said, I wouldn't give up on life there either...
Re:Life on Jupiter? (Score:2)
Re:Oh My God! It's full of stars! (Score:2)
Actually, they're completely wrong (Score:4, Funny)
Looks suspicious (Score:5, Funny)
joke, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
c'mon...
Re:Looks suspicious (Score:2)
Re:Looks suspicious (Score:2, Funny)
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)
Re:Looks suspicious (Score:2, Funny)
Leave it alone... (Score:5, Funny)
Send in the--- (Score:2)
The only question is-- How much energy would be required to get it back to Earth
Dave? Is that you? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dave? Is that you? (Score:2)
Only three? How quickly they forget!
Looks like ... (Score:2, Funny)
It's too late! (Score:3, Funny)
Note to self: find someone get to work on that Bowman virus post-haste.
Re:It's too late! (Score:2)
Of course, it should also play "Daisy, Daisy" when exposed to an iSeries or a zSeries mainframe.
Faster better cheaper? (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Or only three days (<1%) of the current USA defense budget...
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point! Thanks. :)
Role of Federal Gov't. (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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).
Re: Role of Federal Gov't (offtopic but....) (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re: Role of Federal Gov't (offtopic but....) (Score:2)
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
Re:Role of Federal Gov't. (Score:2)
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
Re:Role of Federal Gov't. (Score:2)
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
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:2)
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:2)
Or, gasp, developed the skills to create it internally.
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:2)
Are we now debating space policy on the basis of marketing tag lines?
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:2)
Are we now debating space policy on the basis of marketing tag lines?
Looks like it, so while we're at it, why can't we build a new space shuttle based on Windows (Where do you want to go today?)????
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:2)
I'll bite (someone has to), because if we based it on Windows, it would cra... er, nevermind, guess they already did.
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:2)
I don't know how to take this... (Score:2)
Re:I don't know how to take this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't know how to take this... (Score:2)
The world hunger problem is about money, not lack of food. Zero-gravity growth experiments and terraforming won't solve that problem.
Re:I don't know how to take this... (Score:2)
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
The problem is... (Score:2)
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
Re:The problem is... (Score:2)
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
Re:The problem is... (Score:2)
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)
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.Re:I don't know how to take this... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:...and it's radioactive! (Score:3, Informative)
"Risked" is a strong word.
-l
Re:...and it's radioactive! (Score:2)
Not really. I'm used to hearing words on the order of threatened, endangered [spintechmag.com] or imperiled from these folks. "Risked" seems comparatively much less hysterical.
Re:Faster better cheaper? (Score:2)
What I attempted to point out is the merit of a particular "big budget" NASA project verses the results we've gotten from the "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy. There are no "feeding the poor" implications in this.
However, I am well aware that singling out foodstamps causes many knees to jerk. I could have used any number of different budget figures to the same effect, but I know what I am doing. :)
Thanks for playing
Somewhat unrelated... (Score:2, Interesting)
Next up on NASA's list of spots to find.... (Score:1, Funny)
Another spot? (Score:4, Funny)
Uhm... (Score:4, Funny)
I kid, I kid
Re:Another spot? (Score:2)
Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2)
Apples and oranges. The dust and the table aren't orbiting each other.
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2)
No, but they all have the same orbital speed. If the earth were to lose mass, the satellites would be moving too fast to stay in the same obit and would spiral out.
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2)
First off, it's "loses" and "satellite". Secondly, you're wrong.
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2)
Of course, this is the star los
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2)
This is exactly what stars do. Just that the mass loss, both as "solar wind" and radiation, isn't a large part of their total mass.
Re:Losing mass, changing orbit? (Score:2)
Try again. A planet and its primary orbit each other; the mass difference makes it hard to see, but the star wobbles around its center too. IIRC the planets thought to circle Barnard's Star were detected by seeing this wobble. Watch a hammer-throw contest and you'll see what I mean.
So if the orbit is dependent on the mass of the star, it's also dependent on the mass of the planet, albeit much less so.
I didn't see any "dark spot" (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:I didn't see any "dark spot" (Score:2)
You can't see the Red Spot on that photo, either. Should we infer the Red Spot doesn't exist?
Re:I didn't see any "dark spot" (Score:2)
You can't see the Red Spot on that photo, either. Should we infer the Red Spot doesn't exist?
You also can't see my dick in that photo, should we infer...
oh nevermind.
The hot giant (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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
Kinetic energy (Score:2)
Re:The hot giant (Score:2)
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)
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)
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)
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
Re:Which spot is bigger? (Score:2)
You know why women have such bad depth perception? Men are always telling them "...this is 9 inchs!" J-hoke , Son,
The Core (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Not permanent (Score:2, Informative)
Not anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not anymore indeed, the article says it has already gone away.
Why combine the stories? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
High-power NASA photo of this phenomenon (link) (Score:2, Funny)
I feel sure that something is going to happen.
Something wonderful. [visualeffects.net]
blakespot
HA! (Score:2)
Been using it for nearly 3 months now ...
Worst quote ever in the Space topic (Score:4, Funny)
Geez, write a personal or something...
So what? Jupiter has spots (Score:3, Funny)
Goatse??? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Earth (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Earth (Score:3, Funny)
(An oldie but goodie...)
New York (AP) - The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by researchers at the University of Fulchester. The element, tentatively named Administratium, has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have 1 neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles a
Re:A moon hit the planet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A moon hit the planet (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean planetography.
"Underneath the outer atmosphere is liquid metallic hydrogen. What does that mean?"
You're putting forward theory as fact and missing a several thousand kilometre thick wodge of increasingly dense gas that can stay partially stable for months or centuries in the case of the Great Red Spot.
OD
Re:A moon hit the planet (Score:3, Funny)
Most likely it's a gigantic cloud city run by Billy Dee Williams.
Re:A moon hit the planet (Score:2)
Impact events only leave signs on gas giants for a fairly short time. It isn't that long since the last time Jupiter got hit.
Re:This is obviously a mistake. (Score:2)
The so-called "dark spot" is not a feature of Jupiter, but of Uranus.
Was that intended as the pun I read it to be?
Re:This is obviously a mistake. (Score:2)