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Space Science

Saturn Has a Warm Pole 49

Posted by Hemos from the like-forgotten-earth dept.
Artifex writes "Astronomers using infrared imaging capabilities at Keck Observatory in Hawaii have discovered that Saturn's "south" pole is warm - the first warm pole detected in the solar system. "
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Saturn Has a Warm Pole More

Saturn Has a Warm Pole

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  • Dear God (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )
    I read it as "Saturn Has a Worm Hole" and I was like "Dear God!" Not that a warm pole is a bad news, but discovering a worm hole (a theoretical distortion of space-time in a region of the universe that would link one location or time with another, through a path that is shorter in distance or duration than would otherwise be expected) would be an outsnadning breakthrough. For anyone interested, more info here [answers.com].

  • Better (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QMO ( 836285 ) on Monday February 07, 2005 @09:57AM (#11596278) Homepage Journal
    I thought that this article was interesting in that it gave the information, explained that the information was incomplete, explained that the information was incompatible with some common ideas about how things work, and didn't try to scare me into anything.

    I didn't see any "as many as" or "could be the most" or even "may destroy civilization as we know it."

    Maybe if there were more political overtones to this topic the article would be more normal?
    • I wonder if this could be caused by the density change associated with higher temperatures, mixed with the planets rotation? Maybe the planet is acting as a centrifuge, forcing warm air to stay in the poles...

      Come on everybody, what's your theory?

      • Maybe what looks like the bottom of Saturn to us is really the top, and we all know that hot air rises . . .

        How's that for a theory?

      • Re:Better (Score:2, Insightful)

        by youknowmewell ( 754551 )
        Volcano that is conveniently located at or near the pole.

        • Re:Better (Score:2, Insightful)

          by battlesharrp ( 821973 )
          Possibly a volcano...
          But don't you have to have a mostly solid(or at least plastic-y like the mantle) surface to have something resembling a volcano?
          • No shit. He could've said "maybe there's a giant swiss cheese fondue at the south pole generating the heat" and it would have hardly been more ludicrous.

            I think it could be from exothermic chemical reactions between the gases that tend to accumulate at that particular pole. Wouldn't that be easy to verify by spectral analysis of that particular region of the planet?
            • I like the exothermic chemical reactions idea- what would you be checking if you were using a spectral analysis? It seems they already did something similar, but I thought that was part of how they found the warm spot.
              Maybe convection currents.

              I wish there was fondue on Saturn. Then maybe we'd have more of an incentive to develop better technology and go there to investigate semi-intelligent fondue making organisms.

  • Warm pole? (Score:4, Funny)

    by base3 ( 539820 ) on Monday February 07, 2005 @09:59AM (#11596291)
    I swear, sometimes the jokes just write themselves!

  • I know where this came from (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday February 07, 2005 @10:07AM (#11596361)
    Didn't this come from the book of "Roman God Pickup Lines" ?
  • While I appreciate this is the first planet in the solar system to display this - is it not all relative? The scientists that found this vortex did not estimate the temperature at the pole. Saturn has to be by and large pretty bloody cold. The fact that the pole is warmer than the rest of the planet is not necessarily all that meaningful is it? I mean it could still be way way below the freezing mark. I mean if ithe average temperature of saturn is -130C ( http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/bobalien99/table.h [aol.com]

    • Re:It's all relative? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Scarblac ( 122480 )

      Of course it is still bloody cold there - it's described as a jet steam in the Saturn atmosphere, i.e. more atmospheric activity than usual. Not hot springs.

      The significance is that we don't have an explanation for it. It's something strange and unexpected. On other planets, the poles are colder than the rest.

      Furthermore, if this were the result of seasons (the pole has been in continuous sunlight for 18 earth years, just like our poles have a continuous day during summer), then you'd expect the effect to

      • Maybe it has something to do with the rings casting shadows over the equatorial parts, so the atmosphere has an unusual temperature distribution, causing the winds to migrate in the opposite sense compared to what we would expect. (Cooling down at the equator and blowing down, warming up at the pole, expanding and rising up.)

        (disclaimer = didn't RTFA. Mod down accordingly.)

  • $PLANET has a warm pole... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday February 07, 2005 @10:36AM (#11596672) Homepage Journal
    If it'd been Uranus, I think I woulda called in sick today.

    • Re:$PLANET has a warm pole... (Score:5, Informative)

      by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Monday February 07, 2005 @12:46PM (#11598181)
      Since Uranus is tilted on its axis [wikipedia.org] almost ninety degrees it is very likely that the same polar vortex mechanism is at work there (probably even bigger effect than on Saturn) too and we jest haven't seen it yet due to a lack of angular resolution from our ground telescopes. So yes, Uranus probably does have a big hot pole!
      • Uranus has a big black hole
      • That's right on correct. I'm waiting first to see whether Saturn's north pole has a cold polar vortex (like nearly the entire rest of the solar system atmospheres whose poles endure winter at one time or another)...maybe the Cassini infrared instrument (CIRS) will discover this in the next few years. Now Uranus is now 2 years away from equinox, so it will be a bit of a wait until it's pole-on again, as it was in 1986. The best we can do is compare relative temperatures, so I'm about the task of analyzing
        • interesting. very cool to have the discoverer of the phenomenon here with us! congradulations and please stick around! I'm sure you can contribute valuable information to other science articles appearing here in the future :)
  • So.. it's got a hot bottom?

  • broadband imaging (Score:3, Interesting)

    by helioquake ( 841463 ) on Monday February 07, 2005 @11:51AM (#11597554) Journal
    Considering this is a broad-band IR imaging, isn't it plausible that the bright spot in the south pole is not due to strong thermal continuum, but instead due to strong emission line features?

    I wonder if Saturn is too bright for the Spitzer's spectrogrpah.

    • Re:broadband imaging (Score:3, Interesting)

      by astrobabe ( 533099 )
      Given that I work for Spitzer. . .yes. Saturn is on the list of bright sources that will saturate the detectors except possibly short exposures in high resolution mode of IRS. Given that we've accidentally slewed the telescope across it though and left latents, we probably won't be observing it any time soon.
    • We'd call it medium-band imaging (about 10%), but we're lucky in that we don't expect narrow emission lines in this region and that we're about to be checked soon (I hope) by the high-resolution Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) on board the Cassini spacecraft. The atmospheric opacity is supplied by a spectrally broad quasi-"continuum" absorption arising from a collision-induced dipole of molecular hydrogen (a very weak absorber, but all the outer planets have PLENTY of it!) Glenn Orton, JPL (co-disc

  • You're not doing it right. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WaterBreath ( 812358 ) on Monday February 07, 2005 @12:05PM (#11597704)
    Saturn's "south" pole is warm

    Okay, I'm gonna be nitpicky here... Why in the world is the word "south", within quotation marks in the post?

    Any planet with a magnetic field will have a south pole (and a north pole, of course), which will probably be on the rotational axis of the planet, and which will not necessarily point the same direction in 3-space as Earth's south pole. The linked story doesn't make a distinction. And a quick Google search shows that none of the major science news outlets have put the "south" in quotes, or made any note that it might not actually be the magnetic south pole. So, why would the poster feel it's necessary to throw in the quotes? A failed attempt at being clever?

    • Re:You're not doing it right. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, no, the magnetic pole is only vaguely close to the rotational pole; and the magnetic polarity of a planet is capable of shifting, while the rotational polarity does not. And a body might be rotated 180 deg to the ecliptic, too, so that its rotational south pole is lined up with the planets' rotational north poles. So one has to decide whether the "south" pole is the rotational south pole or the ecliptical south pole. Me, I'd go for ecliptical.
    • Any planet with a magnetic field will have a south pole (and a north pole, of course), which will probably be on the rotational axis of the planet, and which will not necessarily point the same direction in 3-space as Earth's south pole.

      You don't even need a magnetic field...

      Universal definitions:

      East is in the direction of the planet's rotation

      West is the opposite of East

      If you face East, North is on your left and South is on your right.

      For bodies that are tidally locked it gets more complicated...
    • My head hurts.

      You do realize, do you not, that the earth's magnetic fields has flipped countless times in the past? In fact some people think we may be starting to see the start of a new reversal - the strength of the earth's magnetic field has dropped dramatically in the last century.

      Are we going to have to redo all of our maps with Australia at the top?
      • That's rediculous! Just because the earth's magnetic feild might change, that doesn't mean the entire construction of the continents is going to change too...lol. I'm just going to assume that you didn't mean that :P :)
      • You do realize, do you not, that the earth's magnetic fields has flipped countless times in the past?

        I do. But AFAIK, for as long as humans have known at least generally how magnets work, it has not changed. Also, this response [slashdot.org] was quite insightful, but as I later responded, it still does not explain the quotes.

  • Don't forget the sun tan lotion!
  • Happiness is a warm pole...

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