Here's a really cool mystery to think about. Where do you find naturally occurring atmospheric hexagons? Why, Saturn of course!This image is incredible and baffles scientists as they have no idea what could be causing this hurricane-like storm on Saturn's north pole to look like a hexagon.
"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."
The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds.
Another interesting mystery our universe continues to surprise us with.
1 comment:
That's pretty cool! And strange at the same time. That's a big storm too, I don't always realize earth's size in comparison to other planets.
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