Hexagon Spotted on Saturn.

Posted by Spluch in Pictures on March 28, 2007 at 8:09 am


saturnHex.jpg

Astronomers have spotted a hexagon-shaped feature on Saturn’s north pole.

“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.

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COMMENT

7 comments to "Hexagon Spotted on Saturn."

  1. Sid
    March 28th, 2007 at 8:52 am

    I'm guessing Xenu placed it there. If they can look closer, it will probably have the divisions of a Trivial Pursuit token.

    Hail Xenu!

  2. Jeremiah
    March 28th, 2007 at 10:45 am

    This thing is a hexagon.

  3. Wah
    March 28th, 2007 at 11:16 am

    Hexagons and circles are pretty similar. You can get the same effect by using a few diffuse light sources shining through circular holes. The shadows will be hexagons.

  4. amanda
    March 28th, 2007 at 11:16 am

    I don't get why this is unusual. I mean snowflakes are ALL hexagons too, when you get down to it...and what about the golden mean, it's everywhere. Certain matter behaves in certain fashion under pressures or during chemical processes. A geometric shape doesn't imply abnormality at all.

  5. Ali
    March 28th, 2007 at 11:23 am

    @Amanda

    I think they found it odd because of the way the extreme wind speeds are creating the hexagonal shape...that and it's about 15,000 miles wide.

  6. beajerry
    March 28th, 2007 at 11:49 am

    It would be interesting to see how it changes over time.

  7. mrgoodbar
    March 28th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    I doubt it has anything to do with the winds and more to do with some sort of extreme magnetic interference at the pole. Also this isn't the fast swirling top clouds you're seeing but a deeper, denser (and perhaps more stable) layer.

    Nothing weird here that science can't explain with some good theorizing and continued observations, but I bet the tin-foil and UFO kooks are having fun with it. Secret space base of the Third Reich, anyone?


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