The first relatively close-up photos of Jupiter’s red spot have been taken by Juno.
That thing is 16,000 km across — you could plop the whole planet Earth in there with room to spare. It’s spectacular, but I still don’t know what’s going on in that swirling chaos, or what caused it.
That’s gotta itch.
Rotate it by 90° and it’s the Eye of Sauron.
In a future pass they’re going to determine if there’s a mass anomaly under there that might help explain it.We may or may not get an answer.
When you dive into it with your space craft, you’re transported to the future.
Maybe they’ll find Amelia Earhart in there.
has anyone asked Charles Murray?
uncle frogy
That’s where God lives.
Or at least he will until we’re able to get probes down there then he’ll move. Again. He used to live in Uranus but he’s been pulled out of there many, many times already.
It’s perfectly obvious that that’s Azathoth, who exists in the center of the chaos that is reality.
The prophet Lovecraft said it in his sacred text, the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, I believe it, that settles. it.
When you dive into it without space craft, you’ll die.
With or without, you’ll probably die anyway.
Ooh! It’s fractally whirly!
I look forward to the chemical analyses and measurements of temperature. My guess is that different chemistry changes the density and thermal properties of the atmosphere in there. Being darker, it would also absorb more sunlight and thus get warmer, helping to sustain whatever fluid-dynamic differences it has with the surrounding atmosphere.
I hope that gravitational anomalies reveal the rotation rate of the solid body under the atmosphere; it will be interesting to see if that rotates at the same speed as the atmosphere.
It ate the planet Mondas.
Could it be the leftover disturbance from a whacking big rock? Heat might do that. We’ve only been looking at Jupiter for a very little while.
It’s a hickey left by Hell Planet Remina.
Electromagnetism and gravity.
If only they had a Nobel Prize for Vagueness….. I’d even be willing to split it with somebody, if they’d write the paper.
Marcus Ranum:
Seems unnecessary. Jupiter could just have a gigantic storm, without needing a kick from some external thing like that. Lots of energy in that system (Jupiter plus the Sun), and it all needs something to do. Maybe this is just the work of the hairy ball theorem, or I don’t know, the ham sandwich theorem. If we knew more about the physics/chemistry/etc., I’m sure there would be plenty of nice theorems to pick from.
An interesting tidbit on its wiki page:
It’s also shrinking gradually.
Epic fart.
@rietpluim, 4
Yeah, ‘Storm’ is a fun and silly SF series. Well-drawn though I’m of two minds about some of the overarching plots in the Pandarve books.
Alex the Pretty Good To be honest I never was a Storm fan, but I can imagine people think the drawing (painting really) is impressive.
Dr. Phil Marcus at Berkeley took a crack at this in the 80s / 90s – unless further work has evolved assumptions, this was pretty well sorted. Storm systems of this sort are an almost inevitable consequence of how the atmosphere is structured – Jupiter is convecting heat from its interior. As what comes up must push aside what’s there … the result is a belt / band structure once rotation is added, rather than simple hex cells and the like. The arrangement guarantees vortex shedding along the intersections. At the spot’s position relative to the axis of rotation, an accumulation of these is particularly feasible. Simulations of a mathematically similar flow field often spontaneously produced great spots! This does not rule out an extra seed/anomaly, but one may not be necessary – structures like it are … normal … for a fast rotating and energetic Jovian planet.
Looks like something a barista would do.
I’m saying I know for certain that the red spot is the result of alien activities… but it’s definitley aliens.
Hydrogen latte?