Astronomers Detect a 10-Sided Structure in Saturn's Atmosphere

Posted by jjgreen 5 days ago

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Comments

Comment by henearkr 5 days ago

Not a "structure", but rather atmospheric resonance create this polygonal shape, from cyclones self-arrangement etc.

Same thing on Jupiter, by the way, known since a long time.

I'd say that "structure" is click-baity, as it evokes some artifact.

Comment by princevegeta89 4 days ago

Given the well-known hexagon on its north pole this decagon doesn't seem that surprising after all.

Comment by jonathanlydall 5 days ago

Perhaps “feature” would be most appropriate.

Comment by yesitcan 4 days ago

But then the title would be less clickbait.

Comment by aaron695 4 days ago

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Comment by tastyfreeze 5 days ago

Years ago there was a video on YouTube showing that geometric shapes appear in a vortex of water at different rates of spin. While it is neat that these shapes appear in atmosphere of another planet I have since assumed that it is the same dynamic as shapes in water vortices.

Comment by brador 5 days ago

Found this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=I1vhRJo0Eik

Comment by tastyfreeze 5 days ago

That is a much better explanation than the one I saw. From that video the polygons only appear once there is a dry region at the bottom. Could we be getting a view of what constitutes a planetary surface at the bottom of the vortex?

Comment by AngryData 5 days ago

I mean provided there was a distinct surface to see then it could happen if it was strong enough, but the problem with the bucket is it's limited depth. If the bucket was 20 foot tall I doubt you would see the bottom before those structures appeared.

Comment by tastyfreeze 5 days ago

Sounds like a good experiment. That experimenter said that deeper water required faster spinning to draw the vortex to the bottom and that the shapes don't appear until the center of the vortex is dry. So they did some experiments with deeper water but it was easier to make the shapes with less water.

Comment by swiftcoder 5 days ago

My first thought on seeing the images was "texture coordinates for a sphere are hard"

Comment by yipinwong 5 days ago

There is a talk amongst Astrophysics (not a serious one) that we showed up too late as a civilization, and Universes thrived at around 5 billion years after the big bang.

Now we are 13.8 billion years old, and the Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

That 7+ billion year gap is so huge, we cannot even detect any structures anywhere.

---

My thoughts out of my @$$

The possibility is the Mars where there is a big scar on it, where it could have had been a space war, but cannot figure out as it's been billions of years ago.

Same for the Saturn. It could have had harboring another life form and try to protect itself with the thick atmospheric shield in the gas giant to avoid the demise the Mars has encountered.

Comment by retube 5 days ago

Hmm. i think you need a universe at least 10bn+ years for intelligent life as you need to have had cycle of earlier stars going supernovae to create the heavier elements.

That aside, 13bn years old is young. literally an instantaneous flash in the context of all time until heat death of the universe.

Comment by yipinwong 5 days ago

You see red dots/monsters on hubble or JWT.

Those are the ones fundamentally shifting theories about how early stars/blackholes/galaxies can form. (there are other factors like dark matters that can play a role but nobody knows for sure yet)

13bn years is not too young with that context in mind.

Comment by bombcar 5 days ago

> That aside, 13bn years old is young. literally an instantaneous flash in the context of all time until heat death of the universe.

That alone is sus, because if we have infinity billion trillion years until the end, and we're so close to the beginning as to be a rounding error, it's weird.

Comment by Dylan16807 5 days ago

That activity is massively massively frontloaded. About 95% of all stars that will ever form, have already formed. And with typical main sequence stars lasting under 10 billion years, we're already well into the decline of the universe.

Comment by mr_toad 4 days ago

> And with typical main sequence stars lasting under 10 billion years

For mid to large size stars, yes. But Red dwarf stars are expected to live for trillions of years.

Comment by subscribed 5 days ago

Why is that _weird_? That implies recorded data / measurements going against the proven and tested theories, or the _design_.

Comment by _bernd 5 days ago

No we don't have that much time. Over time there will no longer be huge areas of new star formation. Most stars are also rather short lived and can not sup6a plane like planet Earth.

Our sun, sol, has a neat live span so we can thrive for while if we don't **up this plants ecosystem.

But as far as I understood astro physics we are rather quiet early in the game.

Comment by aeve890 5 days ago

>The possibility is the Mars where there is a big scar on it, where it could have had been a space war, but cannot figure out as it's been billions of years ago.

A Death Star ray just grazed Mars and ended up hitting Earth and killing the dinos. Coming soon on my Wattpad

Comment by Hikikomori 5 days ago

I like to think that the dark forest theory is real but its just AGIs out there letting meatbags create a new AGI, and then they just reset the planet.

Comment by yipinwong 5 days ago

Whatever had happened 7 billion years ago coulda triggered what DF theory explains.

At the time there were species communicating, but all hell broke loose, and probably decided not to communicate with each other, hiding.

Comment by kevin_thibedeau 5 days ago

The mice are probably in on it.

Comment by pohl 5 days ago

> ...where it could have had been a space war...

This was a plot point in ST:SNW S4E1

Comment by RetroTechie 5 days ago

"In addition to the difference in the number of sides," Sánchez-Lavega explained, "the decagon is situated at a less polar latitude than the hexagon in the southern hemisphere,

Just a thought: how do lengths of the sides compare between north pole's hexagon and this south pole decagon? Causes might be unclear but perhaps that side length corresponds to a 'wavelength' that's more-or-less a constant?

Comment by __alexs 5 days ago

The brief excitement in the space between expecting a decahedral possibly artificial structure lurking in a gas giant and finding out it's just wind.

Comment by pvaldes 5 days ago

Taking in mind the gyrating hexagon that seems unique in the solar system (rings had been found in other planets) I propose to rename the sixth planet to Hexaturn.

(Or at least that particular cloud. The name is too good to not use it)

Comment by mettamage 5 days ago

Looks like a better Sauron's eye. If there are any Hollywood movie producers here, please make this an evil villain vibe in a movie. Saturn is awesome

Comment by neilellis 5 days ago

Aliens playing D&D

Comment by karim79 5 days ago

Nah it's the simulation rendering in low poly further away. Or both.

Comment by sgt 5 days ago

A monolith!

Comment by moret1979 4 days ago

My god, it's full of stars!

Comment by wewewedxfgdf 5 days ago

Does magnetism play a role in such?

Comment by stevenalowe 5 days ago

Atmospheric structure not artificial

Comment by schrectacular 4 days ago

Obviously Dwellers.

Comment by staplung 5 days ago

Is it just me or does the dark blob in the center of the decagon look like a Mandelbrot set? The resemblance appears more acute in the images lower down in the article.

Comment by pavon 5 days ago

I think the images in the article are mosaics created from multiple images and the dark blob in the center is where their was no imagery because Saturn's south pole is currently tilted somewhat away from us. It has a 30 year orbit, and you can see in the images we are able to see closer and closer to the south pole each of the three years images were taken. The rough edges are just an artifact of image processing, and where individual exposures cut off.

Comment by blooalien 5 days ago

> Is it just me or does the dark blob in the center of the decagon look like a Mandelbrot set?