There’ve been a few threads recently about the Cassini mission at Saturn, and I really wasn’t sure whether this would belong in GQ but it was an entirely different subject and one which is truly fascinating. I didn’t think it was mundane enough for MPSIMS, but since there’s no factual answer even by NASA, I wasn’t sure where to put it. Please feel free to move this to an appropriate section, mods.
NASA just released images of an atmospheric formation at Saturn’s north pole which has been known about for a long time, but hasn’t been photographed since the Voyager missions. Since the north pole is not facing the sun right now (and won’t be for some time), they had to take infrared photos. The formation is even larger than the Great Red Spot, and it’s incredible in a way that few extraterrestrial phenomena are. I can only wonder what could possibly make this happen. Is the core of Jupiter less spherical and perhaps more geometric? Even NASA isn’t sure.
As much as I believe in aliens, I’m pretty skeptical that they’re behind this.
My second response – my first of course was ‘That is so freakin awesome’ – is that ‘precise’ and ‘nearly perfectly straight’ as estimated by the weatherman studying it are likely to be human exaggeration. Even in the rough image I can tell those sides aren’t anything like perfectly straight, and future images may reveal that it wasn’t nearly as well-formed as it first appeared. My third thought I didn’t finish because I was whiplashing myself over to Randi’s board to see what the woos are making of it, bless their zany hearts.
Oddly enough I am the opposite in that I am very Skeptical of Aliens, but wouldn’t be surprised if such a thing is “alien-made.” Not to say that It can’t be natural, just that if it is, it is incredible.
edit: I see on preview EE saw some other images that show it isn’t straight lines. Much more believable that it is natural now. It’s my understanding straight lines rarely happen in nature. Especially at this scale. I retract my original thoughts then.
thanks for that link, Squink. That’s about as counter-intuitive an experiment as I can imagine. So it’s not so amazing after all. I was kind of hoping they were the product of giant Saturnian bees.
I believe in aliens too - I’ve met a number of legal ones, and probably a few illegal ones too, although they weren’t going to tell me that. None of them seemed like they could have created rotating hexagons around the north pole of Saturn.
What?
Based upon the conclusive evidence presented so far this must be caused by man made global warming. We must immediately spend trillions of dollars to reverse this horrible chain of events before it turns into a square, or worse, a triangle.
