Saturn’s “Mysterious” Hexagon Is Breeding A Fresh Batch Of Alien-loving Loonies As We Speak
Filed under: The Universe
Nope, we completely have no data about the breeding of loonies, but we’re joining the “Saturn hexagon dance party” by citing the potentially hype-deflating Earth-bound possibilities of squarish, pentagonal, and hexagonal spinning things, as found out last year by researcher Tomas Bohr and colleagues:
Tomas Bohr and colleagues made plexiglass buckets, 13 and 20 centimetres across, with metal bottoms that could be rotated at high speed by a motor. They filled the bucket with water and spun the bottom to whip up the liquid into a whirlpool that rose up the sides of the container.
This set-up is very similar to the rotating bucket that Isaac Newton used in the seventeenth century to investigate centrifugal forces.
The researchers found that once the plate was spinning so fast that the water span out to the sides, creating a hole of air in the middle, the dry patch wasn’t circular as might be expected. Instead it evolved, as the bucket’s spin sped up, from an ellipse to a three-sided star, to a square, a pentagon, and, at the highest speeds investigated, a hexagon.
The caveat is that the workings of Bohr’s experimental findings are largely unknown and may or may not apply to large-scale phenomena like that in Saturn, but why let caveats get in the way of insane fun? Go ahead, tell grandmom the Pentagon has an office building in another planet, only it has six darned sides, quiet larger, and possibly full of otherwordly stuff you’d usually see if you’d peek up Marilyn Manson’s nostrils.
Left, Saturn’s exciting hexagon; right, Tomas Bohr’s smaller-scale bucket experiments
via ENTROPY BOUND].
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April 3rd, 2007 at 10:24 am
This is interesting… Now, what exactly would have caused such a shape to show up on Saturn? One odd thing is that the speed of rotation of the hexagon on Saturn is more or less the same as Saturn’s estimated rotation speed.
This is really interesting and fun. I wonder what Saturn will come up with next.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I don’t know about Saturn, but there’s bound to be something coming into Uranus in the near future.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Tomas Bohr’s photos reveal some sort of agitator at the bottom of the bucket. Being that Saturn is a gas giant; where is the agitator that is inducing these hexagonal cloud patterns? These experiments do nothing to explain the formation of these cloud systems on Saturn. (or their inexplicable longevity)
I wouldn’t go telling my Grandmom that there is a Pentagon on Saturn which is “quiet”, larger and has six sides. I would tell her it is a Hexagon and hexagons have six sides. I would also point out to her that the patterns defy all known laws of fluid dynamics; unless there is some underlying disturbance or physical structure inducing the pattern.
I’d explain more, but I must fly back to the mothership before it leaves orbit.
July 25th, 2007 at 2:58 am
The bucket experiment is a cute idea, and almost had me sold - but, if valid, why’s there a hurricane instead of a hexagon at the other pole? Maybe north pole and south pole spin at immensely different speeds? (No geometric shape at all, in south.) Not likely.
Obviously, there’s a mothership immersed below the surface, using Saturn’s rotational energy as a power source. The little ice moon with its geysers provides lots of water. Titan, with all that methane, provides fuel for the bunsen burners (necessary equipment, in their school science labs). Earth, quite nearby in celestial terms, is an ideal hunting ground for food (red meat, buckos!) and material for long-term biological experiments (evolution, etc.).
Later on, when sol expands into Red Giant phase, Titan’s methane will convert into organic compounds under the increased sunlight. So, all won’t be lost when Earth gets submerged beneath overly-hot hydrogen.
And, the little grays will still come out to play, playing hopscotch from ice-boulder to ice-boulder in the rings.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Hmm, interesting idea’s, however I can now confirm this is the doing of Jodie Foster
January 16th, 2008 at 6:55 am
this is such bullshit…..obviously a bucket has sides to it…so whats under the clouds at the north pole of saturn….and why has it taken so long for us to have access to this information…only 26 years!!!! So thing is going on that are government is slowlllyyyy preparing us for.