What is Digg?139 Comments
- noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -18/+221Well seeing as NASA's atmospheric scientists are perplexed, I'm going to guess this has nothing to do with your grade school experiment.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+132Dharma?
- djscrib, on 10/12/2007, -30/+125It's cool but not magical. There's a grade school science experiment where you fill a bucket full of water and spin it around really fast on a machine. The "hole" in the middle of the water that forms will assume different shapes depending on the speed. One of those is a hexagon. Since the whole planet is a spinning mess of crap that seems to be the larger scale equivalent.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+60@djscrib:
Dugg for referring to Saturn as "a spinning mess of crap."
:) - jake8689, on 10/12/2007, -16/+54I for one welcome our hexagon storm overlords
- neave, on 10/12/2007, -3/+40Advert-free video is available here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/movies/PIA09187.mov
The whole planet is one huge raging storm, and this is like the eye of the storm at the north of the planet. The same thing's happening in the south pole as well, as in this video: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA08332.mov
Also, this storm's so huge it could swallow the Earth! - Prysorra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36Wow - this has implications. Related but not entirely the same phenomena:
Check out this Nature article on how to make a geometric whirlpool: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060515/full/060515-17.html
http://www.digg.com/design/PICTURES_Fluid_Polygons_and_Polyhedra - sotopheavy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31So we need a large wrench to unlock Saturn's secrets?
- DickyMcPhallus, on 10/12/2007, -5/+33Obelisks are going to start flying out of that thing. It's full of stars, you know.
- bishsd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26FTA:
"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."
Not to get all tin foil hat, but damn that's weird. Check out the video link at the bottom of the article. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Really? Because Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, seems to think it's kind of weird.
- Detritus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Thanks for calling attention to the video link. That is even weirder to see it in motion.
My parents have gotten into astronomy and while visiting them a couple of years ago I was amazed to see Saturn through their telescope. They showed me some Nebulae and other neat stuff, but Saturn really stood out. It is one visually stunning planet, I was really awed by the experience. I highly recommend making friends with someone that has a ridiculously large telescope. - atticus8, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Sir, you have truly found the way to Digg success:
1) Silly Bible quotes
2) Useless photos of muddied colors / nothing in particular
3) Liberal use of unnecessary spacing so that your post is ridiculously, annoyingly long
4) Basically admitting you are a tool (clouds have "completely reshaped what Ive known about ancient history, archeaology, religion")
You are on your way, my friend. All you needed to complete the post was to add "I think these spirits in the clouds finally proves that PS3 is a better system. Oh, and Apple sucks."
PS - I'm not logician, but I'm pretty sure no one is relying on war to get themselves peace. - arcsine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18NASA's write up is better:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034 - cptn_cardboard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Steve 12:24
And he said unto him "Kick the believer in the testis, for he believes in stupid *****." - noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Well, after looking at the page Prysorra put forward, there may be some relation... the major difference I see is that on saturn you can see that the gasses aren't thrown aside like the liquid in the bucket experiment. There is clearly still cloud mass inside the hexagon. Also, there are no edges for the gasses to be hitting against and coming back in the hexagon pattern.
- dopplerdog, on 10/12/2007, -8/+22Breaking news: Astronomers on Saturn discover a Bizarre Pentagon on Earth.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=The+Pentagon,+United+States&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=38.871022,-77.05596&spn=0.010809,0.021179&t=k&om=1 - AlanCayce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Comments in digg have gone to *****..
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16THE MONOLITHS !!!!
- carolinaws, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14My money's on the Monolith.
- Pfhreak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11"Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn"
Yeah, about twenty years ago by the Voyager probes. (Yes, I read the article.) - sxtxixtxcxh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9lol. nothing extra-terrestrial about it... you know.. except for the whole thing about it not being terran at all.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13We have to remember lots of magnetic activity exists near the poles of all planets. And magnetic fields can produce very strange patterns.
I remember this from flight school. My instructor was a strange weather phenom nut and tornado hunter. - Otto, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Honeycomb's big!
- pleiadianagenda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Is it cymatics? The creation of geometric structure via vibrational frequency?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2795869048702157810&q=cymatics
More cymatic video on google. - atticus8, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I don't understand why everyone is so confused. Just ask HP Lovecraft - he'll tell you what it is. He'll even tell you what elder god the Hexagon belongs to. He will also probably say that it is "unholy" and "blasphemous" and probably mention the word "insanity".
- kaffein, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Not as weird as Iapetus:
http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon1.htm
http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus/Iapetus-Color-High-Res-s.jpg - hockey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7It's the portal that Starbuck came out of after her ship exploded in Maelstrom.
- philconow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Is this guy for real?
I am about to start my own religion and show pictures of clouds, quickest way to a million $. - stacky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I believe the original post was a reference to Arthur C. Clarke's novel "2010: Odyssey Two"
And I'm sure it's posted somewhere further down, but "My God, it's full of stars!" - Haapi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6We will meet at midnight at the Well of Souls.
- threemagic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6no, our honey bees.. they are gone.. I guess we found em.
*shakes fist at damn space traveling honey bees - AoSDFA, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Well, DUH. That must be where Starbuck popped out.
- S4MF1SHER, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That looks awesome. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has found a lot of interesting things. Check out the bizarre sounds of Saturn that it picked up.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=1613 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9There's going to be another sun?
- razrielle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@sotopheavy
Hmmm, US or Metric?, dont wanna strip it out - Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"It's cool but not magical. " duh..
- sxtxixtxcxh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6big mouths wanted.
- DavidDigg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Well seeing as NASA's atmospheric scientists are perplexed, I'm going to guess this has nothing to do with your grade school experiment."
Why do you think the scientists are perplexed? The hexagon is clearly the result of a dynamical system, and we even have a model for it. BTW NASA scientists have a vested interest in waxing cosmic - PR is a very serious business for them. "Cool pictures but nothing to see here but a few mathematical details" isn't the kind of message that helps NASA rake in the $billions... - threemagic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3bipolar
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"shun the nonbeliever" lol. I love those ponies
- BunnieLebowski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4come on people...this is obviously a phantom zone used to hold the criminals from Krypton
- amphoterous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Oh Jesus...
Where's my tinfoil?!? - Gigs, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6@noahhoward
If you think of the planet as though it were the bucket, with gravity acting as spherical walls, and the open top in a spherical sense as analogous to eye of the hurricane which we can look "down" into on the other side of the planet, it seems like it could be a partial explanation, and it might only apply to a relatively narrow atmospheric shell spinning at planetary rate to cause the same phenomena. Obviously there are other forces of gravity, pressure and polar magnetism involved which could account for the hexagon being "filled in" because theres no planetary "bucket bottom"...but it is probably a good jumping point for the scientists to base a computer model. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Space Bees?
- Silentshadow900, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's the Andromeda strain!
- DharmaTurtle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Dharma?"
You called? - trollick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Bizarre? It looks pretty normal to me. If it had 7 sides that would be bizarre!
- dasid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"We've never seen anything like this on any other planet."
This has been seen on Earth: http://www.enterprisemission.com/Hyperdimensional%20Hurricane_optimized/02.jpg - mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's just some kind of standing wave thing. I mean it's cool, but science writers often play up the "bizarre" angle to get more readers. Actually, it probably would have been more striking if they had left out the hyperbole.
Cassini Images Hexagonal Cloud Formation on Saturn
March 27, 2007
Pasadena, Calif. -- An six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission. -
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