Saturn's Hexagon: The Impossible Six-Sided Storm at the Pole
pplpod29 Juni

Saturn's Hexagon: The Impossible Six-Sided Storm at the Pole

Hover over Saturn's north pole and you would expect a swirling circular hurricane. Instead, you find a flawless six-sided polygon, a geometric shape that seems to defy everything we know about how turbulent gas behaves.

This episode dives into the physics, history, and unsolved mystery of Saturn's hexagon, drawing on atmospheric research, planetary data, and fluid dynamic models. We unpack its staggering scale, its eerie synchronicity with the planet's deep interior, and the competing theories scientists still fiercely debate.

  • Each side of the hexagon is roughly 14,500 kilometers long, about 2,000 kilometers longer than Earth's entire diameter
  • The storm rotates in perfect lockstep with Saturn's internal radio emissions, suggesting the deep core puppeteers the outer atmosphere
  • How it was hiding in 1981 Voyager images and only assembled into a hexagon in 1987, then changed from blue to gold during the Cassini mission
  • The Oxford lab experiment that produced hexagons by spinning fluid at different speeds, and why critics say it relies on vortex streets we don't observe
  • Why deep barotropic instability, with the central polar vortex acting as a gyroscopic stabilizer, is the leading explanation

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(8057)

The Malpasset Dam Disaster: How a Hidden Fault Erased a Valley

The Malpasset Dam Disaster: How a Hidden Fault Erased a Valley

On December 8, 1959, a thin concrete arch dam on the French Riviera vanished in a fraction of a second, unleashing a 40-meter wall of water that erased entire villages and killed 423 people. It is a c...

29 Juni 20min

Leif Erikson: The Viking Who Beat Columbus by 500 Years

Leif Erikson: The Viking Who Beat Columbus by 500 Years

Imagine learning the first European to reach North America did it not with a royal fleet, but as a family of exiled Norse outlaws running out of map. Christopher Columbus was half a millennium late to...

29 Juni 18min

Cher Ami: The War Hero Pigeon and the Legend the Army Built

Cher Ami: The War Hero Pigeon and the Legend the Army Built

Picture a World War One hero who took a bullet to the chest, lost a leg, and saved nearly 200 American soldiers, a hero so revered that General Pershing personally saw them off at the docks. Now pictu...

29 Juni 21min

Miracle on the Hudson: The Three Minutes That Saved 155 Lives

Miracle on the Hudson: The Three Minutes That Saved 155 Lives

At 3:27 PM on January 15, 2009, a flock of Canada geese filled the windshield of US Airways Flight 1549, and both engines went silent. Captain Sully Sullenberger had three minutes and one impossible d...

29 Juni 21min

The Platypus: Nature's Impossible Animal Decoded

The Platypus: Nature's Impossible Animal Decoded

In 1799, a British scientist took scissors to a strange pelt arriving from Australia, certain he was the victim of a hoax. A duck's bill grafted onto a beaver's body simply could not be real. He never...

29 Juni 23min

Wojtek: The 500-Pound Bear Who Became a Soldier

Wojtek: The 500-Pound Bear Who Became a Soldier

Imagine a World War Two soldier who trekked the deserts of the Middle East, fought at Monte Cassino, drank beer with his unit, and never dropped a single crate of artillery shells under fire. Now imag...

29 Juni 19min

Lake Vostok: The Hidden Ocean Sealed for Millions of Years

Lake Vostok: The Hidden Ocean Sealed for Millions of Years

Buried beneath four kilometers of solid Antarctic ice lies a body of liquid water the size of a sea, sealed off from sun, wind, and atmosphere for 15 to 25 million years. It is the ultimate locked-roo...

29 Juni 21min

Populärt inom Nöje

mellan-himmel-och-jord-med-jlc
badfluence
filip-fredrik-svarar
mardromsgasten
dialogiskt
chilla-med-de-vet-du
rss-p3-musikdokumentar
fem-i-topp
skandal
mannen-utan-spar
schulman-show
gott-snack-med-fredrik-soderholm
podme-bio-4
karatefylla
trumpodden
sexet
hemma-hos-strage
skivsnack
let-me-know-kiss-army-sweden-podcast
rss-tonarsdrommar