science

NASA's Jet Propulsion Labratory, has explored an 18 year old mystery hexagonal formation cirling the north pole of Saturn. I know they say that hexagons are one of natures most efficient and common shapes, but I don't think this is what they had in mind!

NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image.

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "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."

The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.

What interests me is the fact that this is apparantly stable! That is to say that we aren't dealing with a "Jesus face on toast" thing. Enjoy the movie!

I couldn't help but post this one... so sad!

I couldn't help myself, when I saw this blogger's post of the new NASA findings. Essentially they've found photographic evidence of new water flows appearing on the surface of Mars.

Also, you can check out the NASA page for more details on the findings. I have to say, having grown up a space enthusiast, this is incredible. Now if we could only get things working here on Earth, we could travel to Mars and set up shop without having all the trendy-lefties poo-pooh us for screwing up one planet and hopping onto another.