What the hex is up with Jupiter's North Pole? Jupiter doesn't have a colossal hexagon at its North Pole, unlike it celestial cousin Saturn. So says NASA after the six megabytes of data the Juno probe collected last weekend finally made it to Earth after requiring a day-and-a-half to download. One of the downloads was the image at top, which those of you who want more …
This post has been deleted by its author
To quote NASA's release on the matter – which someone obviously didn't read properly – "Saturn has a hexagon at the north pole," said Bolton. "There is nothing on Jupiter that anywhere near resembles that.'
No waldo for you.
And no biscuits for whomever just scanned the release at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2016-231
“Saturn has a hexagon at the north pole,” said Bolton. “There is nothing on Jupiter that anywhere near resembles that. The largest planet in our solar system is truly unique. We have 36 more flybys to study just how unique it really is.” - Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
More on Saturn's hexagon. That isn't on Jupiter.
It's lovely when you get to tell other people to RTFA. Usually it's me getting told.
Well it was written on a Friday afternoon...people are allowed to make mistakes, just as we're allowed to take the piss when they do. The confusion may have occurred with this infrared photo of a southern aurora on Jupiter which does indeed look a bit hexagonal (or polygonal, anyway).
Devils advocate is a noble calling, but Friday afternoon does not quite excuse his previous list of "works". Friday night/Saturday morning, stumbling into the office to find a warm, dry place to sleep it off after chucking out time at the boozer seems more believable.
I am of the suspicion that this is just another "sexed up" premeditated piece of clickbait.
This post has been deleted by its author
I don't find this strange at all.
This is after all the same author who sexes up stories, adding "exaggerated inaccuracies" because clickbait is good now apparently - Like this one.
Or adds a "story" which is 3 sentences long and manages to get the subjects name wrong and not supply a link. - Here. Only fixed after a comment pointed it out.
Only really worth reading his "stories" when you feel the need to point and laugh at the less fortunate.
I'm also looking forward to Nasa's assessment of Jupiter's uniqueness. They could rank the planets in order, perhaps from "utterly" down to "really only a little bit".
As a unit of uniqueness may I propose the snowflake? Or its abbreviation, the flake? "Studies have shown that among the bodies of the Solar System Jupiter possesses uniqueness of the order of 50 megaflakes, dwarfing Pluto's measly 1.3."
It is. There's some info in that More on Saturn's hexagon link above, and more here (Their other main reference is an Elsevier link and 1) Fuck those guys and 2) I'm not $40-worth of interested and will never know what that article contains).
The TL;DR is that it's to do with a high difference in latitudinal wind/fluid speeds; and also it occurs only within a narrow band of viscosity; which is why you don't get hexagons on Jupiter and -far more interestingly and it must have driven people batshit at the time- Saturn's south pole. In the lab, they also managed to get triangles, septagons and ovals.
This post has been deleted by its author
if you take a look at Ken Wheelers book "uncovering the secrets of magnetism", you'll discover that the centripetal force of a magnets 'north' crushes matter into its closest formation, hexagonal close packing - which makes hexagons in the geology from the centre to the north poles of all celestrial body with a strong magnetic core. Its definitely not solely a liquid dynamics phenomenon. its magnetic.
At least it isn't the NBN… they'd spend ¾ of a billion dropping some letters from their name, choosing a new logo, then sic the Federal police onto anyone deemed opposition before laying copper out to Mars and plonking a dodgy microwave tower on the wrong side of a hill to go the final "mile".
But it is fibre to its closest exchange(*), therefore it is "fibre enabled", and you can get a proper BT "superfast" contract.
(*) I was sorely tempted to d/l the exchange location list, then look up each altitude and work out which exchange actually was at the highest altitude (thus possibly being closest to Jupiter, if we ignore the earth's curvature, season, time of day and relative orbital position as having an impact, which they will) and then check it had fibre running through it, but that seems like far too much work to show that BT's shite "fibre" service means that fibre doesn't get anywhere near your property and most tech folks know that.
There is a giant hexagon there, did everyone miss this? the north pole picture is not even of the area of the north pole, the north pole is actually in the black area, we can see the edge of a hexagon where the storms lay around the edge, show us the rest of it!!! we are 1/3 of the way to seeing a full hexagon, made by the magnetic centripetal vortex pulling matter into its closest formation, hexagonally! around a single point this creates a hexagon. solved
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
