Lovely lab recreations of Saturn’s hexagonal storms
- Andrea James
- Uncategorized
- Oct 28, 2010
- Big Picture Saturn, Cool Cassini Saturn, guestblog, Gustav Holst Saturn, HOWTO, Isaac Newton, Neither Newton, North Pole, Planetary Society, Science, Space
Video link. Back in 2007, Pesco blogged about a mysterious hexagon on Saturn that emerged from a storm on their North Pole. While people have known since Isaac Newton’s time that spinning a bucket of water could create similar patterns, scientists wanted to emulate the precise conditions on Saturn. Neither Newton nor Saturn have cool green glowy stuff or sparkly white stuff and mechanized centrifuges, so this is quite pretty and trippy. There’s some lovely stills of varying rates of spin creating different shapes. I recommend muting their sound and putting on Gustav Holst’s Saturn. There’s even a HOWTO at The Planetary Society.