Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Hexagon on Saturn

It is an old news, but it still impresses me. This hexagon (or rather hexagonal formation) lies on the north pole of the planet Saturn and its about 25,000 kilometres (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.
"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.
There are some explanations involving possible standing wave but I think it doesn't look convincing enough. Here is an example.

Sources: NASAPhysorg

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