![]() ![]() Mayer had placed floating circular magnets in a pool of water and observed that they would spontaneously arrange themselves into geometric configurations, similar to those seen on Jupiter, with shapes that depended on the number of magnets. ![]() The answer to the mystery of why Jupiter has these geometric formations and other planets do not, Ingersoll and his colleagues discovered, could be found in the past, specifically in work conducted in 1878 by Alfred Mayer, an American physicist, and Lord Kelvin. Saturn, which is also a gas giant, has one enormous storm at each of its poles, rather than a geometrically arranged collection of storms. However, Ingersoll says, this explanation still does not account for the behavior of the storms once they reach Jupiter’s south pole, which is unusual even compared to other gas giants. Under some experimental conditions, and on Jupiter, cyclonic storms repel each other, rather than merging. They did so using math derived from a proof written by Lord Kelvin, a British mathematical physicist and engineer, nearly 150 years ago. Now, a research team working in the lab of Andy Ingersoll, Caltech professor of planetary science, has discovered why Jupiter’s storms behave so strangely. However, on our planet, hurricanes do not gather themselves at the poles and twirl around each other in the shape of a pentagon or hexagon, as do Jupiter’s curious storms. The storms are analogous to hurricanes on Earth. Since they were first spotted by NASA’s Juno space probe in 2019, the storms have presented something of a mystery to scientists. Down near the south pole of the planet, mostly hidden from the prying eyes of humans, is a collection of swirling storms arranged in an unusually geometric pattern. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAMĪt the south pole of Jupiter lurks a striking sight-even for a gas giant planet covered in colorful bands that sports a red spot larger than the earth. Storms gathered at the south pole of Jupiter, as imaged by the Juno probe. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |