Astronomers Detect a 10-Sided Structure in Saturn's Atmosphere

heyitsmedotjayb

Economy so bad I'm looking up rentals in Saturn's 10 sided structure

sgt

A monolith!

neilellis

Aliens playing D&D

yipinwong

There is a talk amongst Astrophysics (not a serious one) that we showed up too late as a civilization, and Universes thrived at around 5 billion years after the big bang. Now we are 13.8 billion years old, and the Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago. That 7+ billion year gap is so huge, we cannot even detect any structures anywhere. --- My thoughts out of my @$$ The possibility is the Mars where there is a big scar on it, where it could have had been a space war, but cannot figure out as it's been billions of years ago. Same for the Saturn. It could have had harboring another life form and try to protect itself with the thick atmospheric shield in the gas giant to avoid the demise the Mars has encountered.

stevenalowe

Atmospheric structure not artificial

__alexs

The brief excitement in the space between expecting a decahedral possibly artificial structure lurking in a gas giant and finding out it's just wind.

swiftcoder

My first thought on seeing the images was "texture coordinates for a sphere are hard"

staplung

Is it just me or does the dark blob in the center of the decagon look like a Mandelbrot set? The resemblance appears more acute in the images lower down in the article.

tastyfreeze

Years ago there was a video on YouTube showing that geometric shapes appear in a vortex of water at different rates of spin. While it is neat that these shapes appear in atmosphere of another planet I have since assumed that it is the same dynamic as shapes in water vortices.

henearkr

Not a "structure", but rather atmospheric resonance create this polygonal shape, from cyclones self-arrangement etc. Same thing on Jupiter, by the way, known since a long time. I'd say that "structure" is click-baity, as it evokes some artifact.

RetroTechie

"In addition to the difference in the number of sides," Sánchez-Lavega explained, "the decagon is situated at a less polar latitude than the hexagon in the southern hemisphere, Just a thought: how do lengths of the sides compare between north pole's hexagon and this south pole decagon? Causes might be unclear but perhaps that side length corresponds to a 'wavelength' that's more-or-less a constant?

pvaldes

Taking in mind the gyrating hexagon that seems unique in the solar system (rings had been found in other planets) I propose to rename the sixth planet to Hexaturn. (Or at least that particular cloud. The name is too good to not use it)

mettamage

Looks like a better Sauron's eye. If there are any Hollywood movie producers here, please make this an evil villain vibe in a movie. Saturn is awesome

wewewedxfgdf

Does magnetism play a role in such?

schrectacular

Obviously Dwellers.