Beehive on Saturn?

Hello Guest,

Because we cannot see through to the surface (if there is indeed a solid surface) on Saturn, we can only theorize the cause of the hexagonal shape.

Natural hexagonal shapes on Earth are found on quickly cooled basalt (Giant's Causeway), dried mud and salt pans.

All the above are associated with cooling/drying out.

It could be a mystery such as Jupiter's Great Red Spot, which has steadfastly remained over hundreds of years, in the same place, despite winds of several hundreds of miles per hour swirling past the Red Spot, to merge together on the lee side.

Perhaps we shall never find the true answer, but that should not stop us trying to understand the cause.

Kind Regards....

It looks more like a pentagon to me. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I wouldn't be surprised someone starts one up about the US Military already being on Saturn.

Hello 3Doug

That's where they have already set up an extraction plant, for Gigatillions of tons of Methane.

Invitations to tender for the design build of the pipeline back to Earth are soon to be let, as I understand.

Kind Regards....

Just in from NASA NEWS CENTER:A strange shaped gigantic asteroid is headed for Jupitor's pole.It is shaped like a large threaded bolt,with a hexagonal head of the same dimensions as the polar hexagon "socket" on Jupiter.Almost as if the whole thing was designed by a genius engineer.

Scientists theorise that something screwy is going on here.

volcanic basalt rock maybe?

Or is Arthur C Clarke's 2008 a space oddity?

It doesn't say if the stable hexagon rotates or not relative to the cyclonic wind pattern, but if it does, I'd say it's an artifact of that rotation. If it doesn't, then there's definitely something screwy going on here...

The stable hexagon is stationary relative to the vortex inside.

Vewy strwange!(Porky Pig)

There's a toy called a spirograph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph

that generates designs by the addition of counter rotating circles. What I think might be happening here is similar. A second vortex rotating opposite the one circling the south pole is being carried around. The sum of the motions generates a figure that appears stationary. Some pictures show a 5 sided figure, others 6. There may be some way that the rotation speeds get locked together in some ratio or it may be just chance that the rotation ratios are close to a small integer ratio (or we wouldn't have noticed the figure).