© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science InstituteA closeup of the 2010 megastorm that formed in Saturn's northern hemisphere, wrapping around the entire planet
Such terrifying "megastorms" are common on Saturn. Also called "Great White Spots," they erupt once every 20 or 30 years in the planet's northern hemisphere and rage nonstop for months. Astronomers have spotted six of these planet-wide storms whipping around on Saturn since 1876. The most recent storm struck in December 2010, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft happened to be orbiting the planet, snagging a front-row view of the megastorm's entire 200-day life span.
Now, new research into the epic 2010 storm has found that those 200 days of thunder were just a few drops in a much bigger, weirder meteorological bucket. According to recent radio telescope scans, the ongoing impacts of megastorms that erupted on Saturn more than 100 years ago are still visible in the planet's atmosphere today, and they left behind persistent chemical anomalies that scientists can't fully explain.
In other words, long after a megastorm fades from view, its impact on Saturn's weather lasts centuries.
"For most of the time, Saturn's atmosphere looks hazy and featureless to the naked eye in contrast to Jupiter's colorful and vibrant atmosphere," the researchers wrote in a study published Aug. 11 in the journal Science Advances. "This picture changes when we look at Saturn using a radio eye."
© R. J. Sault and I. de PaterRadio image of Saturn taken with the VLA in May 2015, with the brighter radio emissions from Saturn and its rings subtracted. Since ammonia blocks radio waves, the bright features indicate areas where ammonia is depleted and the VLA could see deeper in the atmosphere.
Visible only in radio wavelengths, those remnants took the form of large ammonia gas anomalies. Saturn's uppermost cloud layer is made mainly of ammonia-ice clouds. But in their radio observations, the researchers saw regions of unexpectedly low ammonia concentrations just below this cloud layer in areas associated with past storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles below these same atmospheric regions, ammonia concentrations spiked much higher than normal.
The implication, according to the study authors, is that megastorms appear to drive some mysterious ammonia transport process that drags ammonia gas from Saturn's upper atmosphere into the depths of the lower atmosphere — possibly in the form of a "mushball" rain in which icy hail balls of ammonia fall through the atmosphere before reevaporating again. This mushy process appears to last hundreds of years after a storm visibly vanishes, the researchers wrote.
While the mechanisms behind these atmospheric anomalies — and behind Saturn's megastorms in general — remain a mystery, studying them further could broaden not only our understanding of how giant planets form but also of what drives storm systems like Saturn's Great White Spots and Jupiter's even larger Great Red Spot to grow so inexplicably large, according to the researchers.
"Understanding the mechanisms of the largest storms in the solar system puts the theory of hurricanes into a broader cosmic context, challenging our current knowledge and pushing the boundaries of terrestrial meteorology," lead study author Cheng Li, formerly at the University of California, Berkeley and now an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, said in a statement.
Reader Comments
All man’s knowledge will come to naught.
OTOH, I remember other quotes from "scientists" of the late 19th century, who stated that they had basically discovered and investigated all there is to know, and there are just some small holes to fill and details to specify.
Statements of that kind were made in the last decades, too.
There is something amiss in the mentality of people nowadays called "scientists".
All bow before the political scientists posing as those who follow the scientific process.
Bow before the child sacrificing god of scientism.
Paid NWO shills no more no less.
Who is John Galt?
A modern day "scientist" usually operates equipment on a daily basis that costs ten times his annual salary - at least. Which means, he is fully dependant on government funding. Or what I call corporate-fascist funding, were taxes are funneled into "private" corporations that have the power to "lobby" governments - think pharma industry.
Such a "scientist" is not doing science, but research on behalf of their superiors - hence I call them research employees. If he doesn't toe the line, he will not only lost his job, but will be unemployable in his field in general. The modern-day Galileo treatment.
And paraphrasing the same man (Galileo), there is such thing as "consent" in scientific matters.
I knew you knew and that you knew I knew that you knew. LOL
That is for the public strays that come on here that have not signed on to SOTT.
Be well my Brother from the same spiritual mother.
They've already labeled all the great white spots on Earth as non-inclusive.