How can Saturn have a North Pole shaped like a Hexagon?

--------- #1332 - Saturn’s Hexagon at the North Pole

- Attachment: Cassini image of Saturn’s North Pole.

- Astronomy can sometimes just baffle you beyond belief. How about flying over the North Pole of Saturn and looking down into the clouds and seeing a perfect hexagon. A straight lined, six sided geometric figure. The image is beyond belief. At the center of the larger hexagon is a smaller hexagon. What could possible cause this. Astronomers get the big bucks for coming up with the answers.

- The winds on the planet are clocked at 300 miles per hour. Three times hurricane force, could that have caused it? But, revisiting Voyager photographs that were 25 years old showed this same hexagon shape. Saturn’s Hexagon seemed to be similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Saturn has a thick atmosphere. Circular shapes and curves should dominate, not six sided figures.

- The Hexagon rotates with the planet every 10 hours and 39 minutes.

- Each side of the Hexagon is 8,600 miles long. The distance across the Hexagon is 15,000 miles. We could fit four Earths inside the Hexagon. The Hexagon shape extends at least 60 miles deep into the atmosphere.

- One theory is that the shape is created by some sort of standing wave. A resonance of a wave reinforcing itself in exact repetition. The South Pole of Saturn does not have any evidence of this same phenomena, just the North Pole. The standing wave could have something to do the planet’s magnetic field but we have no explanation of how this mechanism might work.

- We see hexagons created in nature in crystals and in snowflakes. But, not usually in fluid dynamics. Oxford University researchers took the idea that fluid dynamics have standing waves and was able to simulate the hexagon effect. They filled a tank with a glycol-water mixture. They put the tank on a turntable. They spun the tank in one direction. Then inserted a solid ring inside the tank and spun it in the opposite direction at a different rate. What emerged was a steady six-sided pattern in the fluid. Could this same effect be repeated on a planetary scale? Could this be what is happening in Saturn’s atmosphere?

- The rings of Saturn now have some competition for attention. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.

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