Why, How and What is the Hexagon on Saturn?
Yesterday I was handed a link to the most bizarre pictures I’ve seen in a while: A Hexagonal shape on Saturns surface, roughly the size of four Earths.
The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds.
That just makes my head spin in bewilderment. Why, in the midst of the sinuous formations of gas, would there appear a shape with straight sides and corners? Moreover, this thing has existed for over 20 years. First spotted by patching together images from Voyager 1 and 2, the spacecraft Cassini has now pictured it again.
I don’t know of any other cornered shape on such a grand scale, at least not such a primitive one. Moving up levels of complexity in the Universe, we get continually curvier lines such as our cloud formations. What we’re seeing are the interactions of a soup of shapes (gas) - I don’t see how they could sustain a global primitive geometric shape like a hexagon for an extended period of time. Totally bizarre.
Just wondering.
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
Max Kaizen
this is utterly weird %-/ & worth following up on
Apr 1st, 2007
domestika
If it weren’t NASA-endorsed, you’d certainly suspect a photoshop job, wouldn’t you?
A hexagon almost makes sense though…
I’m not (by any stretch of the imagination) anything resembling a scientist, but I am a beekeeper — unfailingly amazed by the elegance and strength of honeycomb’s hexagonal cosntruction and the perfection of its design for the dual purpose of raising brood and storing food…
Apr 2nd, 2007
Australiopoxis_791
Is it completely crazy to think the Hexagon might well be artificial? Can a natural process create a geometric shape like a hexagon? Is this a calling card from a higher intelligence, or just a physics formation?
Jul 23rd, 2008
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