Jupiter loses a stripe.

conspiracy theories, anyone?

Anthropogenic global warming?

Interesting article. Normally when I read an article in the form of "some natural phenomenon has stopped occurring", I get worried and think of how the human race is fucking over the planet and we're all going to die, unless we figure out what we did wrong. That was the initial thought that went through my mind when I clicked through to this article.

Then I realized, hey... that's another planet. We didn't cause the problem! We can just watch and not care one way or the other. If we figure out why, great. If we never do... also fine.

Quite relaxing.

I'm sure it will turn up in the last place you look for it

That's quite a difference: http://i.imgur.com/ISCI3.png

Note that the Great Red Spot is in the same location where the stripe used to be. I'm surprised they didn't mean that in the article.

If you look at how the Great Red Spot spins against the southern stripe, you can imagine it gobbling up the stripe: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/790106-02...