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Wow. Imagine if it were a square on Saturn. I think that would provide more fodder for sci fi writers than the hexagon.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini...
The website has an awkwardly placed link. The link mentions "Saturn's South Pole … with its rotating vortex" with a link to another post from the website with a picture of the vortex, but the description is that of "the north pole of Saturn… [a] vortex of strange and complex swirling clouds" encompassed in a hexagon. Do we have pictures of the south pole?
A hexagon is a boundary shape with the least energy. What you are really probably seeing is a circle that has pushed outwards against another set of forces and reached equilibrium (differing temperatures, gasses, who knows what). I have been playing with voronoi diagrams and diffusion limited aggregation recently , and it is amazing some of the structures that will emerge when a system reaches equilibrium. It is possible that certain forces have aligned with their peak energies in the form of a regular polyhedra, which happens all over nature on large and small scales.
Don't take it off! Saturn will fall off and go wobbling around the Solar System.
It's God's own hex nut. Don't take it off! Saturn will fall off and go wobbling around the Solar System.
It's God's own hex nut. Don't take it off! Saturn will fall off and go wobbling around the Solar System.
The website has an awkwardly placed link. The link mentions "Saturn's South Pole … with its rotating vortex" with a link to another post from the website with a picture of the vortex, but the description is that of "the north pole of Saturn… [a] vortex of strange and complex swirling clouds" encompassed in a hexagon. Do we have pictures of the south pole?
Found one by clicking "rotating vortex" > "infrared images" > "rotating vortex": http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061113.html . I guess someone got lazy.