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from the Lady-Macbeth-would-be-pleased dept.
The most famous atmospheric features of both Jupiter and Neptune may be gone soon:
When we think of storms on the other planets in our Solar System, we automatically think of Jupiter. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a fixture in our Solar System, and has lasted 200 years or more. But the storms on Neptune are different: they're transient.
[...] "It looks like we're capturing the demise of this dark vortex, and it's different from what well-known studies led us to expect," said Michael H. Wong of the University of California at Berkeley, referring to work by Ray LeBeau (now at St. Louis University) and Tim Dowling's team at the University of Louisville. "Their dynamical simulations said that anticyclones under Neptune's wind shear would probably drift toward the equator. We thought that once the vortex got too close to the equator, it would break up and perhaps create a spectacular outburst of cloud activity."
Rather than going out in some kind of notable burst of activity, this storm is just fading away. And it's also not drifting toward the equator as expected, but is making its way toward the south pole. Again, the inevitable comparison is with Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS). The GRS is held in place by the prominent storm bands in Jupiter's atmosphere. And those bands move in alternating directions, constraining the movement of the GRS. Neptune doesn't have those bands, so it's thought that storms on Neptune would tend to drift to the equator, rather than toward the south pole.
Neptune's Great Dark Spot may not have the support of atmospheric storm bands, but Jupiter's Great Red Spot is also on the decline:
A ferocious storm has battered Jupiter for at least 188 years. From Earth, it is observed as red swirling clouds racing counter-clockwise in what is known as the planet's "Great Red Spot." But after shrinking for centuries, it may now be on the brink of disappearing for good.
"In truth, the GRS [Great Red Spot] has been shrinking for a long time," lead Juno mission team member and planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Glenn Orton told Business Insider in an email. "The GRS will in a decade or two become the GRC (Great Red Circle). Maybe sometime after that the GRM"—the Great Red Memory.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Jerry Smith on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:39AM (7 children)
The comments above are the reasons I left /.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:45AM
Get pregnant, you insignificant little insect! Your existence amounts to nothing more than being a breeding sow, so give birth to my feces babies with your rancid, disease-ridden asshole! Give birth until it's broken!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 21 2018, @12:22PM
Interesting bit of trivia as it may be, what do you expect as "intelligent comments" to this story?
Come on, I dare you, come with a better comment than the above (and this is including your whinge).
Personal point of view: if S/N wouldn't exist, I think I can manage to find the news myself; I'm here more because of the discussions the posted stories can elicit than I am about the stories themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @01:03PM
I see, you figured out in advance that these comments would appear on SoylentNews, so you decided to go here so that you don't miss the opportunity to complain about them, right?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @01:05PM (1 child)
look above again - https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=24192&page=1&cid=641104#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] nails it
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:28AM
That's to show that even tongue-in-cheek trollish posts can trigger interesting answers.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday February 21 2018, @09:13PM
Lighten up.
Yes, many of the opening statements are stupid. So stupid, that they can't be real... i.e. they are most likely posted as a joke.
If you can't handle a few joke submissions, I afraid to wonder how much of a special little snowflake you must be.
Even of you do not like the joke... they are so offensive that you need to complain? Get Bent!
Get a sense of humor.
(for the record, I did not post anything on this topic prior to now... But I would have made a global warming joke if no one else did. I never post AC; I stand by my posts and humor even if I troll.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:21AM
Have you thought about leaving SoylentNews? I'm seriously considering it. If SoylentNews doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on!