Discovery assures us that space contines to be utterly inexplicable – at least as far as that famous, bizarre, permanent hurricane on the King of Planets:
Numerical modeling of the spot, as well as laboratory experiments trying to reproduce the dynamics of the Great Red Spot indicate there’s more going on than meets the eye.
“One of the interesting things we’ve discovered about this is that when you try to recreate this in the lab, it’s highly, highly unstable,” Marcus told Discovery News. “It just literally rips itself to shreds.”
Yet the real Giant Red Spot is one of the most stable features visible on Jupiter. So what gives?
“It’s telling us something about Jupiter,” said Marcus. “There must be something special about Jupiter’s atmosphere that makes it different.”
They think there’s some kind of major changes in temperature going on somewhere deep under the atmosphere, but they just don’t know – the only window down that far is the Red Spot.