Photos Changing Planet
"It's at that marginal point where it's just stable," said Marcus. In Jupiter's case, the cascades of sands are little vortices of wind that break off from the perimeter and periodically twirl into the center of the Great Red Spot. "The Red Spot is trying to disperse, but it keeps eating little high-speed vortices (of wind)," he said. What this all means to the planet as a whole is that when the Great Red Spot changes shape or color it implies something strange is afoot in the atmosphere in general. "The Red Spot has changed shape dramatically, although its strength hasn't changed," said Marcus. That implies that something, probably the temperature of Jupiter's atmosphere is changing. "There have been a lot of changes in Jupiter's atmosphere," said astronomer and planetary scientists Imke de Pater, also at Berkeley, but not one of Marcus' coauthors. And since the only temperatures that can be currently measured are far too high in the Jovian stratosphere to reveal much information, she said, the Great Red Spot is one of the few clues to what is going on. Related Links: |
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