On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Tom Johnson <t...@jtjohnson.com> wrote:
> If these systems move into a dynamic hexagonal mode, might it be possible > that, if one could drill down into the thing, some fractal relationships > would appear? > Hm. What was your thinking behind that? When I first heard (a few years ago) that Saturn had a hexagon, the source suggested it might have a cymatic <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics>cause, which it seems to me is basically saying the same thing as Eric's phrasing. I believe it also claimed there were similar less prominent patterns in the other gas giants, lemme try to find it: Edit: Okay, so it seems as usual a few people have proposed this idea. I had forgotten how cymatics had been embraced by the fringe, so some sources are a little sketchier looking than others - or as one blogger said, "I discovered that Cymatics aka Tonoscope has a trail of New Age websites in Google. All claiming eternal life when listening to vibrations...?! But peculiar it is." (Another blog counters "When it comes to bizarre phenomena like this, all the explanations sound far-fetched because the universe is more bizarre than we imagine.") Several of the sites look familiar; I leave you to do the search<http://google.com/?q=cymatics+saturn>, but the page that was most likely the one to have introduced me to the phenomenon was this one<http://www.tokenrock.com/cymatics/cymatics_of_saturn.php>. No mention of other gas giants, must have been my imagination. Although the flow becomes non-axisymmetric during the instability, it > typically remains vertically uniform so that both the polygon and vortices > extend throughout the whole depth of the system, with coherence along a > direction parallel to the axis of rotation and no phase tilt with height. It seems this would change with differently-curved space (as induced by the gravity of Saturn) and indeed, we see no south-polar hexagon<http://Although the flow becomes non-axisymmetric during the instability, it typically remains vertically uniform so that both the polygon and vortices extend throughout the whole depth of the system, with coherence along a direction parallel to the axis of rotation and no phase tilt with height.">. What we really need is a probe more durable than anything we have produced so far that we can just drop into Saturn/Jupiter/what have you to see what is *in* there. There is (as always) an appropriate Clarke short story: A Meeting with Medusa <http://books.google.com/books?id=hbAqAAAAQBAJ>. -Arlo James Barnes
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