No, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is not disintegrating, physicist claims
Earlier this year, several amateur astronomers spotted an unusual anomaly on the planet Jupiter: bits of the gas giant's famed Great Red Spot appeared to be flaking off, raising fears that the planet's most identifiable feature might be showing signs of disappearing. But Philip Marcus, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, begs to differ. He argues that reports of the red spot's death have been greatly exaggerated. |
| A dramatic view of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its surroundings, courtesy of Voyager 1 on Feb. 25, 1979, when the spacecraft was 5.7 million miles (9.2 million kilometers) from Jupiter. NASA/JPL/Public Domain |
According to Prof. Marcus, however, his computer models demonstrate that the flaking is not a death knell for the Great Red Spot at all. Rather, it's a very natural weather phenomenon arising from the complex fluid dynamics of Jupiter's atmosphere.
Read about it at arstechnica.com
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