Hexagons on Saturn: Now that's big news
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published June 24, 2007
This has been bothering me for the past three months. In March, they confirmed the existence of a big hexagon on the planet Saturn.
I am not kidding. Here is the photograph. There is a giant hexagon ringing the north pole of Saturn.
A hexagon! Six regular sides, each thousands of miles long. Nothing like it has ever been seen in our solar system.
Perhaps you are thinking, "Wait a minute, Howard. I wanted to read more today about property taxes. Or maybe more about Elijah Dukes or Susan Stanton."
Sorry. This Saturn thing has been bugging me, see. Were I the editor it would have been front-page news. I would not let it rest, either.
My reporters would be coming in to talk about the City Council, and I would nod and say, "Yes, that is all well and good. But who can get me a fresh angle on this hexagon?"
Our scientists got a first peek at the hexagon more than two decades ago. But as with that "face" on Mars that turned out to be just rocks, we had to wait for a better view.
That view was finally provided by the Cassini spacecraft, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced in March. You can see more online.
Having heard nothing since then, and fed up with the laxity of the mainstream media on the hexagon story, I called the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. To my great delight, I got a call back from the JPL's hexagon guy.
"When that thing came out, I never saw such a flood of e-mails," said JPL planetary scientist Kevin Baines.
Baines said the JPL has been inundated with e-mail theories, many of them related to the work of European scientists who have created polygon shapes in buckets of rapidly spinning water.
Unfortunately, Saturn is not a rapidly spinning bucket of water. Neither, as one citizen suggested, is the hexagon a giant snowflake.
Baines said teams of scientists are working on the hexagon, but it probably will be months before anybody publishes results. One theory has to do with the hexagon being a big, oscillating wave -- picture the jet stream that encircles the Earth -- shaped by some disturbing force.
I asked Baines whether anybody had accused the JPL or NASA or the government of covering up, you know, the Real Truth about the hexagon.
"Nobody's come up with anything serious like that," he said. "For (the face on) Mars, people were serious. Here, everybody understands it's a fluid planet."
That is fine by me. It is enough that there is a hexagon on Saturn at all. It is a wonder beyond calculation, and in my book, well worth the price of the ticket.
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For more terrestrial matters, there's plenty of current discussion on TroxBlog about the state's tax plan, the Brooker Creek Preserve and other current events in Florida and the Tampa Bay area.