Saturn’s hexagonal ring explained (partly)
The hexagon ring discovery a few years ago on Saturn was fascinating, but this possible solution from some fluid dynamics folks appears even more so. Their basic premise is that they can duplicate the flow by spinning a ring under the surface of the water. This would imply the pattern is created by some kind of high-speed storm running around the pole below the visible cloud layer.
A particularly interesting part of the article is that they can make other shapes too by varying the speed of the underlying spinning ring/storm. My question is since it was a scale study – how fast would the winds in that storm be running? As it is, wind speeds on Saturn are already known to reach 1,800 km/h – and that’s crazy fast (~Mach 1.5).