Not Entirely Weird Science

Rick Weiss has a short item on the strange massive hexagon positioned at Saturn's north pole. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek, mentioning sites talking about the obvious coverup underway:

NASA scientists seeking ideas need look no further than the countless Web sites devoted to conspiracy theories and paranormal phenomena, more than a few of which presume that NASA knows the answer -- and is covering it up.

"I can't wait to hear NASA explain this thing," one blogger wrote. "Isn't there some statement out there that straight lines in nature are impossible? Well, here are six."

But since Weiss is a science reporter, it might have been helpful to point to this story from the May 16, 2006 Nature.com (via StarDestroyer.net):

Bizarre geometric shapes that appear at the centre of swirling vortices in planetary atmospheres might be explained by a simple experiment with a bucket of water.

Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby have created similar geometric shapes (holes in the form of stars, squares, pentagons and hexagons) in whirlpools of water in a cylindrical bucket¹. The shapes appear easily enough once the bucket is spinning at a rate of one to seven revolutions per second, they say....

The researchers found that once the plate was spinning so fast that the water span out to the sides, creating a hole of air in the middle, the dry patch wasn't circular as might be expected. Instead it evolved, as the bucket's spin sped up, from an ellipse to a three-sided star, to a square, a pentagon, and, at the highest speeds investigated, a hexagon.

That makes for stunning science but, at least, science. The pentagon photo I show here, by researcher T.N.R. Jannson, is from the Nature.com story. The Saturn hexagon image is available at the Post story, and in its broad outline is quite similar. Other than one extra side and spanning 15,000 miles instead of inside a bucket, of course.

Oh, and there's also British researchers grow heart tissue from stem cells, namely adult bone marrow cells. The link is to an AFP story on Yahoo news. A news service used by the Post called Health Day has it in a brief online, but so far I don't see anything in the Washington Post. If Weiss would like to add balance all of his embryonic stem-cell coverage, this is an opportunity.

Comments

[RM 'Auros' Harman]

So, in the case of the water, it seems likely that surface tension plays a role here -- once you have a gap, the surface tension wants to assume the shape that balances the centripetal force with the gravitational pull sucking it back into the hole... I guess rather than being curved (like a miniscus) it ends up being polygonal (same as how atoms in molecules distribute themselves into interesting polygons).

That offers an interesting model for the fluid dynamics, but isn't the behavior of a gas quite different from that of a liquid, especially considering that water is itself a pretty unusual liquid?

[Christopher Fotos]

That offers an interesting model for the fluid dynamics, but isn't the behavior of a gas quite different from that of a liquid, especially considering that water is itself a pretty unusual liquid?

Auros.

I'm an English major.

[Douglas V. Gibbs]

Maybe it's the fault of solar system warming. . .

[Douglas V. Gibbs]

Maybe it's the fault of solar system warming. . .

[Luann29Foreman]

I received 1 st loan when I was 32 and it supported me very much. But, I require the college loan over again.

[mortgage loans]

Every body admits that life seems to be not cheap, but people need money for different stuff and not every one gets big sums money. Thence to receive quick home loans and commercial loan would be a correct solution.

[Coursework]

I think bizarre geometric shapes that appear at the centre of swirling vortices in planetary atmospheres might be explained by a simple experiment with a bucket of water.

[loans]

I received my first home loans when I was not very old and that supported my business very much. Nevertheless, I need the student loan again.