Peenie Wallie

A hexagon-shaped feature at Saturn's north-pole, first observed by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 over 25 years ago, was filmed by the Cassini space probe on November 10, 2006.

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.

The new images taken in thermal-infrared light show the hexagon extends much deeper down into the atmosphere than previously expected, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops. A system of clouds lies within the hexagon. The clouds appear to be whipping around the hexagon like cars on a racetrack.

John Tierney at the New York Times thinks that the hexagon is

the Hex Nut of the Giants, affixed to the end of a massive bolt that’s holding the planet together. I haven’t worked out yet how a race of titanic engineers managed to insert the bolt at Saturn’s south pole. Nor have I identified the location of their hardware store, but we need to start looking for it right away, because NASA’s video shows that it’s swirling counterclockwise dangerously near what looks to me like the end of the bolt. If this thing keeps unscrewing . .

Via Glenn Reynolds, who thinks "it's the walls of an alien base."

The giant hexagon on Saturn is obviously some type of message.

Anyone who has read Grant Callin's Saturn Alia is aware that the Thartheeans left clues for the humans scattered throughout Saturn's moons on hexagon-shaped tablets about the location of... Well, I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't read the story.

Unfortunately, both Saturn Alia and its sequel, A Lion On Tharthee, are out of print. Which is too bad, because Grant Callin was one of the best "hard sci-fi" authors I've read. With Saturn in the news again, maybe they'll be re-published.

Update: Related post: Saturn's Kilometric Radiation Radio Emissions (the Saturn Kilometric Pulse was a beacon left by the Thartheeans in Saturn Alia).

Another cool picture: Europa Rising

UPDATE: Some reader comments at the Slashdot story are worth noting. When I have time later, I'll insert the proper hyper-links. (Later: Done)

/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Insightful)
by spun (1352) on Tuesday March 27, @04:39PM (#18507131)

Wasn't there a story here within the last six months or so about spinning a bucket of water at the right speed and having it form geometric forms, including a hexagon?

Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Informative)
by sfcfagwdse (805746) on Tuesday March 27, @04:43PM (#18507193)

Here's one: http://www.physorg.com/news66924222.html

Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Interesting)
by Rei (128717) on Tuesday March 27, @05:22PM (#18507815)

The curious thing, though, is that the south pole is very different -- almost looks like a human eye. I wonder what sort of rotational effect could cause such an asymmetry between north and south poles?

Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Informative)
by samkass (174571) on Tuesday March 27, @04:43PM (#18507197)

Typing "spinning water hexagon Slashdot" into Google turned up this article

Re:/. story about spinning water? (Score:5, Informative)
by greg_barton (5551) * on Tuesday March 27, @05:12PM (#18507687)

You mean, specifically, "Swinney, meanwhile, thinks that the process is unlikely to apply to large-scale flows such as that on Saturn, but might be relevant to smaller-scale phenomena such as tornadoes."

Original article