Hubble Discovers Dark Spot on Uranus

TheDawgLives writes "Just as we near the end of the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean, winds whirl and clouds churn 2 billion miles away in the atmosphere of Uranus, forming a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States."

Re: "Dark Spot on Uranus"

[joe_n_bloe]

OMG, what did that take, like 30 seconds?

Re:Hurricane season

[stupidfoo]

Clearly, global warming is causing this lack of hurricanes and major storms.

Why not? It gets blamed for everything else.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Lazerf4rt]

I challenge anybody to post a +5 Insightful comment about this story. It can't be done!

Re:A dark spot...

[MrNaz]

Dammit I should have read the other posts first. Scratch that, I really should have PREDICTED the other posts and not made a joke that was bound to have been made once for every meter between here and Uranus.

Tee hee!

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[strider44]

Don't worry, your post will get there. I admit I burst out laughing as soon as I read the headline but if you want something mildly insightful I might as well fill in something while I have the time.

Is it any surprise that there's a dark spot on Uranus? Jupiter has a couple of huge cyclones raging on in there, so does Saturn. Both the planet's black spots are bigger than Uranus' anyway. Uranus is a gas giant, since there's going to be some wind going on there I'm not exactly shocked that huge cyclones have formed.

Enormous cyclones I think are just a side-effect of gas giants. I don't think it's anything to get excited about.

Re:In Related News....

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Isaac Asimov pointed out that the pronunciation 'urinous' is not really an improvemnet.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[Hoi Polloi]

It is impressive that even with the feeble solar energy it receives there is still enough to power massive cyclones.

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[roseblood]

Gravitational heating [harvard.edu] left over from the formation of the planets and radioactive decay [wikipedia.org] both provide for heat in the cores of the planets in our solar system. For alot of detail on this subject you can look here [berkeley.edu]

Re:Dark Spot on Uranus?

[RealGrouchy]

I'm not refuting you, since I'm not qualified to. But it absolutely bakes my noodle that planetary features would always occur at 19.5 degrees south lattitude. What forces could possibly be happening to make planets all end up with significant features at the same point?

First, he said 19.5 degrees north or south.

Second, 19.5 degrees is not a point, it's a line/locus. He's not saying that Slartybartfarst always signs on the same point on the canvas.

Third, I find your "I can't think of an explanation for these facts, therefore we would do best to ignore them" argument to be scientifically insulting. PP mentioned a geometric phenomenon that is potentially significant (astronomy is closely tied with geometry).

When you say "I'm not refuting you, but..." you reall mean to say "this is fud, but..."

A better refutation would have been to ask the following questions:

- Is this just a selective set of planetary features? (I doubt it, since these are the most prominent ones on various planets, earth excluded)

- Has our observation of planets been selective to this latitude? (We've known about Jupiter's spot for a long time, and we've scoured Mars, and we know lots about Earth)

- Are the facts presented by the parent--namely, are these features at the latitudes specified--true? (I'm too lazy to check)

Pay attention to what has been said, then ask questions, then look for the answers. How well you have done that determines whether the tingling in your head feels like pain, or like knowledge.

- RG>