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Re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot Could Disappear Within 20 Years
The iconic Great Red Spot of Jupiter may disappear in the next 20 years, according to a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
The massive storm — larger than Earth itself — was first spotted in 1830, and observations from the 1600s also revealed a giant spot on Jupiter's surface that may have been the same storm system. This suggests Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) has been raging for centuries.
In a recent story, Business Insider spoke with Glenn Orton, a lead Juno mission team member and planetary scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), about the giant storm's fate.
According to Orton, the storm's vortex has maintained strength because of Jupiter's 300-400 mph (483-640 km/h) jetstreams, but like any storm, it won't go on forever. "In truth, the GRS has been shrinking for a long time," Orton told Business Insider.
"The GRS will in a decade or two become the GRC (Great Red Circle)," Orton said. "Maybe sometime after that the GRM," by which he means the "Great Red Memory."
In the late 1800s, the storm was perhaps as wide as 30 degrees longitude, Orton said. That works out to more than 35,000 miles — four times the diameter of Earth. When the nuclear-powered spacecraft Voyager 2 flew by Jupiter in 1979, however, the storm had shrunk to a bit more twice the width of our own planet.
Data on Jupiter's crimson-colored spot reveals that this shrinking is still occurring. As of April 3, 2017, the GRS spanned the width of 10,159 miles (16,350 kilometers), less than 1.3 times Earth's diameter.The longest storm on Earth lasted 31 days, but Jupiter can sustain longer storms because the gas planet has tens of thousands of miles of atmosphere, and spins much faster than Earth.
Re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot Could Disappear Within 20 Years
Shocking. Mankind has never known Jupiter without that spot.
I'm surprised by the lukewarm reaction to this news. They should prioritize sending a probe down into it to study it before its gone. Should've been done years ago anyways.
Didn't scientists like Sagan predict years ago that this storm might come and go in long cycles? I do know he believed there was a strong possibility of some life form living in those storms.
Re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot Could Disappear Within 20 Years
Shocking. Mankind has never known Jupiter without that spot.
I'm surprised by the lukewarm reaction to this news. They should prioritize sending a probe down into it to study it before its gone. Should've been done years ago anyways.
Didn't scientists like Sagan predict years ago that this storm might come and go in long cycles? I do know he believed there was a strong possibility of some life form living in those storms.
You clearly seem like an expert on this topic...at least compared to me.
I've always been curious...aren't the planets beyond Mars mostly gaseous and not terribly comparable to earth?
Re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot Could Disappear Within 20 Years
Yeah...Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants while Uranus and Neptune are now referred to as 'Ice giants'.
You should dig in to this stuff sometime. It's fascinating what they're starting to learn about our system. Remember the good old days when it used to be Pluto and they'd speculate on a planet X beyond? Now there's a bunch of planets(trans Neptunian objects) beyond Pluto and they may be on the verge of discovering the infamous Planet X as well.
We're also heading in the right direction as far as exploration goes. Other than Mars, the planets themselves are starting to take a backseat and their moons are where the interest is. There is probably some form of life on several of them and we may discover this in our lifetime. The Europa trips that were planned have just been funded. They're gonna find something there. Its exploration is decades overdue.
