Outer space is most definitely the largest mystery to us humans here on Earth. It is so unfathomably large that our brains cannot fully comprehend it. Rules that apply down here go out the window up in space, and phenomena so strange occur that we can barely believe them to be real. One such occurrence is Saturn’s hexagonal structure that so far defies all scientific understanding.
How we have barely touched the tip of the iceberg that is outer space
Almost all of outer space remains a mystery to us as tiny little humans. It is so massive that we will never be able to explore it all, and it just keeps expanding. The observable universe is around 93 billion light-years across, a number so large we can barely make sense of it. And that’s just the observable universe, meaning the area of space that light has been able to reach since the Big Bang. In theory, so much more exists beyond that.
The sheer size of the universe makes it impossible for us to know what actually exists out there. And since it is so difficult to travel to outer space, due to dangerous conditions as well as extreme distance to anything else out there, we have a lot to learn. But we do know that some incredible phenomena occur up there, like supernova (exploding stars), black holes (areas in space where gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape), dark matter and dark energy that hold the universe together, and so much more.
We have such a limited understanding and evidence of these phenomena, but science has created strong theories surrounding these things. Another interesting occurrence that has been sighted for decades is a unique hexagonal shape on the planet Saturn, which doesn’t really make sense to scientists at all.
The unusual hexagon-structure on Saturn that continues to amaze scientists
First spotted back in 1981, this strange shape that Saturn sports has amazed scientists and space enthusiasts alike for many years. The Voyager mission that set out decades ago to study Jupiter and Saturn managed to capture some extremely interesting images of the North Pole of Saturn, showing this unique hexagonal structure. But what exactly was it that they had just discovered?
Saturn is already one of the most interesting planets with all its unique moons, but this makes it even cooler. It took many years before NASA was able to get better images and a better understanding of what this shape was. The Cassini probe, which investigated Saturn from 2004 to 2017, was able to give researchers a clearer idea, but much still remains a mystery. The probe used the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) to better see the shape, even though it was in its winter season, and a lot darker.
Over a few years, the imaging was able to capture what was actually occurring: a symmetric jet stream of winds, stretching for 20,000 miles in diameter, spinning around a vortex right at Saturn’s north pole. This phenomenon has some similarities to an Earth-like hurricane, but it does not get its energy from water and heat as we do here. So how was it occurring?
There is so much we still don’t know about this hexagonal vortex
Kevin Baines, a VIMS and planetary scientist for NASA, says it is one of the biggest mysteries of the dynamics of Saturn. Scientists do not understand how such a symmetrical shape can stay in place in Saturn’s atmosphere, nor why it has occurred for so long. There is still so much to figure out about this storm that Saturn has created, and as researchers continue to investigate data from the probe, more will undoubtedly be discovered. That’s not all that’s strange about this planet; it also appears to have a unique moon environment that is shocking scientists more than ever.