Hexagon on Saturn

N. Sivasothi — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:01:00 GMT

When we talked about shapes in nature yesterday, the hexagon was a favourite, as the story of the bees honeycomb was fascinating. I was thus tickled to see this article in Science Daily earlier this year that described an "odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn"! NASA Scientists are fascinated!

"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."

See: "Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon On Saturn," NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory via Science Daily, 27 Mar 2007.

LSM3261 LIFE FORM AND FUNCTION : shapes hexagon zoology

Hexagon on Saturn