Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind, we're going to be talking about the
Speaker 3: great Red Spot of Jupiter.
Speaker 2: That's right. We've you know, we've talked about the Jovian
Speaker 2: moons before Jupiter comes up time and time again. We
Speaker 2: did an episode talking about, you know, then the mythical
Speaker 2: connotations of Jupiter for sure, but you know, we've never
Speaker 2: done an episode just on Jupiter, and we're not going
Speaker 2: to do that today. We're focusing on a detail of Jupiter.
Speaker 2: I think Jupiter is just too big, Like, is it
Speaker 2: too big of a topic? Well, probably not. We could
Speaker 2: cover it in multiple episodes, but Jupiter is just so
Speaker 2: large that it feels intimidating to even attempt to cover
Speaker 2: all of it.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're doing it piece by piece, defeat in detail.
Speaker 2: That's right, like eating an elephant, as they say. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar system, commanding,
Speaker 2: as we've covered before, its own vast system of moons.
Speaker 2: Its massiveness is such that a Jupiter mass is actually
Speaker 2: used as a unit to describe the massive other massive
Speaker 2: cosmic bodies, and given its size and proximity to Earth,
Speaker 2: humans have known of the fifth planet since very ancient times,
Speaker 2: so long before the invention of the telescope, with observations
Speaker 2: made by ancient Babylonians, ancient Chinese, among others. It's bright
Speaker 2: and it is observable to the naked eye.
Speaker 3: Right, you may in fact associate Jupiter with the dawn
Speaker 3: of the age of the telescope, and that could be
Speaker 3: because Jupiter is very important, and say the story of
Speaker 3: Galileo's early observations. Like Galileo, one of the most important
Speaker 3: things he saw early on the telescope was the moons
Speaker 3: of Jupiter. He discovered the Galilean moons named after him. Now,
Speaker 3: but yeah, we knew about the planet as a point
Speaker 3: of life in the sky, one of the movable stars
Speaker 3: going back thousands of years.
Speaker 2: That's right. So there are a number of what I mean,
Speaker 2: Jupiter is an immensely important planet as in addition to
Speaker 2: just being immense in all sorts of ways. The main
Speaker 2: thing we're going to be talking about here today, though,
Speaker 2: is is less essential but more of an interesting detail,
Speaker 2: and indeed an iconic detail of its appearance, that being
Speaker 2: the great Red Spot, the big red storm that is
Speaker 2: visible on the planet Jupiter, and I think, more to
Speaker 2: the point, is highly visible in every illustration you've ever
Speaker 2: seen of the Solar System, every drawing of the Solar System,
Speaker 2: and specifically the planet Jupiter, that you ever had to
Speaker 2: do or chose to do as a child and onward.
Speaker 3: I would say that the Great Red Spot sort of
Speaker 3: gives Jupiter a face that some of the other gas
Speaker 3: giants don't have. Though, as we may discuss later on
Speaker 3: in this episode or the next, there are similar visible
Speaker 3: weather patterns and storms on some of the other gas giants.
Speaker 3: There's a big spot on Saturn, there's a spot on Neptune,
Speaker 3: as we've talked about before. But I would say none
Speaker 3: of those other features are as clear and easy to
Speaker 3: see and as just kind of face like as the
Speaker 3: red spot on Jupiter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a great red eye staring at us, judging us,
Speaker 2: maybe protecting us a little bit. And you know, of
Speaker 2: course it's not really an eye. You know, I'm glad
Speaker 2: it's nothing. Oh what if it was just a blemish
Speaker 2: on Jupiter's face and we've just been staring at it?
Speaker 2: The whole time.
Speaker 3: So rude, my belts are up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah. Even with great vision and optimal eyesight,
Speaker 2: humans were unable to glimpse the details of the gas
Speaker 2: giants swirling surface until the invention of the telescope in
Speaker 2: the early seventeenth century CEE. So, to be clear, humans
Speaker 2: have only been capable of observing the Great Red Spot
Speaker 2: of Jupiter for roughly three centuries. And the really interesting
Speaker 2: thing on top of this is that the planet's key
Speaker 2: identifying mark, again that every school child can replicate, is
Speaker 2: neither a permanent or even long lasting feature, certainly in
Speaker 2: terms of the life of a planet, but rather a
Speaker 2: temporary atmospheric occurrence that seemingly comes and goes. We've only
Speaker 2: been observing it for a very short amount of time,
Speaker 2: you know, it's as a human observed phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess it can actually be weird in
Speaker 3: terms of its existence in time from two different directions.
Speaker 3: On one hand, if you think of it as a
Speaker 3: feature of the surface of a planet, the fact that
Speaker 3: it's a weather pattern makes it actually quite kind of
Speaker 3: transient and unstable. You know, it sort of undermines the
Speaker 3: ground beneath your feet. To think that the face of
Speaker 3: another planet in our Solar system, which we learned when
Speaker 3: we were children in school, could be changing within our lifetimes.
Speaker 3: Even on the other hand, if you think about it
Speaker 3: as a weather pattern, it's kind of freaky how stable
Speaker 3: it is for decades or even hundreds of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 2: get into the history of the observation of the Great
Speaker 2: Red Spot. So, given that that observation of the Great
Speaker 2: Red Spot wasn't possible before the telescope, when do human
Speaker 2: observers start noticing it during the telescope era? Based on
Speaker 2: what I was reading here, the earliest possible observation, and
Speaker 2: I think, ultimately, as we'll discuss, unlikely observation dates back
Speaker 2: to May ninth, sixteen sixty four, and that's when seventeenth
Speaker 2: century English polymath and author of micrographia Robert Hook observes
Speaker 2: something on the face of Jupiter that he described as
Speaker 2: a small spot moving east to west. Quote in the
Speaker 2: biggest of the three obscure belts of Jupiter. Now we
Speaker 2: could easily do a whole episode on Robert Hook. He
Speaker 2: had his hands in multiple areas of some aientific inquiry.
Speaker 2: He was especially active in the study of the microscopic
Speaker 2: world using new microscopic technology. His book Micrographia concerns this work.
Speaker 2: In fact, I'm to understand he coined the term cell
Speaker 2: in this book, so he was concerned with the little things,
Speaker 2: but also the ginormous things such as Jupiter. But based
Speaker 2: on a subsequent sixteen sixty six observation and nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: seven analysis by Marco for Lani in the Journal of
Speaker 2: the British Astronomical Association, I was reading at its thought
Speaker 2: that this would have situated the spot in what is
Speaker 2: now known as the North Equatorial Belt, the Great Black
Speaker 2: Belt according to the American Physical Society, while the Great
Speaker 2: Red Spot that we know today is in the South
Speaker 2: Equatorial Belt. So, given what we've already explored and what
Speaker 2: we'll be getting into, you might well wonder if this
Speaker 2: was actually a different storm that Hook was observing. Well, possibly,
Speaker 2: But for Lani's argument here was that Hook actually was
Speaker 2: looking at the shadow of or the transit, you know,
Speaker 2: the silhouette of the second largest Jovian moon, Callisto, or
Speaker 2: some other transit shadow. The Royal Society backed Hook's claim, however,
Speaker 2: and there are you know, various arguments about you know,
Speaker 2: nationalism and so forth that would have been wound up
Speaker 2: in that judgment at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've read the same analysis. So the question is,
Speaker 3: did he observe the same storm that we see today
Speaker 3: as the Great Red Spot? Probably not. Was it maybe
Speaker 3: a different storm than we see today possibly, or was
Speaker 3: it the shadow cast or the silhouette of one of
Speaker 3: the moons, And for Lani says the latter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And that seems to be a fairly convincing
Speaker 2: argument here. Now. The other possibility in terms of first
Speaker 2: or earliest documented sighting of the red spot takes us
Speaker 2: to sixteen sixty five, just a year after Hook's sighting,
Speaker 2: and that's when Italian French astronomer Giovanni Cassini noted it
Speaker 2: for the first time. In his letters, he described weeding
Speaker 2: out different transit shadow spots and noting quote a permanent
Speaker 2: one which was often seen to return in the same
Speaker 2: place with the same size and shape. So he totaled
Speaker 2: thirteen observations. He calculated its rotation. He did not note
Speaker 2: the color, perhaps according to the Journal of the British
Speaker 2: Astronomical Association, because the instrumentation was too low light to
Speaker 2: really pick up on any colorization. Now Again, historians between
Speaker 2: these two tend to favor the Cassini observation because it
Speaker 2: seems that Cassini is definitely observing. There's a stronger case
Speaker 2: to be made that he's observing an actual storm here,
Speaker 2: an actual storm spot on Jupiter. But an important distinction
Speaker 2: to make here is that this might not have been
Speaker 2: the same storm that we see and know today as
Speaker 2: being the iconic Great Storm of Jupiter. The article that
Speaker 2: I referenced on the Journal of the British Astronomical Association
Speaker 2: titled May sixteen sixty four Hook versus Cassini, who discovered
Speaker 2: Jupiter's red spot, points out that that first of all,
Speaker 2: the history of the red spot or spots is imperfect,
Speaker 2: and that no one observed the red spot on Jupiter
Speaker 2: after seventeen thirteen until eighteen thirty one, that's when Heinrich
Speaker 2: Schwabe observed it and then described in much greater detail
Speaker 2: by American astronomer C. W. Pritchett in eighteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: Often often references being the individual to quote unquote rediscover
Speaker 2: the great Red Spot, So the permanent spot of Cassini
Speaker 2: and the great red spot that astronomers have been observing
Speaker 2: since at least eighteen thirty one, they might be two
Speaker 2: very different storms. Since around twenty twelve, scientists have observed
Speaker 2: a shrinking of the Great Red Spot, and recent flaking
Speaker 2: has also led some to think that it might it
Speaker 2: might one day disappear. Some have predicted in the past
Speaker 2: as little as decades from the point of observation. Others,
Speaker 2: and certainly I think more recent observers, have urged more
Speaker 2: caution on this. I mean, I say caution, not that
Speaker 2: this is really any threat to us whatsoever, but it
Speaker 2: They tend to suggest that it may last for some centuries.
Speaker 2: Yet I'm not sure if it will last to twenty
Speaker 2: four oh one. Hard to say, But this is ultimately
Speaker 2: one of those things where no one really knows, because
Speaker 2: again it's a storm. Everyone is familiar with the difficulties
Speaker 2: we have in predicting how the weather works on our planet.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a complex system. Likewise, it's difficult even
Speaker 2: with Jupiter to figure out, Well, this storm has lasted
Speaker 2: for decades at least, but will it last for decades, more,
Speaker 2: centuries more?
Speaker 3: We just don't know, right, So not caution in the
Speaker 3: sense of it could harm us, but maybe caution in
Speaker 3: the sense of like, don't go to one of the
Speaker 3: betting markets and put big money on the storm being
Speaker 3: there or disappearing in a certain timeline. There's not a
Speaker 3: whole lot we know.
Speaker 2: It would be very interesting to see how the public
Speaker 2: responded to it, because I think back to, of course
Speaker 2: changes in categorizations or adjustments and categorizations of Pluto as
Speaker 2: a planet or some other astral body, and you know,
Speaker 2: people ended up having strong opinions about that because the
Speaker 2: idea that Pluto's not on the list anymore. It made
Speaker 2: them feel threatened at times, are wounded in a way.
Speaker 2: And I can imagine a similar reaction to scientists telling everyone,
Speaker 2: you know, the red spot in Jupiter is not there anymore,
Speaker 2: so don't draw Jupiter the same way, and please everyone
Speaker 2: make corrections to your textbooks.
Speaker 3: You know, thinking back on the Pluto thing, some people
Speaker 3: I think genuinely do get frustrated when they have to
Speaker 3: update what they know about something. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of that was just people trying
Speaker 3: to be cute. Yes, just making a little jokey post
Speaker 3: on Facebook, like don't take my Pluto away. But somehow
Speaker 3: I don't know it like it's something that I think
Speaker 3: snowballed from a mostly ironic posting to begin with, into like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, somehow an actual kind of sentiment about
Speaker 3: like I'm dissatisfied with astronomy today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It kind of at least dips its toes, even
Speaker 2: in jest, into sort of science denial, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, though, of course the idea of a planet is
Speaker 3: not like a consistent objective category over time. The whole
Speaker 3: thing was like, we're updating the definition of what we
Speaker 3: consider a planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we could have gone in the other
Speaker 2: direction and just added a list of other things on
Speaker 2: the end there. I can't imagine people wanted to memorize
Speaker 2: more planets, So you know, I feel like this was
Speaker 2: a good balance.
Speaker 3: Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you'd want to add series to.
Speaker 2: The list you want to. But that's Pluto. Pluto small
Speaker 2: and ultimately insignificant compared to the glory of Jupiter. And
Speaker 2: and of course it's red Storm, It's great red spot.
Speaker 2: There is another, by the way, at least one more.
Speaker 2: There is the Little Red Spot, also known as Red
Speaker 2: Spot Junior or oval Ba, which formed in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight and two thousand from three white oval shaped storms.
Speaker 2: So again, like new stuff pops up new details. If
Speaker 2: you look at some of the glorious detailed imagery that
Speaker 2: we now have of the storms of Jupiter, I mean
Speaker 2: it is a complex system. It is like a crazy
Speaker 2: swirl of madness there.
Speaker 3: Sorry, sorry, I just had to check something off, Mike,
Speaker 3: because I had a massive musical confusion in my brain.
Speaker 3: When you said Red Spot Junior. I thought I was
Speaker 3: hearing that to the tune of the theme song of
Speaker 3: a cartoon I watched as a child called James Bond Junior,
Speaker 3: Red Spot Junior. But then it turned out I went
Speaker 3: and checked and I wasn't even remembering the theme song, right.
Speaker 3: I think I was hearing the tune of the Transformers
Speaker 3: theme in my head, but putting James Bond Junior.
Speaker 2: I don't remember James Bond Jr.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, I'm glad I could bring you on this
Speaker 3: journey with.
Speaker 4: Me, folks, all right, So back to the great Red
Speaker 4: Spot grs if you prefer is pointed out by Simon
Speaker 4: Et Hall in twenty eighteen's Historical and Contemporary Trends in
Speaker 4: the size, drift and color of Jupiter's Great Red Spot
Speaker 4: published in the Astronomical Journal.
Speaker 2: We have roughly one hundred and fifty years going one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty now obviously worth of recorded observations of
Speaker 2: the Great Red Spot that we can study. Now. They
Speaker 2: point out that the measurement accuracy and all of these
Speaker 2: observations depending greatly on terrestrial atmospheric conditions, the skill of
Speaker 2: the observer, and the contrast of the Great Red Spot
Speaker 2: with its ever moving surroundings. Because as we'll discuss, it's
Speaker 2: like there's coloration changes in there as well. It's not
Speaker 2: a consistent color of time, nor a consistent shape and size.
Speaker 3: Nor a consistent color throughout. I mean, even within the
Speaker 3: Great Red Spot, you've got like the sort of central
Speaker 3: redder area, and then you've got kind of a white
Speaker 3: band around the outside of it. And then that's within
Speaker 3: like the wider stripes along the latitudinal stripes along Jupiter,
Speaker 3: which are known as the zones, and the darker, more
Speaker 3: orange or red stripes which are known as the belts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in this paper they averaged out reported measurements
Speaker 2: to better reflect the likely actual conditions in Jupiter's atmosphere.
Speaker 2: And I'll get to some of their general details here
Speaker 2: in a second, but we should probably point out some
Speaker 2: of the things that they highlight here as well about
Speaker 2: where our imagery comes from. So some of our most
Speaker 2: impressive images, of course, of Jupiter come not from earth
Speaker 2: bound telescopes and observatories, but from satellites and especially flybys
Speaker 2: of the planet Jupiter, such as nineteen seventy four's Pioneer
Speaker 2: ten and eleven. These revealed stark colorization more than detail.
Speaker 2: Then we had seventy nine's Voyager and Voyager ten. I
Speaker 2: forget which one became vegure. Interesting since we mentioned I
Speaker 2: don't know which you want? Did they both become feature?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: We all become vegure.
Speaker 2: Eventually they revealed a more complex inner working in velocity
Speaker 2: fields of the storm. And then we have of course
Speaker 2: the Hubble space telescope, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons, and Juno,
Speaker 2: and these have all helped to produce just a robust
Speaker 2: monitoring record of Jupiter and Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Certainly,
Speaker 2: among other things confirming is continual evolution, that it is
Speaker 2: a thing that is continually changing now at the time
Speaker 2: of this study, they pointed to these general trends and stats.
Speaker 2: You can get into a great deal of detail here.
Speaker 2: We'll get into more detail as we get into this episode,
Speaker 2: but they do state that, yeah, it is in fact shrinking,
Speaker 2: though it's too large and too complex a system for
Speaker 2: us to really leave it at that and do it justice.
Speaker 2: There's a great deal of information about how it's longitude
Speaker 2: length has continued to decrease, as has its latitudinal width,
Speaker 2: while there's also been an observable increase in its westward
Speaker 2: drift rate. Internal velocities have increased on the east west
Speaker 2: edges and to decreased on the north and south, so
Speaker 2: it's become a rounder over time. But again, it's like
Speaker 2: our mind, it's so big and into even more details.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Jupiter is enormous, This storm is enormous,
Speaker 2: and it is also incredibly complex. So you can't again,
Speaker 2: you can't just talk about its color. It has multiple
Speaker 2: colors in it, and maybe those colors, when seen from
Speaker 2: a great distance or rendered in just a certain way,
Speaker 2: takes on a certain feeling of red or orange or
Speaker 2: you know, a sort of a rusty brown. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's one of those things that we want to
Speaker 2: be able to categorize it as more of a single
Speaker 2: entity when I mean it is, but it is again,
Speaker 2: it's a great storm. It's not it's not a it's
Speaker 2: not like even a planet itself. We can sort of
Speaker 2: look to as a conceivable whole, and we have just
Speaker 2: a different system going on here.
Speaker 3: Well, much like a storm on Earth. I mean, we
Speaker 3: identify it as a thing, a coherent mass. But of
Speaker 3: course that you know, it is a pattern within fluids,
Speaker 3: within masses of fluids, and so there are fluids that
Speaker 3: are constantly flowing in and flowing out from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you get into a quick questions like, well,
Speaker 2: there's a hurricane, what is it made of? Well it's yes,
Speaker 2: it's made of rain drops on one level, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot more to the answer.
Speaker 3: You could say it's made of energy. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't have to think about that.
Speaker 2: But we want to be able to answer the question
Speaker 2: with a succinct Oh, it's made of X. You know.
Speaker 2: So this study also points out, yeah, you have changing
Speaker 2: size and internal wind speeds that have been observable from
Speaker 2: seventy nine through twenty seventeen, again keeping in mind the
Speaker 2: publication date of this paper, and this seemed to result
Speaker 2: in decreased internal circulation within the spot, intensity of the
Speaker 2: storm and resulting darkness. Lightness in places has also shifted,
Speaker 2: and again I've seen this characterized as a general darkening,
Speaker 2: but I think that what you see discussed in more
Speaker 2: in depth papers like this indicates something far more complex,
Speaker 2: with coloration and brightness depending on the exact composition and
Speaker 2: intensities within the storm system. Now, again, we absolutely don't
Speaker 2: know how long the storm will ultimately last. Again, it's
Speaker 2: an extremely temporary condition in the lifespan of a planet,
Speaker 2: but long lasting within the context of human lives, human observation,
Speaker 2: and in comparison to terrestrial storms. That being said, more
Speaker 2: commentators these days seem to favor a longer continued lifespan
Speaker 2: for the storm unless I noticed at least one paper
Speaker 2: pointing out unless something really cataclysmic occurs.
Speaker 3: I wonder what they got in mind for that, What
Speaker 3: like like an asteroid hitting it or something.
Speaker 2: Well, this got me thinking, I was like, what would
Speaker 2: it take? So it does get rather fascinating because, first
Speaker 2: of all, Jupiter does take a lot of hits, and
Speaker 2: some of these hits have been like pretty brutal. It's
Speaker 2: pointed out in a twenty nineteen NASA article by Carl B.
Speaker 2: Hilly From July sixteenth through July twenty second. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four, enormous fragments of the Shoemaker Levy nine comet
Speaker 2: crashed into Jupiter over the course of several days, and
Speaker 2: it had just been discovered a year prior, quote, creating
Speaker 2: huge dark scars in the planet's atmosphere and lofting superheated
Speaker 2: plumes into its stratosphere. Yeah, and you can look up
Speaker 2: images of this. I included a couple for us here, Joe. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: it basically looks like the planet's a lower hemisphere was
Speaker 2: hit with celestial buckshot.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it has wounds and they're strangely kind of
Speaker 3: scattered almost along a line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you see.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the interesting thing is that, first of all,
Speaker 2: these scars persisted for months and were and we're reported
Speaker 2: to be and certainly you can look at the images
Speaker 2: and see this for yourself. They're more noticeable than the
Speaker 2: Great Red Spot during this time. So this was definitely
Speaker 2: a period. And you know, I was in school at
Speaker 2: the time. I don't remember anyone making a point out
Speaker 2: of this, but like, Jupiter definitely looked different as long
Speaker 2: as these scars were hanging out, and you know, we
Speaker 2: didn't freak out about updating the illustrations or anything, but
Speaker 2: these were big hits. These were the sorts of things
Speaker 2: that if these fragments had hit the Earth, we'd be
Speaker 2: talking about an extinction event. Wow. And observation of these
Speaker 2: impacts I was reading at the time helped fuel efforts
Speaker 2: to better protect potential space collisions involving the Earth. You know, certainly,
Speaker 2: you know driving home that collisions like this still do
Speaker 2: occur in our Solar system, and it's not unthinkable that
Speaker 2: they could occur to our planet, and therefore maybe we
Speaker 2: need to keep a better eye on what's out there.
Speaker 3: Well, fortunately we're a smaller target both in terms of
Speaker 3: size and gravitational attraction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jupiter is the broad side of a barn here
Speaker 2: any respects.
Speaker 3: But doesn't mean we shouldn't we shouldn't be vigilant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, as we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 2: like we need to have an idea of what's out there,
Speaker 2: and all these efforts to track them and coordinate and
Speaker 2: to possibly redirect anything that's incoming vitally important to everything
Speaker 2: we're doing on the planet. For good or ill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a plan of what to do, a well
Speaker 3: researched plan.
Speaker 2: Yes, So these fragments that hit a hit Jupiter, they
Speaker 2: didn't directly impact the Red Spot. We can if you
Speaker 2: look at some of these images, and you can look
Speaker 2: at one up here, Joe, you can still see the
Speaker 2: much fainter spot in this July first, nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: image that I've included for you to the right. And
Speaker 2: even if the Red Spot took a direct hit, it
Speaker 2: seems like there's plenty of reason to assume that such
Speaker 2: a large storm system would maybe be slightly temporarily altered,
Speaker 2: but otherwise would remain. So we should remember that in
Speaker 2: addition to being historically larger than the Earth in its diameter,
Speaker 2: in its footprint, the storm is also quite deep, and
Speaker 2: again is an energetic system. Now how deep fairly recent
Speaker 2: recordings give us estimates on this. According to a twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one Wiseman Institute of Science and NASA collaboration, the
Speaker 2: Great Red Spot likely extends to a depth of about
Speaker 2: five hundred kilometers or three hundred and eleven miles below
Speaker 2: the planet's clouds, and you can compare that to the
Speaker 2: storm's diameter of roughly two hundred and fifty miles or
Speaker 2: sixteen three hundred and fifty kilometers. So what kind of
Speaker 2: cataclysm would it take to erase the Big Red Spot.
Speaker 2: It seems like it would need to be a cataclysm
Speaker 2: on the sort of scale that would threaten Jupiter itself,
Speaker 2: like a collision with a planet it or close passage
Speaker 2: to a massive star. And of course, in either scenario,
Speaker 2: the loss of the Red Spot will be the least
Speaker 2: of our worries here on Earth.
Speaker 3: All right, now, Rob, you asked me to look a
Speaker 3: little bit more into the nature of the storm. We've
Speaker 3: said several times now that the Great Red Spot is
Speaker 3: a storm, but what kind of storm is it?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What's going on there? So I looked into this. The
Speaker 3: Great Red Spot is, in the words of the authors
Speaker 3: of a paper I think you mentioned earlier, Rob, and
Speaker 3: we may come back to in the next part of
Speaker 3: the series won by Sanchez la Vega at All from
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, the Great Red Spot is a giant
Speaker 3: anti cyclone vortex. Now that will make more sense if
Speaker 3: we break it up into its parts. Normally, when we're
Speaker 3: talking about weather, a vortex is a rotating, revolving mass
Speaker 3: of air, So when air begins flowing in a spiral
Speaker 3: around a central axis. So a tornado is a type
Speaker 3: of vortex. A hurricane is a vortex. A polar vortex
Speaker 3: is a vortex. Vortex has the same meaning on Jupiter
Speaker 3: that it does on Earth, but of course, because we're
Speaker 3: on Jupiter, it's not rotating air. It is the atmospheric
Speaker 3: gases found on the planet, which are mostly hydrogen and helium,
Speaker 3: with some other things mixed in there as well, methane,
Speaker 3: ammonia and things like that. So that's vortex. What about
Speaker 3: the anti cyclone bit. Anti cyclone refers to the structure
Speaker 3: of the vortex, and anti cyclone is easier to understand
Speaker 3: in contrast with its opposite, which, as you might guess,
Speaker 3: is the cyclone. A cyclone has a circulation pattern where
Speaker 3: the wind flows counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise
Speaker 3: in the southern hemisphere, and anti cyclone is the opposite.
Speaker 3: North of the equator, an anti cyclone spins clockwise south
Speaker 3: of the equator counterclockwise. Now from that distinction, you might
Speaker 3: assume that cyclones and anti cyclones are essentially just mirror
Speaker 3: images of each other, kind of like a wind that
Speaker 3: blows from the east versus a wind that blows from
Speaker 3: the west is going to be about the same as
Speaker 3: just what direction that's going. But that's not the case
Speaker 3: at all. On Earth, cyclones and anti cyclones tend to
Speaker 3: have extremely different characteristics as weather. There are some exceptions,
Speaker 3: but generally an anti cyclone is going to mean clear skies, calm,
Speaker 3: dry weather on the ground, really just not much to notice.
Speaker 3: So often an anti cyclone doesn't even really register to
Speaker 3: us as weather. It's just like, oh, it's nice and
Speaker 3: clear out, clear skies, it's dry, It's yeah, great, great
Speaker 3: nice weather. Meanwhile, cyclones include stormy patterns like hurricanes and typhoons.
Speaker 3: Those are both examples of a tropical cyclone. These bring clouds,
Speaker 3: high winds, and rain. So what makes the difference. Why
Speaker 3: would the direction of rotation of a massive air feel
Speaker 3: so different on the ground. Well, A major factor determining
Speaker 3: whether a cyclone or an anti cyclone pattern forms in
Speaker 3: a massive air is pressure. So an anti cyclone forms
Speaker 3: around a region of relatively high atmospheric pressure and high pressure.
Speaker 3: The air is dense and it wants to sink. So
Speaker 3: with an anti cyclone, you've got dry, cool air from
Speaker 3: higher up in the atmosphere that converges near the center
Speaker 3: of the pattern, and then it falls down toward the
Speaker 3: earth because of the high pressure, it wants to sink,
Speaker 3: and then it diverges outward from the center at the bottom.
Speaker 3: So this is not exactly right, but just you can
Speaker 3: roughly kind of imagine a whirlpool sucking cool, dry air
Speaker 3: from way up high in the atmosphere and then funneling
Speaker 3: it down to the ground where it then kind of
Speaker 3: spreads out gently over the surface. Meanwhile, well, a cyclone
Speaker 3: is formed around a region of low atmospheric pressure. It's
Speaker 3: the opposite. In a low pressure region, warm moist air
Speaker 3: near the surface begins to rise up and this causes
Speaker 3: more warm moist air to flow in from all around
Speaker 3: near the surface to take its place. This is sometimes
Speaker 3: described as convergence at the surface, meaning the surface of
Speaker 3: the Earth like the ground or the surface of the sea.
Speaker 3: So it's flowing to the middle around the ground, and
Speaker 3: the air flowing to the middle from the bottom is
Speaker 3: again in contrast to the anti cyclone, where the air
Speaker 3: flows to the middle from the top. The low pressure
Speaker 3: and the convergence at the surface these tend to result
Speaker 3: in cloud formation, rain, and high winds. So why do
Speaker 3: these patterns have opposite rotation in the northern and southern hemispheres.
Speaker 3: This is because of the Coriolis effect. We've talked about
Speaker 3: this on the show before, but just to briefly refresh,
Speaker 3: it's that manifests because it is not only the air
Speaker 3: that is moving over the surface of the Earth. It's
Speaker 3: not like the surface of the Earth is actually stationary
Speaker 3: and the air is moving around. The surface of the
Speaker 3: Earth is moving too. The Earth is rotating, and so
Speaker 3: the Earth rotates counterclockwise. If you're looking down at it
Speaker 3: from the north pole, it rotates clockwise if you're viewing
Speaker 3: from the south pole. And as a result, objects moving
Speaker 3: in the atmosphere within the rotating reference frame of the
Speaker 3: Earth will appear to have their path deflected because the
Speaker 3: Earth itself is moving, and it will appear to be
Speaker 3: deflected to the right in the northern hemisphere and to
Speaker 3: the left in the southern hemisphere, and that creates these
Speaker 3: different patterns. That's why it's different on the different sides
Speaker 3: of the equator. By the way the Coriolis effect, it
Speaker 3: only manifests on large scales. The idea that it determines
Speaker 3: which way the water flows down the drain and the sink.
Speaker 3: That is a misconception that's apparently based more on things
Speaker 3: like the shape of the sink and how you pour
Speaker 3: the water. You see Corioli's forces popping up in like
Speaker 3: big movements of masses like weather and ocean currents and
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: The Simpsons taught us wrong on this one, they did.
Speaker 3: Yes, a rare miss for them. You know the Simpsons.
Speaker 3: Often they get the math and science right, usually.
Speaker 2: If you're not familiar with what we're talking about. I
Speaker 2: don't remember the season, but what they travel to Australia, Yes,
Speaker 2: where where the US Embassy has a toilet, like a
Speaker 2: high tech toilet that's been specially designed to force a
Speaker 2: northern hemisphere directional flush effect as opposed to a southern
Speaker 2: hemisphere flush, which, again, as we're making clear here, is not.
Speaker 3: A thing right to make it flow the right way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but anyway, back to the storms here. So again, cyclones
Speaker 3: form the basis of most storms and bad weather on Earth.
Speaker 3: I mentioned there were some exceptions. There are some occasional
Speaker 3: large anti cyclone storms that can form for various reasons,
Speaker 3: but that's more rare. On Earth, most of your big
Speaker 3: storms are cyclones. Tropical cyclones like hurricanes and typhoons form
Speaker 3: over low pressure regions in the ocean north and south
Speaker 3: of the equator. So they form these massive rotating systems
Speaker 3: where you've got warm, wet air that comes up off
Speaker 3: of the ocean and it circulates and forms a spiral
Speaker 3: of thunderstorms with high winds. And generally these storms they
Speaker 3: build up in energy and intensity, and they can travel
Speaker 3: around and they usually dissipate once the storm either moves
Speaker 3: onto land or into cooler waters at higher latitudes, robbing
Speaker 3: the storm of the warm wet air that supplies it
Speaker 3: with energy and keeps it going. So Jupiter's Great Red
Speaker 3: Spot is an anti cyclone vortex. It is a spiraling storm,
Speaker 3: but unlike most of these big storms on Earth, it
Speaker 3: is a high pressure system, not a low pressure system,
Speaker 3: and it rotates in the anti cyclonic direction counterclockwise in
Speaker 3: Jupiter's southern hemisphere. So that's the two parts of the
Speaker 3: description anti cyclone vortex. But there was a third word.
Speaker 3: It is a giant anti cyclone vortex, and it is
Speaker 3: indeed giant. You were already alluding to this, rob how
Speaker 3: big exactly is the storm. It seems currently it is
Speaker 3: more than sixteen thousand kilometers wide, which is bigger than
Speaker 3: the entire planet Earth. As we've said, Earth's diameter is
Speaker 3: something like twelve seven hundred and fifty kilometers. The Red
Speaker 3: Storm is more than sixteen thousand. And I also just
Speaker 3: want to briefly compare this to the biggest storms in
Speaker 3: the historical record on Earth. The largest storm ever recorded.
Speaker 3: This doesn't mean necessarily the largest storm ever to occur,
Speaker 3: but the biggest one we ever measured was Typhoon Tip,
Speaker 3: a tropical cyclone that formed in the Western Pacific in
Speaker 3: October nineteen seventy nine. Tip was huge, with a peak
Speaker 3: diameter of more than two thy two hundred kilometers. A
Speaker 3: common comparison people make is that if you laid the
Speaker 3: storm out over the eastern United States, the edges of
Speaker 3: the storm would reach from Texas to New England, just
Speaker 3: gigantic by Earth standards. But of course, the Great Red
Speaker 3: Spot is not only a lot bigger than that storm,
Speaker 3: it's bigger than the whole planet. And it is not
Speaker 3: even currently at its maximum size. As you were talking about, Rob,
Speaker 3: you know, when it was first observed, the diameter of
Speaker 3: the spot was estimated to be almost fifty thousand kilometers,
Speaker 3: which is more than three times the width of Earth.
Speaker 3: I think actually almost four times the diameter of Earth.
Speaker 3: And so again contained in that fact about the change
Speaker 3: over time is the implication that the Great Red Spot
Speaker 3: fluctuates greatly in terms of size and structure. Another thing
Speaker 3: is the contrast in intensity with the biggest storms we
Speaker 3: know about on Earth. In Typhoon Tip, the wind gusts
Speaker 3: reached more than three hundred kilometers per hour, which is
Speaker 3: absolutely crazy. That is really really high wind. But the
Speaker 3: Great Red Spot storm is even more intense. I've read
Speaker 3: different numbers here for the wind speeds. I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: but I wonder if any discrepancies in the accounting might
Speaker 3: have to do with the fact that there's no solid
Speaker 3: surface below to measure the winds against. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it has to do with the fact that it's
Speaker 3: fluid on fluid, but anyway, I was looking for a
Speaker 3: good source on this, and I used a fact page
Speaker 3: from NASA's Juno mission, which was focused on Jupiter's atmosphere,
Speaker 3: among other things. So that seems to be a good authority,
Speaker 3: and they peg the range of wind speeds within the
Speaker 3: Great Red Spot at four hundred and thirty to six
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty kilometers per hour or two hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy four to twenty five miles per hour. That would
Speaker 3: be within the outer reaches where the winds are the
Speaker 3: most intense. In any case, way way more powerful than
Speaker 3: the most powerful cyclone ever recorded in history on Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's just an absolute monster on a
Speaker 2: scale that staggers the imagination, challenges the imagination, and it's
Speaker 2: and it's it's a planet that is again it's a
Speaker 2: gas giant. As we've been driving home, there is no
Speaker 2: hard surface like it's we we can't even picture ourselves
Speaker 2: in the midst of it like we have an easier
Speaker 2: time picturing ourselves, of course, on the surface of something
Speaker 2: like Venus, which in and of itself is it a
Speaker 2: completely alien and inhospitable environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but would kill you. But there's something to stand on.
Speaker 2: There's at least something to stand and crumble voluntary. Yeah. Here,
Speaker 2: it's it's just it's hell, it's mean Stupiter, baby.
Speaker 3: But so yes. The Red Spot of Jupiter is a
Speaker 3: giant high pressure storm in contrast to most of Earth's
Speaker 3: low pressure storms in the atmosphere of Jupiter's southern hemisphere
Speaker 3: swirling in the anti cyclonic direction. But there are a
Speaker 3: bunch of interesting questions that remain, some of which we
Speaker 3: have fairly good ideas of how to answer, some of
Speaker 3: which are much more mysterious, and there are only some
Speaker 3: kind of educated guesses questions like the one you raised,
Speaker 3: how long is it going to be around? One question
Speaker 3: that's interesting is how does this storm persist for so long?
Speaker 3: Over time? Storms on Earth don't last that long, and
Speaker 3: also the question of how did it form in the
Speaker 3: first place. So I think we should come back and
Speaker 3: do a part two on the Great Red Spot.
Speaker 2: Rob Yeah, yeah, get into why this color. Well, you
Speaker 2: might think it's the jelly filling of the planet, but
Speaker 2: that's inaccurate. If you've read that somewhere, that's a lie.
Speaker 2: And we'll look at more plausible answers to that question
Speaker 2: in the next episode. In the meantime, since we have
Speaker 2: several days before that episode will come out, we would
Speaker 2: love to hear from you if you have, especially, I'm
Speaker 2: interested for examples from various science fiction films where Jupiter
Speaker 2: pops up in the background, or at least is the
Speaker 2: red storm is acknowledged, and then I want to know
Speaker 2: what year that is supposed to take place and how
Speaker 2: we might therefore couch that in our very vague and
Speaker 2: shifting understanding of how long this storm has lasted and
Speaker 2: how long it will last. Just a reminder to everyone
Speaker 2: out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursday, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want
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Speaker 2: You can follow the podcast wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 2: and on Instagram we're s twob yam podcast, so if
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or us to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
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