Admittedly, any mystery involving geometry does not sound all that thrilling (though this one does have a sweet video), I promise this one is. For the last 30 years astronomers have been mesmerized by why Saturn has a gigantic hexagon encircling its North Pole. Most of the distinct bands that characterize Saturn's surface are circular, formed by gas jet streams at various latitudes. However, when the Voyager spacecraft flew over Saturn in 1988, astronomers noticed that one of the bands is a very distinct hexagon with sides nearly the diameter of earth. Someone concocted a theory to explain the geometric voodoo and attributed it to a giant vortex along one of the hexagon’s sides. It sounded reasonable; the vortex was certainly big enough to manipulate the course of the planet's jet stream. But then when Cassini went back a few years ago, the hexagon was still the same as ever and the vortex was nowhere to be seen. Saturn's jig is up though. As explained by Science N
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