Jupiter loses a stripe. | Hacker News Reader

Jupiter loses a stripe.

newscientist.com

Interesting article. Normally when I read an article in the form of "some natural phenomenon has stopped occurring", I get worried and think of how the human race is fucking over the planet and we're all going to die, unless we figure out what we did wrong. That was the initial thought that went through my mind when I clicked through to this article.

Then I realized, hey... that's another planet. We didn't cause the problem! We can just watch and not care one way or the other. If we figure out why, great. If we never do... also fine.

Quite relaxing.

I had a similar thought progression, but then I went from "What did we do?" to "Oh crap is Jupiter going to blow up or something" and finally "Wait, that is stupid"

Actually, we probably do want to care about that. We know Earth's environment is changing but be don't really know why. Our planet is a single data point in the solar system, which makes analysis a little difficult.

Is Mars getting warmer or colder? Is Jupiter? Why is Jupiter's atmosphere visibly changing? If all other planets in the solar system are getting warmer/colder, shouldn't we expect Earth's temperature to change as well?

It's like a bright neon sign flashing "Clearly Explained Reason for Increased Solar System Exploration", but the space agency budget folks will likely ignore it and attempt to gain public support through some asinine vision quest thing instead.

I agree that sending probes thought the solar system is interesting, but other planets are not worming.

PS: This is the second time the band has disappeared discovering why that happens may be interesting like the North pole hexagon cloud pattern over Saturn but it's probably not a temperature effect: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060519/full/news060515-17.ht...

Do we have sufficient data to conclude that other planets are not warming? How far back does our accurate, consistent measurement go? Years? A decade or two?

I'm not sure we have sufficient data to conclude anything right now. We know astoundingly little about the neighbourhood we live in.

I don't want to sound like too much of a jackass here, but do you have any reason to think that other planets are warming? The rhetorical technique of "pose a question without any real backing, then demand proof when someone answers" drives me nuts.

Yes. For one, there's that big ol' fusion furnace in the middle of the place that's tossing out a variable amount of energy as time goes on.

Examining the weather of other planets would help explain if solar activity or other factors are affecting planetary temperatures more than recent human actions.

The sun isn't responsible for global warming. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7327393.stm

Please don't bring that politicized stuff into the discussion. That's a different flame war entirely.

If Jupiter is warming/cooling or Mars is warming/cooling, then something has to be responsible for it, and it sure isn't human activity.

If not the sun, then what? Something about planetary environments we're likely interested in learning more about, right?

You don't get to just label contrary scientific findings as 'political', and dismiss it out of hand. Here's the published paper that the article refers to: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/3/2/024001/ The correlations don't hold up under analysis, and that's really all there is to be said on the subject. But if you feel that you can refute that paper with evidence, then go for it. I for one would love for you to be right, It's no doubt save me (and everyone else on the planet) a whole load of economic pain. Sadly, reality does't seem to be going along with my desires.

I didn't dismiss/refute/claim anything or intend to start yet another global warming flame war. I'm probably as familiar with that research as you are and I'm not refuting it.

If other planets are warming/cooling then something is responsible for it. If it's not the sun, then it's something else related to planetary environments with which we are not familiar. Studying that would be A Good Idea, regardless of where people stand on global warming, because examining Earth alone just gives us a single data point.

What's happening on Mars? Does it parallel the changes we're seeing on Earth to some degree? What's happening in Jupiter's atmosphere to bring about such a dramatic change in a short period of time?

Could we see a similar dramatic change on this planet?

Jupiter is far enough from the sun that it already emits significantly more heat than it receives. So the sun becoming more active won't have any measurable effect on Jupiter, or any other of our gas giants, or Pluto or Charon.

If any planets ARE warming because of an increase in solar activity, the ones we should expect to see a change on are Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Venus is a good example of what happens if the greenhouse effects run amok, and Mars is a good example of the opposite. We're in the middle, at least for now.

Do we have sufficient data to conclude that other planets are not warming?

Yes.

The theory that the sun is causing global worming fails on several levels and there is zero evidence from the data we have that global the sun is causing global warming.

PS: Presenting a theory with zero support and then requesting more evidence from theory’s that have support is not rational behavior. You can request all the evidence you want but at the end of the day whichever theory has the MOST evidence is more likely to be correct.

Jupiter's atmosphere is really complex, probably more so than the Earth's due to its internal heat, high spin rate and lack of surface. I'm not sure we should look there for clues about the changes in the Sun. Probably much easier to just measure the solar output.

That's quite a difference: http://i.imgur.com/ISCI3.png

Note that the Great Red Spot is in the same location where the stripe used to be. I'm surprised they didn't mean that in the article.

If you look at how the Great Red Spot spins against the southern stripe, you can imagine it gobbling up the stripe: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/790106-02...

On closer inspection, astronomers detected what appears to be a large and rapidly-growing collection of black rectangles on the surface.

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE USE THEM TOGETHER USE THEM IN PEACE

*Edit Ack! pavlov beat me to it

Pedantic note: the last part - "USE THEM TOGETHER USE THEM IN PEACE" - was added to the movie version, in which the story was overlaid with a now-anachronistic Cold War tension between the American and Soviet members of the mission.

I'm sure it will turn up in the last place you look for it

same could happen to... eg. the gulf stream! europe would be frozen like sibiria...

look around, in fact there are people anticipating a shutdown: http://www.gulfstreamshutdown.com/

"All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there."

(A. C. Clarke, "2010")

why? or would that be considered a spoiler to the book?

It would be pretty hard to explain why without explaining 90% of the plot. Fortunately, there is wikipedia, which will do the spoiling for me - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_Odyssey_Two

conspiracy theories, anyone?

There is an alien base situated directly behind the planet. Their own pollution and resource consumption is the direct result of the changes in the planet's atmosphere.

We haven't got long.

Anthropogenic global warming?

BP was mining for some toxic gas on the surface of the planet when something went horribly wrong. Now they're pumping out 5000 Bcfe's of it per day into the southern hemisphere and its destroyed the red stripe we'd become so accustomed to.

Their volcano is vacationing on another planet.

Well, it might just be a coincidence that StarCraft 2 beta has just been launched, but personally, I'm thinking "Ender's Game". Damned Zerg!

WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS?

Don't forget the other important question:

WHERE ARE THEY?

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