On an Internet forum, someone who is writing a novel set in the year 2080 asks if the Great Red Spot on the planet Jupiter should be included or if, on the contrary, it should be considered missing. The question is not trivial, because Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is shrinking and turning orange.
For those who don’t know, the Great Red Spot is a giant whirlpool—bigger than Earth—where winds reach 450 km per hour. It is an enormous vortex, the largest of all those existing on the planets of the solar system, and its origin is a mystery that symbolizes science’s efforts to conquer the distance.
The vortex is divided into two parts. On the one hand, there is an outer ring that continues to gain speed. On the other, there is an inner ring whose winds move more and more slowly. This tension in speeds could be related to the size of the aforementioned spot, which, over time, has not only been reducing in size, but has also become more circular.
According to some sources, the Great Red Spot was first observed by the English scientist Robert Hooke in May 1664, although this is not a very precise record; it has not been possible to verify that it was actually that exact spot and not another one located further north on the planet. The Italian artist Donato Creti painted it in 1711, but he placed the spot in the northern hemisphere.
Until a little less than a century ago, people speculated about its composition, thinking that it was a body floating in Jupiter’s atmosphere like a moving bubble of helium or hydrogen. It was also thought to be the top of a column of gases coming out of a crater, which linked with the theories of the late 19th century, when scientists of that time proposed that it was a lake of lava whose origin was in an ever-active volcano. In 1979, the Voyager space probe cleared up some doubts, revealing the Great Red Spot as a moving flow system. Fluid mechanics experts found themselves facing an active storm 16,000 kilometers in diameter that was not abating. They would have to reach the deepest part of Jupiter’s atmosphere to know the origin of the filamentous structures that swirled over that chaotic ocean floor.
Since the space probe Voyager Since NASA visited Jupiter, the Great Red Spot has been shrinking. By then, its size could be estimated at approximately 1.8 Earths. Today, it is around 1.3 Earths. Therefore, based on this data, we can resolve the question we alluded to at the beginning of this piece. Jupiter’s Spot would still exist in 2080, but it would no longer be as large as Earth.
However, since the question is related to a science fiction novel, it is possible to imagine how the Great Red Spot shrinks until it becomes a barely visible point that rises and passes through Jupiter’s atmosphere, advancing towards Earth as it grows in size, threatening to envelop our planet in an eternal whirlpool of chaotic fluids.
The stone axe It is a section where Montero Glezwith a prose-like will, exercises its particular siege on scientific reality to demonstrate that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
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