Astronomers from the University of California at Berkeley (USA) have discovered that megastorms that occur deep within Saturn’s hydrogen-helium atmosphere can last for centuries. This has been officially announced Web site Educational institution.
By analyzing the radio emission and movement of ammonia, scientists have discovered long-duration megastorms on Saturn, somewhat reminiscent of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The largest megastorm in the solar system is called the Great Red Spot – this atmospheric vortex, about 25 thousand km wide, has adorned the surface of Jupiter for more than a hundred years.
On Saturn, such events begin every 20-30 years, but the exact mechanism of their occurrence is not known for certain. Saturn and Jupiter are composed of hydrogen gas, and in a new paper, the authors found anomalies in the concentration of ammonia gas in Saturn’s atmosphere.
The authors suggested that the anomalies are associated with megastorms that have already stalled in the planet’s northern hemisphere. Researchers believe that ammonia is transported from the upper atmosphere to the lower atmosphere through precipitation and reevaporation, and this process can take hundreds of Earth years.
ancient scientists calculated speed of colliding black holes.