Resonance in Jupiter's Atmospheric Vortices

Hubble Snaps Baby Pictures of Jupiter's "Red Spot Jr."

NASA/ Hubble Newsdesk
May 04, 2006

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers their most detailed view yet of a second red spot emerging on Jupiter. For the first time in history, astronomers have witnessed the birth of a new red spot on the giant planet, which is located half a billion miles away. The storm is roughly one-half the diameter of its bigger and legendary cousin, the Great Red Spot. Researchers suggest that the new spot may be related to a possible major climate change in Jupiter's atmosphere.

Dubbed by some astronomers as "Red Spot Jr.," the new spot has been followed by amateur and professional astronomers for the past few months. But Hubble's new images provide a level of detail comparable to that achieved by NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they flew by Jupiter a quarter-century ago.

Before it mysteriously changed to the same color as the Great Red Spot, the smaller spot was known as the White Oval BA. It formed after three white oval-shaped storms merged during 1998 to 2000. At least one or two of the progenitor white ovals can be traced back to 90 years ago, but they may have been present earlier. A third spot appeared in 1939. (The Great Red Spot has been visible for the past 400 years, ever since earthbound observers had telescopes to see it).

When viewed at near-infrared wavelengths (specifically 892 nanometers - a methane gas absorption band) Red Spot Jr. is about as prominent in Jupiter's cloudy atmosphere as the Great Red Spot. This may mean that the storm rises miles above the top of the main cloud deck on Jupiter just as its larger cousin is thought to do. Some astronomers think the red hue could be produced as the spots dredge up material from deeper in Jupiter's atmosphere, which is then chemically altered by the Sun's ultraviolet light.

Researchers think the Hubble images may provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global climate change that will alter its average temperature at some latitudes by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. The transfer of heat from the equator to the planet's south pole is predicted to nearly shut off at 34 degrees southern latitude, the latitude where the second red spot is forming. The effects of the shut-off were predicted by Philip Marcus of the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) to become apparent approximately seven years after the White Oval collisions in 1998 to 2000.

Two teams of astronomers were given discretionary time on Hubble to observe the new red spot...

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (wide field channel) took this image of the entire disk of Jupiter on April 16. The second red spot appears at southern latitudes, below the center of Jupiter's disk. The new spot is approximately the size of Earth's diameter. The image was taken in visible light and at near-infrared wavelengths, and does not represent Jupiter's true colors. The red color traces high-altitude haze blankets: the equatorial zone, the Great Red Spot, the second red spot, and the polar hoods. The Hubble group that conducted this observation is led jointly by Imke de Pater (UCB Astronomy) and Philip Marcus (UCB Mechanical Engineering). Other team members are Michael Wong (UCB Astronomy), Xylar Asay-Davis (UCB Mechanical Engineering), and Christopher Go, an amateur astronomer with the Astronomical League of the Philippines.

Analysis

Jupiter's enigmatic bright spot, and the many other cloud formations in the Jovian atmosphere can be structurally explained by the theory of Magnetic Resonance presented at this site. The comparative image above shows this author's spherical pattern of Magnetic Resonance on the right and the April 16, 2006 Hubble near-infrared image of Jupiter at left to reveal the correlating symmetry of vortical points.

The nonlinear infrasound standing wave resonance on Jupiter is defining the relative positions of the eyes of the atmospheric storms which appear like stable hurricanes aligned in latitudinal rows, each vortex spinning in counter-rotation to adjacent storms.

The same resonance pattern also underlies the vortical storm activity on the other gas planets, reconfirming the correlation; in the ringed spectral shifts of Uranus and the concentric rings of heat distribution observed in infrared imaging of Saturn and its moon Titan.

This infrasound resonance pattern has also been observed for short periods on Earth and dictates the geopositions of the pyramids of the world, with the Orion pyramids of Giza, Egypt at the centerpoint. The oncoming solar-system-wide magnetic reversal of December 22, 2012 may influence the atmospheric cloud patterns of Earth to become similar to those of Titan, with patterns of glowing plasma forming in the skies - seen as brilliant luminous spots like standing aurora.