{"id":23786,"date":"2021-02-04T11:29:27","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T16:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/?p=23786"},"modified":"2021-02-04T11:29:27","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T16:29:27","slug":"polar-hexagon-on-saturn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/news\/polar-hexagon-on-saturn\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep rotating convection generates the polar hexagon on Saturn"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n
Rakesh K. Yadav<\/span> Jeremy Bloxham<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
PNAS\u00a0<\/span>June 23, 2020 117<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n

\"The hexagonal flow pattern on Saturn is a striking example of turbulent self-organization. However, the mechanism of its formation and its depth remain unclear. There are two hypotheses: in one, the hexagon is shallow, extending to depths ranging from tens to hundreds of kilometers; in the other, it extends to thousands of kilometers. Here, we argue that the hexagon is likely very deep. Our model simultaneously and self-consistently produces alternating zonal jets, the polar cyclone, and hexagon-like polygonal structures similar to those observed on Saturn. These results show that compressible convection in rotating spherical shells is sufficient to produce Saturn-like polygonal zonal jets.\"<\/p>\n

Read the paper at PNAS<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the news article on Ars Technica<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rakesh K. Yadav Jeremy Bloxham PNAS\u00a0June 23, 2020 117 \"The hexagonal flow pattern on Saturn is a striking example of turbulent self-organization. However, the mechanism of its formation and its depth remain unclear. There are two hypotheses: in one, the hexagon is shallow, extending to depths ranging from tens to hundreds of kilometers; in the other, it extends to thousands…<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":23788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YvN-6bE","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/saturnhex.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23786"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23792,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23786\/revisions\/23792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}