this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
524 points (96.5% liked)

Science Memes

17959 readers
2245 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 359 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Because hexagons are the bestagons.

[–] halvar@lemy.lol 47 points 1 month ago

the only answer i'll ever need

[–] Matty_r@programming.dev 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Bestagons, Roll out!

wait...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] MarriedCavelady50@lemmy.ml 179 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

If only there was a Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn's_hexagon

A hypothesis developed at Oxford University is the hexagon forms where there is a steep latitudinal gradient in the speed of the atmospheric winds in Saturn's atmosphere.[22] Similar regular shapes were created in a laboratory when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different speeds at its centre and periphery. The most common shape was six sided, but shapes with three to eight sides were also produced. The shapes form in an area of turbulent flowbetween the two different rotating fluid bodies with dissimilar speeds.[22][23]A number of stable vortices of similar size form on the slower (south) side of the fluid boundary, and these interact with each other to space themselves out evenly around the perimeter. The presence of the vortices influences the boundary to move northward where each is present, and this gives rise to the polygon effect.[23] Polygons do not form at wind boundaries unless the speed differential and viscosity parameters are within certain margins and thus absent at other likely places, such as Saturn's south pole or the poles of Jupiter.

Other researchers claim that lab studies exhibit vortex streets, a series of spiraling vortices not observed in Saturn's hexagon. Simulations show a shallow, slow, localized meandering jetstream in the same direction as Saturn's prevailing clouds are able to match the observed behaviors of Saturn's hexagon with the same boundary stability.[24]

Developing barotropic instability of Saturn's North Polar hexagonal circumpolar jet (Jet) plus North Polar vortex (NPV) system produces a long-living structure akin to the observed hexagon, which is not the case of the Jet-only system, which was studied in this context in a number of papers in literature. The NPV, thus, plays a decisive dynamical role to stabilize hexagon jets. The influence of moist convection, which was recently suggested to be at the origin of Saturn's NPV system in the literature, is investigated in the framework of the barotropic rotating shallow water model and does not alter the conclusions.[25]

A 2020 mathematical study at the California Institute of Technology found that a stable geometric arrangement of the polygons can occur on any planet when a storm is surrounded by a ring of winds turning in the opposite direction to the storms itself, called an anticyclonic ring, or anticyclonic shielding.[26][27]Such shielding creates a vorticity gradient in the background of a neighbor cyclone, causing mutual rejection between the cyclones (similar to the effect of beta-drift). Although apparently shielded, the polar cyclone on Saturn cannot hold a polygonal pattern of circumpolar cyclones such as Jupiter's due to the bigger size and slower wind speed of Saturn's polar cyclone, so the side-adjacent vortices and deep barotropic instability (Cassini's wind speed measurements preclude shallower barotropic instability at least at the time of the Cassini encounter), or possibly baroclinic instabilities remain as the most viable explanations for Saturn's sustained hexagon.[28]

[–] Evolushan@lemmy.world 68 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Test apparatus from Oxford article:

Resulting hexagons observed:

This is on my phone hope the text is readable.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 45 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Tl;Dr

"Why is it a hexagon"

[–] MarriedCavelady50@lemmy.ml 61 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Atmosphere outside hexagon spins faster than atmosphere inside hexagon

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 93 points 1 month ago (3 children)

TIL all the Civilization maps are on Saturn

[–] ashenone@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 month ago (3 children)
[–] gnutrino@programming.dev 19 points 1 month ago

*civ 4.

5 was the first one with a hex grid

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 month ago

Which is still my favorite for some reason

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org 7 points 1 month ago

That makes sense...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 68 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's less weird when you realize it's not a hexagon, it's a sine wave in cylindrical coordinates. There are a lot of negative feedback loops such that a sine wave can turn into a standing wave. You just have to get a little lucky with a couple important things like your rossby number et voila, hexagon.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)
[–] hayvan@feddit.nl 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Take this, bend it around the pole so it becomes circular.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (4 children)

A planet with an investment chart for a pole. WHY.

[–] webpack@ani.social 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

sine waves aren't strictly an investment thing, they are more of a general math thing and can be used to model a wide variety of stuff (in this case this graph is for investing, but for example it comes up in physics a lot)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] hayvan@feddit.nl 10 points 1 month ago

Capitalism ruining everything.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

That doesn't sound less weird.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 60 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That's where all the 10mm sockets end up

[–] Triumph@fedia.io 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Icytrees@sh.itjust.works 52 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] g0d0fm15ch13f@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because hexagon is bestagon!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Base game got boring, I recommend the Ringfarers expansion.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world 36 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Things like Hexagons and the golden spiral occurring in nature are interesting - but very well-travelled.

[–] NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org 39 points 1 month ago


And I don't mean she travels a lot. -Bender Bending Rodriguez

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 34 points 1 month ago

TLDR That's what happens when circles get squished together.

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because storms want to be circles but any given gas giants atmosphere is basically a series of nothing but storms and when you tile circles you get a hexagonal grid due to the spaces in between them?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] naught101@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago

Standing wave. Earth kind of has one in the jet stream (3 peaks and troughs though, usually), but you can't see it with visible light.

[–] antrosapien@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Aguiar, Ana C. Barbosa, et al. "A laboratory model of Saturn’s North Polar Hexagon." Icarus 206.2 (2010): 755-763.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 7 points 1 month ago

Get out of here with your real answers. 😜

I think the actual answer even with this source is, we sort of have some clues, but we have more questions too.

[–] InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 month ago (7 children)

It is because this is how these things do be. QED.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

To better understand how nature doesn't always make smooth circles out of circular patterns, this Minute Physics video does a banger job using the Earth's moon as an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBcxuM-qXec

For Saturn, you're talking about storm patterns that aggregate near the poles, but the concept is somewhat similar, which is that forces acting on objects (storms) can arrange circles into wave-like shapes.

All that said, I believe that Saturn's hexagon is still not fully understood, and still may be signs of a deeper alien death-star hiding in the clouds and we should probably like... I dunno, stock up on canned beans and toilet paper.

[–] Bonus@mander.xyz 11 points 1 month ago

Hexagons are just nature's way of making arrays of triangles.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 month ago

Based on what I recall of the explanation by the person who figured it out: spinning makes fluid near the edge spin faster than fluid near the middle. The difference in speed creates a wave. Since it's finite and moving, the wave interferes with itself and because of math, makes a hexagon. Something about how the wave pattern changes density and brings different glasses to the surface on the planets.
Then they showed an example by spinning a bucket, and it kinda fell flat because they had to explain that a bucket isn't a sphere so you have to spin it just right to get it to work, but it did work in the end.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What, you want to tighten the axis with a torx?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You get hexagons as well when you drill a countersink bit into plywood. Something something layers.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Did not know that so I looked on Google.

AI Overview That statement is incorrect. Drilling a countersink bit into plywood (or any wood) produces a smooth, conical hole, not a hexagonal one.

Followed by every article talking about why the bits make hexagons, with videos and pictures.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Ulvain@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago

Because the fox made it into the henhouse.

Now all the hexagon.

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 month ago

I feel like I just got goatsed by Saturn

load more comments
view more: next ›