this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Because hexagon is bestagon!

[–] Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radio 4 points 1 day ago

Excelentagon.

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

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 67 points 1 day 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 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)
[–] hayvan@feddit.nl 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

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

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

[–] hayvan@feddit.nl 10 points 1 day ago

Capitalism ruining everything.

[–] webpack@ani.social 11 points 1 day 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)

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[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

Saturn's butt is made of Bitcoin, got it.

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[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Here's a better visualization from Minute Physics how these "wave" patterns can make geometric shapes, using the fact that Earth's moon doesn't make a smooth circle around the sun.

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

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

That doesn't sound less weird.

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

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

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 353 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Because hexagons are the bestagons.

[–] halvar@lemy.lol 45 points 2 days ago

the only answer i'll ever need

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago
[–] Matty_r@programming.dev 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Bestagons, Roll out!

wait...

[–] RichardDegenne@lemmy.zip 27 points 2 days ago (3 children)
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[–] antrosapien@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

I'd like to file a bug report, the texture wrapping is broken

[–] MarriedCavelady50@lemmy.ml 177 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 66 points 2 days 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 2 days ago (1 children)

Tl;Dr

"Why is it a hexagon"

[–] MarriedCavelady50@lemmy.ml 58 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Atmosphere outside hexagon spins faster than atmosphere inside hexagon

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[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

They would never be so obvious

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 35 points 1 day ago

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

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Base game got boring, I recommend the Ringfarers expansion.

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[–] Icytrees@sh.itjust.works 52 points 2 days ago (5 children)
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[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 90 points 2 days ago (3 children)

TIL all the Civilization maps are on Saturn

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

god playing settlers of catan here...

[–] ashenone@lemmy.ml 21 points 2 days ago (3 children)
[–] gnutrino@programming.dev 19 points 2 days ago

*civ 4.

5 was the first one with a hex grid

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[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day 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?

[–] lemming741@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

So it's a soccer ball

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 59 points 2 days ago (3 children)

That's where all the 10mm sockets end up

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[–] naught101@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days 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.

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

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

[–] MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org 38 points 2 days ago


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

[–] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

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