Cool Space Stuff – Lightning on Saturn
A monster storm spawning bolts of lightning 10,000 times more powerful than any seen on Earth is raging on the ringed planet Saturn.
The powerful electrical storm cropped up in Saturn’s southern hemisphere five months ago, when it was first spotted by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, and has persevered to become the planet’s longest continuously recorded tempest to date.
One of the Cassini team points out that we had tracked a couple pretty big storms across Saturn in 2004 and 2006, but that we hadn’t seen any until this one, which seems larger still than the others.
What does it mean? Well not much for you and me down here, in practical terms. In impratical terms, though, it means that the universe is larger than us in ways we are only just starting to fully discover. We are a pretty tiny drop in a very, very, very large ocean. Perhaps it would do us some good to act humble once in a while.
I got the photo for this post from the NASA writeup here. There’s also some more neat information about the storm and our efforts to document what we’re seeing.
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Category: Out in the Black
