New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change

[tocqueville]

Sara Goudarzi
Staff Writer
SPACE.com
56 minutes ago

A storm is brewing half a billion miles away and in a rare event, astronomers get to watch it closely.

Jupiter is growing a new red spot and the Hubble Space Telescope is photographing the scene. Backyard astronomers have been following the action, too.

"Red Spot Jr." as it is being called, formed after three white oval-shaped storms—two of which were at least 90 years old—merged between 1998 and 2000.

A similar merger took place centuries ago and formed the bigger and legendary Great Red Spot, a storm twice as big as Earth and almost 300 years old.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060504/sc_space/newstormonjupiterhintsatclimatechange

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Kick

cuz it's cool.

[Fridays Child]

2. Here are pictures...

[Dudley_DUright]

4. How cute

Jr. is a spittin' image of his dad. Glad FL hurricanes don't last so long or are so powerful, but with Global warming who knows what is possible? :-(

[sakabatou]

6. I wonder how long the storms will last until they merge, if they do...

[bananas]

3. Reminds me of the movie "2010"

But I don't want to give out any spoilers.

[Phoonzang]

5. People on another forum I read...

...are spinning this as evidence that global warming isn't caused by human activity and that it's really the sun heating up or something. They also point to shrinking ice caps on Mars. They're conservative of course.