[Graybeard]

If you are a Fitter & Turner or Boilermaker and you are required to make a Sphere out of flat sheets of metal and you have no method of forming compound curves then the only method I know of is to construct it out of flat panels in the shape of Pentagons and Hexagons. This will give you a very close approximation to a sphere (asymptotically speaking )

From NASA's APOD... http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070403.html .......Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is yet sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System. If Saturn's South Pole wasn't strange enough with its rotating vortex, Saturn's North Pole might now be considered even stranger. The bizarre cloud pattern is shown above in a recent infrared image taken by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. The images show the stability of the hexagon even 20 years after Voyager. Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating. Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon. Although full explanations are not yet available, planetary scientists are sure to continue to study this most unusual cloud formation for quite some time.

Can anyone help explain this:

[Graybeard]

Hot molten Lava falling into the ocean and forming a small promotory, once cooled, cracks into interlocked hexagonal pillars.

Could it be that the clouds on Saturn are undergoing a similar thermal / pressure process. The atomospere may be acting as a refrigerant ?

greg

[Graybeard]

March 28, 2007, 12:08 pm
The [Your Name Here] Hexagon of Saturn

By John Tierney

Tags: NASA, Saturn
The mysterious hexagon in the atmosphere above Saturn's north pole appears in an infrared image of the planet's thermal glow.The mysterious hexagon in the atmosphere above Saturn’s north pole appears in an infrared image of the planet’s thermal glow. The darker lanes bordering the bright red hexagon are thick clouds that block heat from escaping. (Photo: NASA)

Here’s your chance to name something much bigger than a street after yourself.

TierneyLab hereby promises to name Saturn’s mysterious hexagon after the reader who comes up with the most entertaining explanation for this 15,000-mile wide feature at the planet’s north pole. NASA says it looks like clouds are whipping around a hexagaonal race track, but to me it doesn’t look anything like Nascar.

The best theory I’ve come up with so far, after brushing up on von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods,” is that it’s the Hex Nut of the Giants, affixed to the end of a massive bolt that’s holding the planet together. I haven’t worked out yet how a race of titanic engineers managed to insert the bolt at Saturn’s south pole. Nor have I identified the location of their hardware store, but we need to start looking for it right away, because NASA’s video shows that it’s swirling counterclockwise dangerously near what looks to me like the end of the bolt. If this thing keeps unscrewing . . . .

This atmospheric feature, first spotted in 1980, turns out to be more than a transient gap in the clouds. Last year it was spotted again by the the Cassini spacecraft, whose infrared spectrometer captured the first full image of the entire hexagon. Here’s NASA’s summary of expert opinion:

“This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides,” said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We’ve never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn’s thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you’d expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is.”

The hexagon is similar to Earth’s polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.

The new images taken in thermal-infrared light show the hexagon extends much deeper down into the atmosphere than previously expected, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops. A system of clouds lies within the hexagon. The clouds appear to be whipping around the hexagon like cars on a racetrack.

“It’s amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn’s poles,” said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, University of Arizona, Tucson. “At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different.”

Clearly they need help in explaining it — and naming it. I can’t promise you that NASA or any other official agency immortalize your name on Saturn’s north pole, but if you come up with the most appealing explanation, the Lab will henceforth refer to it by your name. We’ll even consider fact-based theories, but the judges will be looking mainly for creativity.

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/...gon-of-saturn/