Remember, the book 2001: A Space Odyssey was about Saturn, not Jupiter

Did you see the new image of the gigantic hexagon at Saturn’s north pole yet?

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft just imaged it. The Voyager probes took pictures of this feature over 20 years ago, but not with this detail. At Saturn’s north pole, we’ve apparently encountered a remarkably regular, naturally occurring hexagon that is 15,000 miles across.

As much as we’ve learned as a species, this is the kind of thing that reminds me that we really are, at best, only technological and scientific adolescents. Astronomers talk about standing waves or maybe a sort of aurora we don’t yet understand, but the bottom line is that we just don’t know what this thing is.

Maybe it’s a massive, intergalactic hub for starships, overseen by sulfur-based intelligent life for which we have no detection capabilities. Think William of Ockham would like that? I don’t, but it’s fun to think about.

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