Whoa. Bryan Appleyard has reservations about the book. That tells you how bad it has got to be. If you show your new baby to your sister, and she doesn’t scrunch up her face and say “OOOH, she’s cute widdle one!” but instead starts talking about the miracles plastic surgery can do, you know you’ve got a really ugly baby. This book is one ugly baby. It’s the baby that would inspire your sister to get her tubes tied to prevent the possibility of repeating your mistake.

Don’t buy this book. Stick your brain in a blender first. If you want a short, safe feel for what the whole thing is like, Beauregard has an article online (it opens with a quote, but only one, thank Waring), but I’ll say nothing more — I’ve read half his book, a sufficiently painful experience. Fortunately, Shelley skewers him with a sneer. Read that instead.

Shelley also uses the word “crackpottish,” not me.

I disagree. That pot ain’t cracked, it’s pulverized and powdered. It’s a smear of dust. It’s gone to the Great Kiln in the Sky. It’s a non-pot. It has ceased to hold soil. It is soil. You could point a gentleman to the spot with the pot, and he’d have to use his imagination—and even at that, the best he’d be able conjure up in his head would be a loose pile of gravel. You know the phrase, “He hasn’t got a pot to piss in”? That’s this pot. This pot is fractured, splintered, split, shattered, blown to flinders, smashed, demolished, obliterated.

So no, I’m not going to make the mistake of calling this a work of crackpottery.

Hilarious.

It’s good to be hated by the right people.”

I’m not quite sure what to make of the following quote, though if it turns out to be some sort of parody, I’ll be pleasantly surprised (though I’m not holding my breath).

This film – it is going to surprise you, one and all. It’s not what you think it is. No one has seen it yet.

His next quote from Marcus Aurelius makes me think that there is really going to be no substance to this movie at all.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Since people who believe in the special creation of humans less than 10,000 years ago are the majority in the country, you might be able to take that statement as an indictment of Intelligent Design. However, from the look of the trailer and the rest of the site, it appears more likely that the entire basis for the movie will be that evolution is the majority viewpoint (at least among scientists), there are people with a minority viewpoint who don’t have the respect of the majority, therefore the majority is wrong because they’re picking on the minority. If this is the case, don’t expect too much of an examination of the actual scientific evidence for Intelligent Design (because there isn’t any). It’ll just be whining about how science is being oppressive or ‘discriminating’ against good God-fearing Christians.

However, I was pleasantly surprised reading this post by the quality of the comments below. Not a single one is respecting the Intelligent Design position, and all are critical of Ben Stein (they all also happen to be fairly well written). Some examples:

Hmmm, er, um well… that’s not much of a response. Anyone can claim to be a rebel, to be oppressed by tyranny. Playing the victim is nothing new, even with a slick paint of coat on it.
No, we haven’t seen the film. But we can most certainly judge the rhetoric and claims already being made, and those of us quite familiar with this debate and the particular buzzwords you’ve chosen have a pretty good idea of what your portrayal will involve (and what it will conspicuously leave out).
Ben’s also words seem pretty clear: you guys want to portray methodological concerns about supernatural explanations as if they were actual bans on free inquiry, rather than boundaries of disciplines with limited scopes. You want to present this as an issue of free speech, but to do so, you are simply going to ignore and misrepresent cases like Sternberg’s, in which a lot more was going on than simply his ability to speak his mind.

Framing this as a “freedom” issue is clever, but false. No one is being oppressed or prevented from thinking anything, as Mr. Stein claims. As noted above, claiming victimhood for oneself is a standard move by these people, not to mention a time-honored Republican tradition. But when scientists criticize Intelligent Design as non-scientific, that isn’t oppression or censorship; it’s the scientific method in action. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for Mr. Stein to address the scientific facts. He’ll wrap himself in the flag and cry about being oppressed and some small subset of the public will believe him.

Watch, I know a quote, too:
“Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be
persecuted by an unkind establishment; you must also be right.”
-Robert Park

According to this post, the majority is usually wrong. The more your ideas are ridiculed, the better they must be. Everyone should try to be hated by everyone else.
Remember, it’s good to keep an open mind; but it shouldn’t be so open that your brain falls out.
There are systems in place to keep science on the right track. All untrue claims are eventually filtered out. Science has self-correction built in. Science is not closed-minded to new ideas. Intelligent design is a very very old idea that has not withstood the demands of evidence, so it has been thrown out. Yes, creationists are sometimes ridiculed, but only because science has dealt with it long ago and bringing it up again and again is like someone today trying to prove geocentrism. It should be either ignored or laughed at.
There is no such thing as “Big Science” controlling what is being studied. If a new idea works, it will pursued. It’s just that simple. If there is any merit whatsoever to a theory, it will not be simply thrown out.
At some point, the general public has to trust that science in general works, and is moving in the right direction. Suggesting that an idea is correct simply because it is criticized is absolutely ridiculous.

Check ‘em out for yourself.

It also appears that noted Science Blogger PZ Myers will also be featured in the movie. He was interviewed for a movie about the intersection of science and religion awhile back called Crossroads, however he wasn’t informed of it’s creationist point-of-view. The deception of creationists knows no ends. It’s also interesting how it appears that all of the creationists interviewed for the film were met with personally by Ben Stein, but PZ wasn’t. Hmm…

Update:
The original post has been removed, so I’ll post the entirety of it below:

Before I thank all of you movie-going readers and posters: the thoughtful, the mortal, the Supreme Beings With Bees-in-Their-Mouths apparently among us, those with intelligence as well as those with designs… it is only fitting that we invite the late, great Johnny Cash to weigh in on the merits of free speech, science and the genius that is freedom of inquiry, in the face of tyranny.

“It’s good to be hated by the right people.”
— Attributed to Johnny Cash

Indeed. We could, I’ll wager – agree that that is perhaps the only statement that all who have visited these pages today might collectively agree upon. But please – let’s have no hatreds here. Life is too long.

Thank-you all, for sharing with us. We are overwhelmed. We had no idea…

This film – it is going to surprise you, one and all. It’s not what you think it is. No one has seen it yet.
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

– Marcus Aurelius

And if we re-read Ben Stein’s words here again and again (as I have)…we may still not quite comprehend the full implications of his thoughts. But keep trying, if you misunderstood them…it’s worth it.

I do not know Mr. Stein…but I can tell you this: the man is comitted to freedom.

Let the buzz begin. Not that “Expelled’s” intentionally incendiary tone will need much help from the pastors and religious-school teachers in attendance at yesterday’s meeting. From the clips and trailers they showed, the film presents a world of–to use a quote I heard repeatedly yesterday–”the new scientific movement” (Intelligent Design, in case you weren’t sure) vs. the tired, old “theory” of evolution. Relying on news-clip montages, interviews, even cut-away shots of concentration camps, “Expelled” talks of faithful scientists and other believers losing jobs, losing grants, even losing friends in defense of ID. And, relying on footage of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other atheists du jure, it sets up a worldview of ID vs. atheism, with no gray areas in between.

And, taking it even further, it posits that, without God, there can be no source of morality, no reason not to “stab someone on the subway,” to borrow another phrase I heard a couple of times yesterday (and which explained, according to Lauer and Logan, the concentration camp scenes, since the film will explore the influence of Darwinism on Hitler). So the battle for ID to be taught on par with evolution is no more, no less than a battle for the legitimacy of morality itself.

Just a furthering of anti-science bigotry. I’m getting rather tired of people saying that I can’t be a moral person just because I reject their notion of God. Just because an atheist doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean that they don’t also experience pain, feel compassion towards others, and wish to get along with their fellow man. So not only are these people not being honest in their depiction of science or religion for that matter (equating belief in God with Intelligent Design creationism), they’re also spouting hate and bigotry. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

I’m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world’s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.
America is not America without freedom. In every turning point in our history, freedom has been the key goal we are seeking: the Mayflower coming here, the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War. Tens of millions came here from foreign oppression and made a life here. Why? For freedom. Human beings are supposed to live in a state of freedom. Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given. A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.

Freedom of inquiry is indeed important. It’s a virtue that I cherish above most others. However, freedom of inquiry has nothing to do with teaching Intelligent Design in classrooms. The point is to teach children the most accurate, supported hypothesis and theories we have so that they have the best understanding possible of the natural world. Intelligent Design is a hypothesis which is untestable and has no good evidence in its favor. Freedom of inquiry has to do with figuring out which theory is best and that’s already been done. Yelling about discrimination isn’t going to change the fact that Intelligent Design doesn’t actually do any science.

Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no brain surgery, no Internet, no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways, no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.
This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.

No real argument there, but you wouldn’t have modern medicine if you would do what Intelligent Design proponents do when they talk about biology. They assert that it’s too complex to figure out, and therefore God did it. What happens when that’s the driving philosophy behind knowledge? The Middle Ages. In a world driven by the idea that what happens to you is part of a divine plan or divine retribution, sickness was seen as God’s punishment. Why bother trying to treat something that God ordained? The advancements that have been made in modern science and medicine have been made in spite of belief in God, not because of it.

Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.
Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.

Bringing up Einstein is a dishonest tactic. Einstein was essentially an atheist. His view of what God was had nothing to do with Christianity or traditional religion. He viewed the laws of the universe as God, which has produced no end of confusion since. Let’s hear what Einstein himself had to say on the subject.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Moving on…

Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe? EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.

Bullshit. A majority of the America’s scientists believe in a God of some sort. If Stein had actually talked to any he would know that. One of the most ardent defenders of science against Intelligent Design is Kenneth Miller, a practicing Roman Catholic. And, even though I think he’s a kook, what about Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project? He’s written a book about his religious beliefs. This is a blatant lie, and one that attempts to equate belief in God with belief in Intelligent Design creationism. Two very different things.

In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened.

The best example I can think of regarding this line of reasoning is Michael Behe. Intelligent Design’s top scientist and author of such books as Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution. Behe is still a tenured professor at Lehigh University, despite advocating Intelligent Design for years.

Of course, this isn’t to say that they couldn’t or shouldn’t. If someone was going up for tenure and the majority of their research was faulty, or inaccurate, or didn’t exist (as with Intelligent Design), who thinks that they should be granted tenure?

This movie looks like it wants to equate belief in God with belief in Intelligent Design creationism. Intelligent Design make the specific claim that the diversity of life on this planet cannot be explained through natural processes and that a supernatural power (God) is needed to create it. Not only is this bad science (an argument from ignorance), it is also bad theology. What kind of God are we talking about who is incapable of creating natural laws to guide his creation and instead needs to intervene all the time to make things turn out right? Just like most fundamentalism, their God is a small god. Most importantly, they don’t really give a damn about freedom of inquiry, they care about getting their religion taught in classrooms and want to remove the entire basis of scientific knowledge (methodological materialism) from public life.

Of course, this movie will probably do quite well in Christian circles. It will probably have special screenings in churches just like the Passion of the Christ did. Of course, the irony will be lost of everyone attending. Most of all its going to provide a huge headache for scientists trying to get good science taught. I can only hope it won’t be as big as I fear it will be

The European Southern Observatory is reporting that they have found the most Earthlike planet yet orbiting another star. It has about 1.5 times the Earth’s diameter, and five times its mass. This makes it the smallest extrasolar planet yet found (two other planets have already been found orbiting that star, with 15 and 8 times Earth’s mass).

This is amazing enough! But it gets far, far better. The parent star, Gliese 581, is a red dwarf, meaning it’s smaller and cooler than the Sun. The as-yet unnamed planet orbits this star much closer than the Earth does the Sun; it stays about 11 million kilometers (6.7 million miles) from its star, while the Earth is 150 million km (93 million miles) from the Sun.

But remember, Gliese 581 is cooler than the Sun, so at this distance the planet would actually be very temperate: models show it would be between 0 and 40 Celsius! If that doesn’t grab you, then consider this:

That is warm enough for water to be a liquid.

So what we may have here is a terrestrial planet with liquid water on its surface.

I’ll sum up. Scientists have been using telescopes to find other planets for a few years now. This is a difficult job because, in addition to being rather small (compared to stars), planets don’t give off their own light. Therefore other methods are used to detect the presence of a planet: either a regular change in the luminosity of a star (when the planet passes in front of it), or a slight gravitation ebb from the pull of a smaller body on the star. Several hundred planets have been found using this method, but so far they’ve been rather massive, Jupiter-like gas giants which have a much lower probability of containing life (though their moons might).

This new planet Gliese 581c has a mass only 5 times that of Earth with a diameter of only 1.5 times Earth’s. And even though it’s sun is far older and weaker than ours, its orbit is closer, giving it the potential for having a similar surface temperature of Earth’s, and therefore the possibility of water.

You may notice all the qualifications here: maybe, possibly, may, potential; that’s because well there’s no picture of it yet. These are preliminary findings, but ones which I’m sure plenty of other scientists are anxious to verify.

However, I think the real excitement lies not in the finding of this one planet in particular, but what it means for astronomy and astrobiology in particular.

The real importance is not so much the discovery of this planet itself, but the fact that it shows that Earth-like planets are probably extremely common in the Universe.

There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone and many astronomers believe most of these stars have planets.

The fact that almost as soon as we have built a telescope capable of detecting small, earth-like worlds, one turns up right on our cosmic doorstep, shows that statistically, there are probably billions of earths out there.

As Seth Shostak says: “We’ve never found one close to being like the Earth until now. We are finding that Earth is not such an unusual puppy in the litter of planets.”

Of course, what this means for the potential for finding life, no one knows for sure. The only real ‘experiment’ we know of where life has occurred is our own planet. It’s possible (a possibility I find credible) that if the right conditions exist (such as liquid water), then life may be almost inevitable. And even if it’s not, this planet implies a frequency of Earth-like worlds that is quite astonishing, bringing the potential for life existing in our galaxy way up.

Say we’ve located approximately 230 planets so far, and one of them is Earth-like. Assume that’s a standard ratio (one that will likely improve as our detection methods improve), that could mean that 0.43% of all planets are Earth-like. Now, that might not seem like much, but with approximately 200 billion stars in the galaxy, that gives us at least tens or hundreds of millions of potentially Earth-like planets in the galaxy (some people might be critical of my fuzzy math, and for that apologize). The potential for life on other worlds is starting to look good.

Of course, we’re all interested in the possibility of advanced civilizations that we might be able to detect, but that’s most-assuredly of low probability. After life forms for the first time, it still has many obstacles to overcome. It has to not go extinct for several billion years, it has to develop sufficient complexity, it has to become intelligent, it then has to develop sufficient technologies (like radio transmission), and then it has to exist at roughly the same time our civilization does. An unlikely, though existent possibility.

Talking about alien civilizations at this point I believe is quite premature, as well as fairly anthropocentric. Humans are just one small example of life on this planet, and the discovery of any form of life on another planet, as primitive as it may be, is exciting enough to me, as is the discovery of the planet itself. What might it look like?

There is much more to learn about this planet. Getting an image of it is currently not possible: at a distance of 20 or so light years, Gliese 581 one of the closest stars in the sky, but still far too distant to separate the planet from the star. So I’m left wondering about this planet. Does it rotate once every orbit due to the gravitational interaction with its star? This is what has happened to every moon in the solar system; they spin at the same rate they go around their parent bodies, so they always show one face to their parent (which is why the Moon always has the same face toward us here on Earth). If so, how does this affect the atmosphere? Models indicate that the air should carry the warmth of the star around the planet, so the temperatures should actually be fairly moderate on both the day and night sides of such a world. But if it’s covered by an ocean, how does having one side of the planet eternally locked into daylight affect it?

Criminy, what would life be like on a tidally-locked ocean world?

Wow. One of my favorite aspects of science is taking an idea and running with it. I don’t encourage too much speculation beyond what’s known — and in this case we don’t know all that much — but it sure can be fun. Especially when what we’re starting with is so exciting.

A digression into religion is probably not necessary at this point, but the power of science to discover totally dwarfs that of religion. I am reminded of a quote by Carl Sagan:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
—Carl Sagan

First bit, Non-Newtonian fluids. These are liquids, for the most part, but with solid particles suspended in them. When rapid pressure is exerted on them they solidify somewhat. I believe it’s the same principle applied in new liquid armor technologies being developed.

The key component of liquid armor is a shear thickening fluid. STF is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic, and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard, nano-particles of silica are the other components of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties.

“During normal handling, the STF is very deformable and flows like a liquid. However, once a bullet or frag hits the vest, it transitions to a rigid material, which prevents the projectile from penetrating the Soldier’s body,” said Dr. Eric Wetzel, a mechanical engineer from the Weapons and Materials Research Directorate who heads the project team.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to post this was just to share some of the videos of the fluid in action. The liquid in these videos is basically water and corn starch mixed together. They’ve got all sorts of weird properties, especially when subject to vibrations.

The following is from a TV show, from Spain:

The following videos demonstrate what happens when you vibrate the non-newtownian fluid.

Even more videos through this link.

The implied answer is that you can’t, even though we all know photography exists, blind people can’t see the contents of a photograph. They lack the visual sense required. Similarly, only psychics have the extra sense required to perceive psychic phenomenon. Attempting to provide evidence to those who don’t have the ‘psychic sense’ is like trying to prove photography to a blind person.

However, Skeptico provides us a solution:

How do you prove photography to a blind man?
That was the question I was asked: how would you prove to a blind man, that photography exists?

I knew what he was getting at. We had been discussing psychics. He was a firm believer in psychic powers, had had psychic experiences, and regularly visited a psychic. His point was, since I had not experienced psychic powers, I would never be able to believe in what he “knew” to be true. You could never prove to a blind man that photography exists, and likewise no one would ever be able to demonstrate to me that psychic powers were real.

It took me about ten seconds to think of a way to show he was wrong. This is what I said. Give the blind man a camera, a tripod and a remote shutter release. (Ideally the camera is a Polaroid, or a digital with an instant picture facility.) Everyone leaves the room but the blind man. He takes a picture of himself, and holds up a number of fingers (1 to 5) at random. The sighted person comes back into the room, looks at the picture and says “you were holding up X fingers”. If he gets the right number, and continues to do so every time this experiment is performed, the blind man will eventually conclude that photography is real. Technically, he will conclude the hypothesis that “a camera can record a visual image”, might be true.

He will want to repeat the experiment with different rooms and different sighted people. He will want to tighten his controls to make sure no one can see through the window or the keyhole. He will want other blind friends of his to do the same experiment successfully. But essentially, he will be convinced by this method.

What’s nice about it, is that even though it uses the scientific method, it isn’t reliant on the use of the senses by the tester (the blind man). The reliance on the senses is considered a self-imposed limit of the scientific method, that science requires direct observation. Fortunately, this isn’t true, or our scientific knowledge would be much more limited than it is today. We wouldn’t be able to know anything about electrons or quarks, or black holes. We also wouldn’t be able to detect anything beyond the limited scope of our own vision or hearing, which would prevent us from knowing anything about x-rays, microwaves, or ultrasonic sound.

Science has wonderful methods for detecting things beyond our senses. So this type of criticism, as well as this analogy, goes up in smoke. But Skeptico takes this demolished analogy and turns it on the critic:

The believer went quiet. (It must be annoying when your analogy is turned against you.) But I decided to push it further. I wanted to ask him some questions.

My first question was, if you did this 1,000 times, and the sighted person got the correct number of fingers (say) 225 times out of 1,000 (where pure chance would be 200 times), would the blind man believe that this “anomaly” was proof of photography? Wouldn’t he expect nearly 1,000 correct out of 1,000? What if when the controls were tightened, the result was reduced to close to 200 correct – pure chance? What if the sighted person was found to have cheated?

It’s a powerful approach, and one, which taken full force, has a damning effect on the entire body of ‘evidence’ for psychic phenomenon.

What if the blind man had to do a drawing and hold it up in front of the camera, instead of his fingers? The sighted person had to write down what he thought the drawing was of, and then a judge got to grade the description based on the photograph of the drawing? Say the blind man drew a circle and the sighted person thought it was a tree, and the judge rated that 7 out of 10 because a tree is roughly circular? Would the blind man be convinced?

What if the blind man had to select one drawing from four “targets” and hold it up in front of the camera, instead of his fingers? The sighted person is shown the four targets and asked to rate the degree to which each matches the one in the photograph. If the sighted person assigns the highest rating to the correct target, it is scored as a “hit.” If the sighted person gets a hit, say 35% of the time (when chance would predict 25%), would the blind man be convinced? What if the person running the experiment was in the room when the photo was taken, and prompted the sighted person during the judging process – would the blind man be convinced then? What if numerous other experimental errors were noted?

What if a scientific body spent 25 years researching whether sighted people could guess how many fingers blind people were holding up in front of a camera, but concluded that there is ultimately very little, if any data that support the hypothesis that they can?

What if a conjuror offered one million dollars for any sighted person who could successfully perform the five finger test, but no one was able to do it?

Wouldn’t the blind man say to all this, “why can’t you just tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”

The guy didn’t want to answer. He conceded his analogy was about me not having had a psychic experience. But apparently the analogy didn’t apply if I turned it around to his beliefs.

And they say skeptics are closed minded.

Indeed.

It’s interesting that when people see a regular shape that there is a sense of something unnatural about it. That maybe it’s unexplainable or even supernatural. Some of the comments on the Daily Mail site are instructive:

With each exciting discovery comes mystery. Which, in my estimation proves that the universe didn’t evolve. It was created by God.
- Frank, Charleston, SC USA

Wow, a hexagon shaped object on Saturn! There is so much more to our existence than meets the eye! That is what I think.
- Elaine Abbate, Paterson, NJ

Now why this shape hints at a universe shaped by God perplexes me. It’s as if any new mystery will always remain a mystery, or that somehow, if we don’t have a current explanation then we will never have one. To me this type of thinking is reminiscent of ancient superstition. We don’t know what caused that lightning bolt, well then one of the gods is mad at us. We’ve come a long way from explaining natural events like lightning through purely natural means, there’s no reason to think that this odd shape on Saturn won’t be explained as well.

In fact, there are already some hints at a physical explanation. The Planetary Society Blog shows us an experiment by some physicists demonstrating how they have created stable polygonal shapes in rotating fluids in a laboratory.

It’s unknown at this point whether these phenomenon are related, but I expect that Saturn’s hexagon will have a fully natural explanation.

(via Bad Astronomy)