Truth and the Devil

There was a recent story about new images from Cassini. It showed a hexagonal shape at the north pole of Saturn. Apparently this shape was first identified in 1980 during the Voyager mission, and scientists were excited to see that it has remained.

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)