And you thought geometry was only for terrestrial engineers and architects? Apparently it’s involved in the maintenance of planets, as well. This six-sided hexagon–twice as wide as Earth–encircles Saturn’s north pole. It was first seen by the Voyager robot spacecraft in the 1980s and recently photographed (here, in infrared) by the Cassini spacecraft. There is some (disputed) thought that it is a vortex-like flow in the atmosphere of the gas giant. But its cause remains a msytery.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 