Gargantuan storms on Saturn can wrap around the entire planet and be seen for months. New research suggests their impacts persist hundreds of years longer than experts thought.
Such terrifying"megastorms" are common on Saturn. Also called"Great White Spots," they erupt once every 20 or 30 years in the planet's northern hemisphere and rage nonstop for months. Astronomers have spotted six of these planet-wide storms whipping around on Saturn since 1876. The most recent storm struck in December 2010, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft happened to be orbiting the planet, snagging a front-row view of the megastorm's entire 200-day life span.
In other words, long after a megastorm fades from view, its impact on Saturn's weather lasts centuries. Related: Strange radio signals detected from Earth-like planet could be a magnetic field necessary for life Visible only in radio wavelengths, those remnants took the form of large ammonia gas anomalies. Saturn's uppermost cloud layer is made mainly of ammonia-ice clouds. But in their radio observations, the researchers saw regions of unexpectedly low ammonia concentrations just below this cloud layer in areas associated with past storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles below these same atmospheric regions, ammonia concentrations spiked much higher than normal.
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