GoKawiil
Tech News
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified a ten-sided cloud formation encircling Saturn's south pole, a counterpart to the long-known hexagon at the planet's north pole. The decagon, detailed in a new Science Advances study, has sides roughly 16,800 kilometers long and sits near a jet stream blowing close to 260 miles per hour, even though the shape itself drifts at less than 6 mph.
A team led by Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country has identified a giant ten-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn's south pole, mirroring the famous six-sided hexagon long observed at the planet's north pole. The feature was first glimpsed in amateur astronomer images from 2024 and confirmed through further analysis in 2025.
Randall Munroe's 2012 diagram Up Goer Five, which described the Saturn V rocket using only the thousand most common English words, spawned a wave of imitators among science communicators trying to simplify their own fields the same way. Critics, including Carl Zimmer, pushed back, arguing the trend was condescending and a distraction rather than a genuine tool for public understanding of science.