Scientists were wrong, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is not dying

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Scientists were wrong, Jupiter's Great Red Spot is not dying

In the last 10 years, but in the last five months in particular, the press has reported dire warnings that the Great Red Spot of Jupiter is dying. However, some astronomers believe, to paraphrase Mark Twain, that the reports of its death are greatly exaggerated, or at least premature.

Robert Hooke, an early British physicist who discovered cells, first described the Great Red Spot in 1665. In 1979, when two Voyager spacecraft flew close by Jupiter, images showed that the spot was a red cloud that rotated as part of a huge vortex several times larger than the Earth.

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Concerns for the Great Red Spot's "health" arose when astronomers realized that the cloud's area in 1979 was only half of its size in the 1800s, as determined from old photographic plates. Recent images showed more cloud shrinkage, leading to headlines that the spot could die within 20 years. In spring 2019, astronomers reported that it was "unraveling," and shedding large "blades" and "flakes" of red clouds.

I have been intrigued by the Great Red Spot since 1979 when I viewed the Voyager images only days after NA

dying