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Post by Mistress Rell on May 27, 2008 6:01:41 GMT -5
A potentially historic change is occurring on Jupiter. An upstart storm now rivals the gas giant's Big Red Spot as king of storms, astronomers announced last week. The Little Red Spot, as it was named upon discovery in 2006, shows both size and speed in threatening to knock the former champion off its perch, with Junior's maximum winds reaching 384 mph (172 meters per second). "In terms of maximum wind speed, the Little Red Spot as measured in 2007 and the Great Red Spot when last measured in 2000 are just about the same," said Andrew Cheng, physicist and lead study author at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Those winds far outstrip the 156 mph threshold that defines a Category 5 hurricane on Earth, and the Little Red Spot itself appears nearly as big as our whole planet. Ful Article
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