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WHY???

Avid Amoeba - 2w

Because hexagons are the bestagons.

361
halvar @lemy.lol - 2w

the only answer i'll ever need

47
RichardDegenne @lemmy.zip - 2w

SUPER BESTAGON

30
not_so_handsome_jack @sh.itjust.works - 2w

BEGIN

13
Birch @sh.itjust.works - 2w

[LOUD THUMPING TECHNOMUSIC]

7
CaptainBlagbird @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 6day

That brought back some PTSD...

And addiction, gotta play it again <3

1
MelodiousFunk @slrpnk.net - 1w

The hexagon was invented by Pappus Alexandria, centuries before the release of unrelated Belgian techno anthem Pump Up the Jam.

1
Matty_r @programming.dev - 2w

Bestagons, Roll out!

wait...

28
ThrowawayPermanente @sh.itjust.works - 2w

This picture makes squares jealous

5
hex123456 @sh.itjust.works - 2w

It’s actually a cube.

Square Pride!!

7
Matriks404 @lemmy.world - 1w

!lemmygold

3
Pearl - 2w

If only there was a Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn's_hexagon

A hypothesis developed at Oxford University is the hexagon forms where there is a steep latitudinal gradient in the speed of the atmospheric winds in Saturn's atmosphere.[22] Similar regular shapes were created in a laboratory when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different speeds at its centre and periphery. The most common shape was six sided, but shapes with three to eight sides were also produced. The shapes form in an area of turbulent flowbetween the two different rotating fluid bodies with dissimilar speeds.[22][23]A number of stable vortices of similar size form on the slower (south) side of the fluid boundary, and these interact with each other to space themselves out evenly around the perimeter. The presence of the vortices influences the boundary to move northward where each is present, and this gives rise to the polygon effect.[23] Polygons do not form at wind boundaries unless the speed differential and viscosity parameters are within certain margins and thus absent at other likely places, such as Saturn's south pole or the poles of Jupiter.

Other researchers claim that lab studies exhibit vortex streets, a series of spiraling vortices not observed in Saturn's hexagon. Simulations show a shallow, slow, localized meandering jetstream in the same direction as Saturn's prevailing clouds are able to match the observed behaviors of Saturn's hexagon with the same boundary stability.[24]

Developing barotropic instability of Saturn's North Polar hexagonal circumpolar jet (Jet) plus North Polar vortex (NPV) system produces a long-living structure akin to the observed hexagon, which is not the case of the Jet-only system, which was studied in this context in a number of papers in literature. The NPV, thus, plays a decisive dynamical role to stabilize hexagon jets. The influence of moist convection, which was recently suggested to be at the origin of Saturn's NPV system in the literature, is investigated in the framework of the barotropic rotating shallow water model and does not alter the conclusions.[25]

A 2020 mathematical study at the California Institute of Technology found that a stable geometric arrangement of the polygons can occur on any planet when a storm is surrounded by a ring of winds turning in the opposite direction to the storms itself, called an anticyclonic ring, or anticyclonic shielding.[26][27]Such shielding creates a vorticity gradient in the background of a neighbor cyclone, causing mutual rejection between the cyclones (similar to the effect of beta-drift). Although apparently shielded, the polar cyclone on Saturn cannot hold a polygonal pattern of circumpolar cyclones such as Jupiter's due to the bigger size and slower wind speed of Saturn's polar cyclone, so the side-adjacent vortices and deep barotropic instability (Cassini's wind speed measurements preclude shallower barotropic instability at least at the time of the Cassini encounter), or possibly baroclinic instabilities remain as the most viable explanations for Saturn's sustained hexagon.[28]

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DragonTypeWyvern @midwest.social - 2w

Tl;Dr

"Why is it a hexagon"

45
Pearl - 2w

Atmosphere outside hexagon spins faster than atmosphere inside hexagon

62
Saapas - 1w

But why hexagon and not a circle

4
underreacting @literature.cafe - 1w

Laws of Physics. Also aliens. (Aliens created physics).

Ps. I'd also like to know the answer.

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Pearl - 1w

Circles are hard to render. It’s why we don’t have perfect spheres. Labs can only get “close to perfect”.

3
veni_vedi_veni @lemmy.world - 1w

They would never be so obvious

4
y0kai - 2w

TIL all the Civilization maps are on Saturn

92
ashenone @lemmy.ml - 2w

Only after civilization 3

21
gnutrino @programming.dev - 2w

*civ 4.

5 was the first one with a hex grid

20
panda_abyss @lemmy.ca - 2w

Which is still my favorite for some reason

11
KiwiTB @lemmy.world - 2w

4.... But I assumed a typo

6
Hofmaimaier - 2w

That makes sense...

7
technocrit @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 1w

god playing settlers of catan here...

2
ZoteTheMighty @lemmy.zip - 2w

It's less weird when you realize it's not a hexagon, it's a sine wave in cylindrical coordinates. There are a lot of negative feedback loops such that a sine wave can turn into a standing wave. You just have to get a little lucky with a couple important things like your rossby number et voila, hexagon.

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SCmSTR @lemmy.blahaj.zone - 1w

this.ToEnglish()

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potoooooooo ✅️ - 1w

A planet with an investment chart for a pole. WHY.

14
webpack @ani.social - 1w

sine waves aren't strictly an investment thing, they are more of a general math thing and can be used to model a wide variety of stuff (in this case this graph is for investing, but for example it comes up in physics a lot)

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technocrit @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 1w

Keep going.... Sine waves are not an investment thing. They're a math thing that can be usefully applied to some things (eg. physics) or poorly applied to almost anything (eg. finance/econ).

1
hayvan @feddit.nl - 1w

Capitalism ruining everything.

13
Random Dent - 1w

Saturn's butt is made of Bitcoin, got it.

3
Deathray5 @lemmynsfw.com - 1w

Damm good bait

3
ameancow @lemmy.world - 1w

Here's a better visualization from Minute Physics how these "wave" patterns can make geometric shapes, using the fact that Earth's moon doesn't make a smooth circle around the sun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBcxuM-qXec

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potoooooooo ✅️ - 1w

That doesn't sound less weird.

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RobotToaster - 2w

That's where all the 10mm sockets end up

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Triumph - 2w

Only the six point ones.

11
naught101 @lemmy.world - 2w

Wat

Edit: oh, right, 12 point sockets

2
Saapas - 1w

I was just thinking of popping out my hex set so I can pop open Saturn

3
Icytrees @sh.itjust.works - 2w

It's bees.

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g0d0fm15ch13f - 2w

Its always bees

10
potoooooooo ✅️ - 1w

But never lupus

2
TargaryenTKE @lemmy.world - 1w

Wasn't it actually lupus one time? Or am I misremembering?

2
MajorasTerribleFate @lemmy.zip - 1w

Apparently, S04E08, "You Don't Want to Know" is the one you're thinking of, so, yes.

2
Corkyskog @sh.itjust.works - 1w

Unless it's Bees.

2
ZILtoid1991 @lemmy.world - 1w

Because hexagon is bestagon!

45
Texas_Hangover @lemmy.radio - 1w

Excelentagon.

4
NotASharkInAManSuit @lemmy.world - 2w

Because Saturn is Catan.

38
MelodiousFunk @slrpnk.net - 2w

Base game got boring, I recommend the Ringfarers expansion.

8
Bleys @lemmy.world - 2w

Somewhat topically, Terraforming Mars clears

5
MyMindIsLikeAnOcean - 2w

Things like Hexagons and the golden spiral occurring in nature are interesting - but very well-travelled.

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gedaliyah - 2w

TLDR That's what happens when circles get squished together.

35
antrosapien @lemmy.ml - 1w

Lazy rendering

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LH0ezVT @sh.itjust.works - 1w

I'd like to file a bug report, the texture wrapping is broken

4
CheeseNoodle @lemmy.world - 2w

Because storms want to be circles but any given gas giants atmosphere is basically a series of nothing but storms and when you tile circles you get a hexagonal grid due to the spaces in between them?

30
lemming741 @lemmy.world - 1w

So it's a soccer ball

3
naught101 @lemmy.world - 2w

Standing wave. Earth kind of has one in the jet stream (3 peaks and troughs though, usually), but you can't see it with visible light.

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Rhaedas - 2w

Get out of here with your real answers. 😜

I think the actual answer even with this source is, we sort of have some clues, but we have more questions too.

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InvalidName2 @lemmy.zip - 2w

It is because this is how these things do be. QED.

14
aeronmelon @lemmy.world - 2w

That’s actually the prevailing theory. A hexagonal shape is the path of least resistance for the wind patterns on Saturn. It probably really is that simple.

4
naught101 @lemmy.world - 2w

Unrelated though - that's a packing efficiency thing.

4
Dasus @lemmy.world - 2w

I don't think it's completely unrelated though. I don't claim to understand what's actually going but seems to me that whatever winds are whipping about there could create fronts that are sort of similar as pressure as what happens with honeycombs. In one it's just the cells themselves create the pressure whereas here it's the giant planetwide storms.

Idk.

As a an interplanetary stormologist. Or a geometrisist.

5
naught101 @lemmy.world - 1w

The movement (kinetic energy) is the driver with the atmospheric patterns. There's no movement in the honey comb.

1
Dasus @lemmy.world - 1w

I mean, they lay round cells, but because they layer them tightly, they get squeezed in, and form a hexagonal pattern. Possibly drying also affects it idk much about bee-engineering, apologies.

1
bestelbus22 @lemmy.world - 2w

Classic application of the "it is what it is" lemma.

0
ameancow @lemmy.world - 1w

To better understand how nature doesn't always make smooth circles out of circular patterns, this Minute Physics video does a banger job using the Earth's moon as an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBcxuM-qXec

For Saturn, you're talking about storm patterns that aggregate near the poles, but the concept is somewhat similar, which is that forces acting on objects (storms) can arrange circles into wave-like shapes.

All that said, I believe that Saturn's hexagon is still not fully understood, and still may be signs of a deeper alien death-star hiding in the clouds and we should probably like... I dunno, stock up on canned beans and toilet paper.

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BeeegScaaawyCripple - 1w

What, you want to tighten the axis with a torx?

11
LH0ezVT @sh.itjust.works - 1w

A T10^4

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Bonus - 1w

Hexagons are just nature's way of making arrays of triangles.

11
ricecake @sh.itjust.works - 1w

Based on what I recall of the explanation by the person who figured it out: spinning makes fluid near the edge spin faster than fluid near the middle. The difference in speed creates a wave. Since it's finite and moving, the wave interferes with itself and because of math, makes a hexagon. Something about how the wave pattern changes density and brings different glasses to the surface on the planets.
Then they showed an example by spinning a bucket, and it kinda fell flat because they had to explain that a bucket isn't a sphere so you have to spin it just right to get it to work, but it did work in the end.

10
LaLuzDelSol @lemmy.world - 2w

You get hexagons as well when you drill a countersink bit into plywood. Something something layers.

8
shalafi @lemmy.world - 2w

Did not know that so I looked on Google.

AI Overview That statement is incorrect. Drilling a countersink bit into plywood (or any wood) produces a smooth, conical hole, not a hexagonal one.

Followed by every article talking about why the bits make hexagons, with videos and pictures.

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LaLuzDelSol @lemmy.world - 2w

Haha I love AI! We're so close to AGI I swear bro!

Interesting, I've only had the hexagon thing happen to me in plywood, but it seems it can happen in regular wood as well.

5
naught101 @lemmy.world - 2w

Presumably to do with vibrations at a harmonic of the RPM?

2
LaLuzDelSol @lemmy.world - 1w

Yeah apparently it has to do with the bit sort of sliding in behind the holes it carves out with its blades. Doesn't happen with a regular drill bit because those don't have sticky-out parts.

1
DempstersBox @lemmy.world - 2w

Incredible.

When my drill bits are super, super dull, they make smooth triangles. Like triangular shaped holes, with no true points or flat edges. If I get crooked while laying on it and drilling (not uncommon with a dull-ass bit) two lobes will stand out more clearly than the side I'm not leaning towards.

Not hexagons, and sure as hell not cones.

Now if they're sharp, it's just a fucking hole. Circular. Like they're supposed to be

Buy me new drill bits. for science

2
Ulvain @sh.itjust.works - 2w

Because the fox made it into the henhouse.

Now all the hexagon.

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AnarchistArtificer @slrpnk.net - 2w

I feel like I just got goatsed by Saturn

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linuxgator - 2w

Isn't it obvious? Someone put a hex on it

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Shaper @lemmy.world - 2w

This was the topic of an awesome old web comic strip, I believe it was from smbc. It was a debate of two where one would simply state the existence of the hexagon, with increasing amounts of slurs. Banger.

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vala @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 2w

Those are not slurs lol

4