Saturn has this hexagon.....

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Actually, they're just trying to one up that really weird planet.

Aaaah...that'll explain why they are such saturnine arseholes.

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Of those moons for which rotation rates are known, all but Phoebe and Hyperion rotate synchronously.
The three pairs Mimas-Tethys, Enceladus-Dione and Titan-Hyperion interact gravitationally in such a way as to maintain stable relationships between their orbits: the period of Mimas' orbit is exactly half that of Tethys, they are thus said to be in a 1:2 resonance; Enceladus-Dione are also 1:2; Titan-Hyperion are in a 3:4 resonance

hmmmmm......thinkin' tides.....

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If there are only 8 particles evenly spaced at a constant radius

There are six mesons that form the hexagon. Take another look...

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This is also assuming that the 8 particles in that figure are actually coplanar in nature,

No it doesn't. It's simply an abstraction of hypercharge vs isospin. It doesn't mean that the particles actually exist in a hexagon formation.

This is a joke, right stuh?

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I think Eorl is probably right with his gravitational resonance approach.

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Quote:

There are six mesons that form the hexagon. Take another look...

Ok, I meant to say 6 not 8, but my point is the same -- there's nothing hexagonal about it without particles making a flat edge, the fact that you would like to imagine straight lines connecting the dots is irrelevant.

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This is also assuming that the 8 particles in that figure are actually coplanar in nature,

No it doesn't. It's simply an abstraction of hypercharge vs isospin. It doesn't mean that the particles actually exist in a hexagon formation.

Ok...so you are verifying my speculation.

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OK. Basically, the straight lines forming the hexagon represent the relative state of one particle in relation to the others, imagined or otherwise. The hexagon emerges in the 2d representation of the meson states because of the limited integral nature of the two quantum values. Apologies for any confusion; it wasn't meant to be a literal hexagon which you can actually see but I thought it was interesting anyway.

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Just been reading about systems theory and self-organisation when I came across another hexagonal phenomenon. The French physicist Henri Bernard noticed hexagonal formations when observing the convection currents in a shallow, circular container of water. Heating the bottom surface, when the heat differential between the top and bottom reached a certain threshold, this happened:

http://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/24_complexity/BenardConvection.gif

Warm water travels to the surface within the interior of the cells whilst cooler water moves to the bottom along the cell walls. Weird but true.

Apparently similar hexagonal formations have been observed in the Earth's atmosphere when warm air rises to the upper regions. The hexagon seems to be one of nature's favourites! Maybe Saturn's hexagon is similarly explained?

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pswfps wrote:

Just been reading about systems theory and self-organisation when I came across another hexagonal phenomenon. The French physicist Henri Bernard noticed hexagonal formations when observing the convection currents in a shallow, circular container of water. Heating the bottom surface, when the heat differential between the top and bottom reached a certain threshold, this happened:

Warm water travels to the surface within the interior of the cells whilst cooler water moves to the bottom along the cell walls. Weird but true.

Apparently similar hexagonal formations have been observed in the Earth's atmosphere when warm air rises to the upper regions. The hexagon seems to be one of nature's favourites! Maybe Saturn's hexagon is similarly explained?

I think that was suggested very early on....

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Oh, sorry must have missed that one hidden amongst the stuff about nipples and space bases. Apologies for completely useless post, please ignore.

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pswfps wrote:

Oh, sorry must have missed that one hidden amongst the stuff about nipples and space bases. Apologies for completely useless post, please ignore.

Oh my god! sarcasm from a POM no less.

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pswfps wrote:

Oh, sorry must have missed that one hidden amongst the stuff about nipples and space bases. Apologies for completely useless post, please ignore.

Blimey.

What do you do when someone says something mean to you?

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dlowan wrote:

It's a **** great space base, clearly.

All your base are belong to us.

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rosborne979 wrote:

dlowan wrote:
It's a **** great space base, clearly.

All your base are belong to us.

I don't have any base.

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Quote:

What do you do when someone says something mean to you?

Well in the old days I'd probably have them rounded up and shipped out to Australia or something. Nowadays a simple phone call to MI5 usually sorts the problem. My psychotherapist tells me I'm somewhat prone to overreact. Perhaps I'm overreacting now? I can never tell.

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pswfps wrote:

Quote:
What do you do when someone says something mean to you?

Well in the old days I'd probably have them rounded up and shipped out to Australia or something. Nowadays a simple phone call to MI5 usually sorts the problem. My psychotherapist tells me I'm somewhat prone to overreact. Perhaps I'm overreacting now? I can never tell.

We can.

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Heh, ok. What's a POM anyway? I realise it's a less than flattering reference to the English but where does the word come from? Is it short for something?

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pswfps wrote:

Heh, ok. What's a POM anyway? I realise it's a less than flattering reference to the English but where does the word come from? Is it short for something?

Nobody really knows tiddley pom.....

This is what wikipedia says:

Pommy

The term Pommy for a British person is commonly used by Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English and Afrikaans speakers, and is often shortened to Pom. The origin of this term is not confirmed and there are several persistent false etymologies, most being acronyms.

One theory is that, as the majority of early immigrants to Australia were English, it is rhyming slang for "immigrant" from a contraction of the word "pomegranate", or possibly more directly related to the appearance of the fruit, as it bears a more than passing resemblance to the typical pale complexioned Briton's skin after his or her first few days living under the hot Australian sun.

The Oxford English Dictionary has recently come out strongly in support of the word being a contraction, listing "pom" and "pommy" under its entry for "pomegranate". A supporting quotation from the Bulletin (Sydney) 14 November 1912: "The other day a Pummy Grant (assisted immigrant) was handed a bridle and told to catch a horse."[1]

A commonly-heard alternative theory is that POM is a shortened acronym of Prisoner of His/Her Majesty (POHM) or Prisoner Of Mother England (POME). As many of Australia's first settlers were convicts, sentenced to transportation, this theory holds that upon arrival in the country they would be given a uniform with POHM emblazoned on the back, and that convicts with an extended stay on Australian soil would no longer have to wear the shirt and would often refer to newer entrants into the country as "Pohmmys". Other suggestions hold that POM is a different acronym, such as "Prisoner of Mother England" or "Port of Melbourne". These etymologies are considered by some researchers to be false, as the term "pommy" was coined long before acronyms were used in common parlance. Moreover, there is no record of prisoners in Australia ever wearing such uniforms.

Another theory is that it is rhyming slang for tommy.

The use of the word "Pom" is contentious. Some British people living in Australasia find the term offensive and demeaning, others find it harmless and amusing. Attitudes to the use of the word have varied over the years, from the 1960s when slogans such as 'bash a pom a day' were heard on New Zealand radio, to today, when the word has become so entrenched that few Australians and New Zealanders see any reason to avoid using the word, some even justifying the use of the word as being "endearing". In December 2006 the Advertising Standards Board of Australia unanimously ruled that the word "Pom" was a part of the Australian vernacular and was largely used in "playful or affectionate" terms. As a consequence, the board ruled that the word did not constitute a racial slur and could be freely used in advertising. The Board was responding to a complaint filed by a community group called British People Against Racial Discrimination.

Or:

[Q] From Rosemary Wetherall: “Is pom short for Port of Melbourne (where the ships docked), Prisoners Of her Majesty, as they were convict ships, or did we all really look like a cargo of pomegranates when we caught the sun? Or is it simply rhyming slang for immigrant?”

[A] You’ve done a great job of listing many of the explanations that one comes across for the origin of this Australian term for British immigrants. You could have added a possible derivation from Prisoner of Mother England, from the common naval slang term for Portsmouth, Pompey, or from pommes de terres for potatoes, much eaten by British troops in World War One, or an abbreviation for Permit of Migration. All of them except your last two, I have to tell you, are folk etymology (which, for some reason I’ve never understood, loves to invent origins based on acronyms).

Part of the reason for all these theories growing up is that there was for decades much doubt over the true origin of the expression, with various Oxford dictionaries, for example, continuing to say that there is no firm evidence for the pomegranate theory. That origin was described by D H Lawrence in his Kangaroo of 1923: “Pommy is supposed to be short for pomegranate. Pomegranate, pronounced invariably pommygranate, is a near enough rhyme to immigrant, in a naturally rhyming country. Furthermore, immigrants are known in their first months, before their blood ‘thins down’, by their round and ruddy cheeks. So we are told”. You will note that he had to explain the pronunciation that we would now take to be the usual one: in standard English it used not to have the first “e” sounded, with pome often rhyming with home.

It is now pretty well accepted that the pomegranate theory is close to the truth, though there’s a slight twist to take note of. H J Rumsey wrote about it in 1920 in the introduction to his book The Pommies, or New Chums in Australia. He suggested that the word began life on the wharves in Melbourne as a form of rhyming slang. An immigrant was at first called a Jimmy Grant (was there perhaps a famous real person by that name around at the time?), but over time this shifted to Pommy Grant, perhaps as a reference to pomegranate, because the new chums did burn in the sun. Later pommy became a word on its own and was frequently abbreviated still further. The pomegranate theory was also given some years earlier in The Anzac Book of 1916.

Whatever your beliefs about this one, what seems to be true is that the term is not especially old, dating from the end of the nineteenth century at the earliest, certainly not so far back as convict ship days.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pom1.htm

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Wikipedia is not a very reliable source, since anyone with an internet connection can add results. The company should change it's name to Wicked Opinion, since facts are optional. Rolling Eyes

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Yet, taken with a grain of salt, it's very bloody handy !

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Superfluid on at Saturn
As this unusual atmospheric feature has finally grabbed the attention of the press another interesting mystery has cropped up. Planetary scientists and astronomers have decided that they can not accurately discern the rate of rotation of Saturn. Since no surface features were visible, a radio method was employed which resulted resulted in a technical problem because of the one of Saturn's Moons.

What does the length of a Saturnian day have do with its weather? As it turns out, some of Saturn's Helium is in the super fluid phase. And as such will actually spawn evenly spaced vortexes while undergoing rotation. This has been observed with dewers of liquid helium right here on Earth. Amazingly, this stuff does not just simply begin to swirl in a bucket as normal fluid would do, but instead it actually forms a matrix of vortexes in a hexagonal arrangement. The distance between these vortexes seems to be a function of angular velocity. Perhaps, we now have a physical way of measuring the length of a day on Saturn? - Also, maybe a wormhole will be found there...lol . That will be another post perhaps...

I invite folks to search super fluid, and rotation to to see just what a bizarre material liquid helium can be.

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Saturn has this hexagon.....

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