Slowdown on Saturn? Windy doings on the ringed planet
By Ron Cowen
The winds in Saturn’s upper atmosphere are some of the swiftest in the solar system, but recent findings suggest there’s been a dramatic slowdown. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that the band of wind circling Saturn’s equator is now traveling 270 meters per second, a 40 percent drop from the supersonic speed it had just 22 years ago.
If confirmed, the data offer the first evidence “that wind speeds in the atmospheres of the giant planets can suffer strong changes,” says Agustín Snchez-Lavega of the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Bilbao, Spain. He and his colleagues describe their findings in the June 5 Nature.