Monday, July 20, 2009

Jupiter Got Popped in the Pole

I saw a link to this article on twitter today.

Apparently an amateur astronomer, named Anthony Wesley from Canberra, Australia, taking pictures of Jupiter last night noticed a new spot near the South pole. Apparently it is completely black and bears a resemblance to the black spots caused by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact in 1994. Apparently many people agree that it was in fact caused by an impact. Apparently there are people using great big honkin' infrared telescopes confirming that it was in fact caused by an impact.

Here is a link to Anthony Wesley's (temporary) website where he lists the details.

(Apparently slashdot ran a story about this that included a link to his website and the traffic hosed his server.)

So, apparently on the day we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first humans setting foot on a giant rock in space that is not called Earth, another giant rock in space crashed into a giant ball of gas in space.

Also, apparently by coincidence, on the same day some red haired nerd in Massachusetts set the world record for use of the word "apparently" in a blog post.

What a world... what a universe.

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