In the last two decades, the speed of the winds blowing on the planet Saturn has decreased from 1,700 km/h to a thousand km/h "only"
The strong winds blowing on the planet Saturn have weakened in the last two decades, and their speed has decreased by 42% - according to a report recently published by researchers from Spain. Saturn is known as one of the planets where the strongest winds blow: they surround the entire planet and their directions are opposite, but it turns out that their speed has been decreasing in recent years.
The Spanish researchers compared the data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope between 1996 and 2002, with the data collected by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1700s. The comparison shows that the speed of the winds blowing in the center of the star has decreased significantly and today it stands at about a thousand km/h on average, instead of XNUMX km/h on average in the XNUMXs. The speed of the winds blowing at both poles of the star remained similar to that measured in the XNUMXs.
The researchers explain the decrease in wind speed with seasonal changes or shadows around the star's rings. The current position of the planet in relation to the sun means that large parts of it are not exposed to the sun's radiation and therefore the differences in barometric pressure, which create the winds, are smaller. It is possible that NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which will arrive at Saturn next year, will confirm these explanations - or point to other reasons that might have caused the change.
