The Great Red Spot Is Dying, And We're the Last To Watch It

By Insane Curiosity

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Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is shrinking and we may be the last generation to see it alive. For more than 150 years, astronomers have measured the most famous storm in the solar system. In 1879, the Great Red Spot was roughly 24,000 miles wide, large enough to fit three Earths side by side. By the Voyager flybys in 1979, it had already lost much of its size. Today, it is barely wider than Earth, and its long oval shape has been squeezed into something closer to a circle. But the mystery is deeper than simple shrinking. The Great Red Spot has survived for centuries because Jupiter has no solid surface for the storm to crash into, and because the planet’s powerful jet streams keep winding it up like a giant atmospheric engine. Yet in recent years, the storm has started behaving strangely: huge red flakes have peeled from its edge, Hubble has detected a mysterious 90-day squeeze-and-swell rhythm, and scientists still do not fully understand what is happening. Some researchers argue the G

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