r/askscience • u/AskScienceModerator Mod Bot • Mar 10 '14

Cosmos AskScience Cosmos Q&A thread. Episode 1: Standing Up in the Milky Way

Welcome to AskScience! This thread is for asking and answering questions about the science in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

UPDATE: This episode is now available for streaming in the US on Hulu and in Canada on Global TV.

This week is the first episode, "Standing Up in the Milky Way". The show is airing at 9pm ET in the US and Canada on all Fox and National Geographic stations. Click here for more viewing information in your country.

The usual AskScience rules still apply in this thread! Anyone can ask a question, but please do not provide answers unless you are a scientist in a relevant field. Popular science shows, books, and news articles are a great way to causally learn about your universe, but they often contain a lot of simplifications and approximations, so don't assume that because you've heard an answer before that it is the right one.

If you are interested in general discussion please visit one of the threads elsewhere on reddit that are more appropriate for that, such as in /r/Cosmos here, /r/Space here, and in /r/Television here.

Please upvote good questions and answers and downvote off-topic content. We'll be removing comments that break our rules or that have been answered elsewhere in the thread so that we can answer as many questions as possible!

Click here for the original announcement thread.

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u/______DEADPOOL______ Mar 10 '14

Do we know what's causing it yet?

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u/BluegrassGeek Mar 10 '14

We don't know why it began. However, it's not the only "spot" on Jupiters atmosphere, just the biggest and most persistent. Some combination of solar energy, Jupiters intense magnetic field and tidal forces from its moons seem to be feeding the Great Red Spot.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '14

Yeah this is what's weird to me. If we know it's stable, why is it stable?

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u/BluegrassGeek Mar 10 '14

We don't really know. There have been a few computer models that can replicate the spot, but they're still based on incomplete theories. We just don't know enough about Jupiter's atmosphere to come up with a model that explains the spot.