Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm wider than Earth that has raged for centuries
This swirling crimson tempest on Jupiter has been continuously watched since the 1800s and is large enough to swallow our entire planet.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a single, gigantic storm, an anticyclone of clouds spinning in the planet’s southern hemisphere. NASA describes it as a giant storm bigger than Earth that has raged for hundreds of years, and at its current size of roughly 10,000 miles across it is comfortably wide enough to engulf our planet.
Astronomers have observed it continuously since 1878, and some suspect it is the same red spot glimpsed as far back as the 1600s, which would make it one of the longest-lived weather systems known anywhere.
A storm wide enough to swallow the Earth whole.
What keeps it churning is Jupiter itself: a fast-spinning ball of gas with no solid surface to create friction and bleed away a storm’s energy. Bands of opposing winds wall the spot in and feed it, letting it persist for timescales that dwarf any hurricane on Earth. It is not eternal, though. Telescopic measurements show the spot has been steadily shrinking, narrowing from around 25,000 miles wide in the late 1800s to less than half that today.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
