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The title of the original text: "the erythema on Jupiter's face" from afar, and the biggest storm in the universe if seen closely.

Jupiter is the giant of the planets in the solar system, and its diameter is 11 times the diameter of Earth. In other words, if Jupiter is used as a container, it can hold more than 1300 Earths. In addition, Jupiter is 2.5 times the mass of the other planets in the solar system combined, containing 75% hydrogen, 24% helium and 1% other elements.

Jupiter is the fourth brightest celestial body in the sky, just behind the sun, moon and Venus. Jupiter is a gaseous planet with no solid surface. It takes about 12 years to go around the sun. Therefore, in ancient China, Jupiter was called the "year star", and on this basis, the concept of the zodiac was created. And Jupiter has one of the most magnificent landscapes, and that is the biggest storm in the entire solar system: the Great Red spot.

The person who first discovered the Great Red spot was Robert Hook, a famous British physicist.

Hook was born on the Isle of Wight in England in 1635. Much like Newton, he also had a childhood full of hardships. Because of his short stature and congenital hunchback, Hook was bullied by bad children in primary school. His father died at the age of 13. In order to make ends meet, Hook had to leave his hometown and go to London as an apprentice.

Fortunately, he was so talented that he was successfully admitted to Westminster High School. It also became a turning point in his fate.

When Robert Hook was 18, Hook was admitted to Christian Church College at the University of Oxford. At the age of 20, he became an assistant to the British chemist Robert Boyle. At the age of 25, he discovered Hooke's Law.

At the age of 28, he invented a high-resolution microscope, which was the first to see the cell wall of plant cells, and was the first to put forward the concept of "cells". As a result of these contributions, Hook was chosen as an academician of the Royal Society when he was less than 30 years old, and was known as "the Leonardo da Vinci of London".

After becoming famous, Hook gradually became arrogant and began to crack down on newcomers from time to time. In 1672, he set his sights on a newcomer who had become famous. The man, seven years younger than Hook, was elected a member of the Royal Society before the age of 30 because he invented a new type of telescope. At the invitation of the Royal Society, the new academician went to London to give a lecture on optics. After the speech, Hook jumped out to smash the floor, refuting the new academician's theory as worthless.

It turned out to be the biggest mistake Hook had ever made in his life. Because the new academician he offended was the famous Newton. Two geniuses, who suffered a lot from childhood, thus began a doomed war that lasted for decades.

After the conflict, Newton returned to Cambridge and began to live in isolation. But the bad relationship between the two is not over. In 1679, Hook wrote a letter to Newton saying that he had just become secretary-general of the Royal Society and wanted to discuss academic issues with Newton. After that, the two wrote a lot of letters to and fro. In the meantime, Hook told Newton that he believed that there was gravity between any two objects, which was inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects. This is the inverse square law that we talked about before. But the problem is that Hook only puts forward such a conjecture, but he can't prove it right at all. Because if you want to prove it, you have to use calculus, which was invented by Newton and no one else can.

As mentioned earlier, in 1687, Newton published the greatest work in the history of human science, the Mathematical principles of Natural philosophy (principles for short). In this book, Newton used his calculus to prove that Kepler's three laws can be derived from the inverse square law of gravity. The publication of this book put Newton directly on the altar of science.

Just then, Hook made a foolish move: he wrote to Newton, asking him to revise the "principle" and admit that he was the discoverer of the inverse square law. This request thoroughly infuriated Newton in his heyday. He wrote back to Hook, saying that the law had long been proposed (such as Brio and Borrelli) and had nothing to do with Hook. To mock Hook, Newton wrote a particularly vicious sentence in his letter: "if I can see further, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants." The subtext is, "all my achievements have nothing to do with you hunched dwarf!"

Funnily enough, this remark, which was clearly used to scold others, turned out to be a famous saying used to show Newton's modesty.

After the publication of the principles, the war between the two men gradually lost its suspense. With the rise of Newton, Hook's position in the Royal Society was gradually marginalized. In 1703, Hook died. Later, Newton became president of the Royal Society. He took cruel revenge on Hook, who had suppressed him, shutting down Hook's laboratory, burning Hook's portrait, and erasing all traces of Hook in the Royal Society. But time finally turned the corner for Hook. It is now widely accepted that Hook was also one of the scientific giants of the 17th century.

Let's get back to the point. In 1664, Hook saw a very large spot on Jupiter. To this day, this spot has not disappeared. In other words, it has been around for at least 350 years. This spot is the famous Great Red spot.

In fact, the color of the great erythema is not fixed. Sometimes it turns crimson, sometimes it turns light red, sometimes it turns white. Then why do people call this discolored spot the Great Red spot? Actually, it's because of an art exhibition.

In 1711, the Italian painter Donato Creetti held an exhibition of paintings in the Vatican on the theme of various celestial bodies in the solar system. While drawing Jupiter, Creedy painted the big spot red. The painting received unanimous praise at the exhibition. Since then, this spot has been called the Great Red spot.

What on earth is the Great Red spot? You can think of it as a superstorm raging on Jupiter. Of course, its scale has far exceeded Earth's understanding of storms.

The largest storm on earth can hold at most one Japan, while when the Great Red spot is the largest, it can hold three whole Earths. In addition, the maximum wind speed of the Great Red spot can reach 180 meters per second. You might as well imagine. What a terrible thing it is that a storm bigger than the earth has ravaged at least 350 years with a wind speed of 180 meters per second.

There is another special thing about the Great Red spot. It is well known that storms on the earth can move freely on the surface of the earth. But the Great erythema is different. It is locked near latitude 23 degrees south and can only move in the east-west direction, not in the north-south direction. This is because the Great Red spot is sandwiched between two strong air currents moving in the east-west direction. For ease of understanding, you can think of the Great Red spot as a ball sandwiched between two conveyor belts that can only roll in the direction of the conveyor belt.

To this day, the Great Red spot is still a fog for human beings. For example, no one knows exactly how it was born, how old it is, or why it lasted so long.

But astronomical observations in recent decades have revealed a very interesting thing: the Great Red spot is getting smaller and smaller. At its largest, it was three times the diameter of the earth; now it is only 1.3 times the diameter of the earth. At the same time, a new force is emerging on Jupiter, which is called Little Red spot.

In March 2000, three small oval storms merged to form a new giant storm, Little Erythema. Over the next decade, the little erythema became larger and larger, and now its length has reached the diameter of the earth. If this momentum continues, perhaps in the near future, the Great Red spot, which has been raging for at least 350 years, will relinquish the throne of the biggest storm in the solar system.

Say a few digressions. On August 5, 2011, NASA launched the Juno satellite probe. After flying for four years and 11 months, it successfully entered the orbit around Jupiter on July 5, 2016 and began scientific research on Jupiter.

On March 8, 2018, the Juno project team published a paper in the prestigious academic journal Nature describing a spectacle unique in the entire solar system: at Jupiter's north pole, a polar cyclone is surrounded by eight cyclones, while at Jupiter's south pole, a polar cyclone is surrounded by five cyclones.

Why are there such strange landscapes in Jupiter's polar regions? So far, people can't find any clue. This shows that Jupiter's atmospheric system is far more complex than people originally expected.

Make a summary. In 1664, Hook saw a very large spot on Jupiter. In an exhibition in 1711, the Italian painter Creti painted it red; since then, people have called it the Great Red spot. The Great Red spot is a superstorm that has ravaged Jupiter with winds of 180 meters per second for at least 350 years. In addition, it is like a ball sandwiched between two conveyor belts, which has been fixed near Jupiter's latitude 23 degrees south and can only move in the east-west direction, not in the north-south direction. Astronomical observations in recent decades show that the Great Red spot is getting smaller and smaller. Its length has fallen from 3 times the diameter of the earth at its largest to 1.3 times the diameter of the earth today.

If this momentum continues, perhaps in the near future, the Great Red spot will relinquish the throne of the biggest storm in the solar system.

Author: Wang Shuang part of the source network copyright belongs to the original author editor: Zhang Runxin ★ book introduction ★

The Universe Odyssey walks the Solar system author: Wang Shuang Tsinghua University Press this is a magical journey that begins with the earth and will eventually travel around the universe, and this book is the beginning of this journey of the cosmic Odyssey. This is a brief history of the solar system, which consists of 40 articles and is presented in the form of "biography". What I want to show you is not some fragmented knowledge about the solar system, but a complete knowledge system about the solar system. With 40 topics carefully selected from hundreds of primary topics, I hope you can understand the coordinates of these major celestial bodies in the history of human civilization: what important role have they played in the history of human civilization? What are the particularly important scientific events? How to change man's view of the whole universe? What kind of connection does it have with our real life? A brief introduction to ★ authors ★

Wang Shuang, Associate Professor and doctoral Supervisor, School of Physics and Astronomy, Sun Yat-sen University. He has devoted himself to the study of cosmology for many years. At present, 35 SCI papers have been published, with a total of more than 1800 references. Popular science writer, author of the Universe Odyssey: walking in the Solar system, telling Children about the Universe and the Theory of Relativity. He has won a series of popular science awards, including "China Publishing Association's 30 good Books in 2017" and "the State Press and publication Administration recommended 100 excellent publications to teenagers across the country in 2018." Sina Weibo, a well-known science blogger with nearly 2 million followers, is a speaker at the standard meetings of Phoenix Satellite TV, Shenzhen Satellite TV and TEDx. This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Origin Reading (ID:tupydread), author: Wang Shuang, Editor: Zhang Runxin

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