Because hexagons are the bestagons.
the only answer i’ll ever need
Bestagons, Roll out!
wait…
This picture makes squares jealous
It’s actually a cube.
Square Pride!!
SUPER BESTAGON
BEGIN
[LOUD THUMPING TECHNOMUSIC]
The hexagon was invented by Pappus Alexandria, centuries before the release of unrelated Belgian techno anthem Pump Up the Jam.
That brought back some PTSD…
And addiction, gotta play it again <3
!lemmygold
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Test apparatus from Oxford article:
Resulting hexagons observed:
This is on my phone hope the text is readable.
Tl;Dr
“Why is it a hexagon”
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But why hexagon and not a circle
Laws of Physics. Also aliens. (Aliens created physics).
Ps. I’d also like to know the answer.
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either that, or
They would never be so obvious
It’s less weird when you realize it’s not a hexagon, it’s a sine wave in cylindrical coordinates. There are a lot of negative feedback loops such that a sine wave can turn into a standing wave. You just have to get a little lucky with a couple important things like your rossby number et voila, hexagon.
this.ToEnglish()
Take this, bend it around the pole so it becomes circular.Here’s a better visualization from Minute Physics how these “wave” patterns can make geometric shapes, using the fact that Earth’s moon doesn’t make a smooth circle around the sun.
TIL all the Civilization maps are on Saturn
Only after civilization 3
*civ 4.
5 was the first one with a hex grid
Which is still my favorite for some reason
4… But I assumed a typo
That makes sense…
god playing settlers of catan here…
It’s bees.
Its always bees
Unless it’s Bees.
Removed by mod
Excelentagon.
Because Saturn is Catan.
Base game got boring, I recommend the Ringfarers expansion.
Somewhat topically, Terraforming Mars clears
That’s where all the 10mm sockets end up
Only the six point ones.
Wat
Edit: oh, right, 12 point sockets
I was just thinking of popping out my hex set so I can pop open Saturn
TLDR That’s what happens when circles get squished together.
Lazy rendering
I’d like to file a bug report, the texture wrapping is broken
Because storms want to be circles but any given gas giants atmosphere is basically a series of nothing but storms and when you tile circles you get a hexagonal grid due to the spaces in between them?
So it’s a soccer ball
Standing wave. Earth kind of has one in the jet stream (3 peaks and troughs though, usually), but you can’t see it with visible light.
Things like Hexagons and the golden spiral occurring in nature are interesting - but very well-travelled.
And I don’t mean she travels a lot. -Bender Bending Rodriguez
Aguiar, Ana C. Barbosa, et al. “A laboratory model of Saturn’s North Polar Hexagon.” Icarus 206.2 (2010): 755-763.
Get out of here with your real answers. 😜
I think the actual answer even with this source is, we sort of have some clues, but we have more questions too.
To better understand how nature doesn’t always make smooth circles out of circular patterns, this Minute Physics video does a banger job using the Earth’s moon as an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBcxuM-qXec
For Saturn, you’re talking about storm patterns that aggregate near the poles, but the concept is somewhat similar, which is that forces acting on objects (storms) can arrange circles into wave-like shapes.
All that said, I believe that Saturn’s hexagon is still not fully understood, and still may be signs of a deeper alien death-star hiding in the clouds and we should probably like… I dunno, stock up on canned beans and toilet paper.
