SCIENCE

Notebook

Cloud Puzzles Saturn Watchers

The handiwork of giant alien bees? A cosmic bathroom floor tile? These are among the explanations not being considered by befuddled NASA scientists wondering why Saturn has an enormous six-sided cloud formation hovering above its gaseous north pole.

The weird, hexagonal feature, 15,000 miles across and unlike anything ever spotted in space, was first photographed by the twin Voyager spacecraft more than two decades ago. But scientists really started scratching their heads when the Cassini space probe recently aimed its infrared imager at Saturn and found that the slowly rotating cloud is still there.

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometrical fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., noting the contrast with the familiar circular swirls seen on other planets and near Saturn's south pole.

NASA scientists seeking ideas need look no further than the countless Web sites devoted to conspiracy theories and paranormal phenomena, more than a few of which presume that NASA knows the answer -- and is covering it up.

"I can't wait to hear NASA explain this thing," one blogger wrote. "Isn't there some statement out there that straight lines in nature are impossible? Well, here are six."

Another hypothesized that the cloud "involves masonic black sun worship from all around the world. So whatever is happening here is possibly the energy fluctuations alien beings are toying with to influence our daily lives."

The military, at least, seems to have escaped blame this time: "Good thing it wasn't a pentagon," one contributor wrote on a conspiracy-theory-friendly Web site, "or there would be lot of freaked-out people."

-- Rick Weiss

Dust May Deter Hurricanes

The Sahara may have helped make last year's hurricane season a relatively tame one, according to a NASA study.

Several major dust storms over the African desert in June and July kicked up vast amounts of dust that then drifted westward over the Atlantic Ocean and blocked sunlight from reaching the surface, researchers found. That cooled ocean waters, which may have made it harder for hurricanes to develop.