For generations we believed the Great Red Spot was the same storm astronomers first sketched in the 1600s, our solar system’s oldest monument. A groundbreaking 2024 study suggests that monument is an imposter.

This episode takes a deep dive into the most iconic and misunderstood feature of our solar system, exploring the physics of a planet-swallowing anticyclonic storm and the evidence that the original Cassini’s spot died out entirely. It covers what NASA’s Juno mission revealed beneath the clouds and the unsolved paradoxes that still baffle planetary scientists today.

• Why the storm’s 300-mph winds and Earth-swallowing size persist for centuries without solid land to create friction
• The 2024 study suggesting today’s storm is a new entity born in an 118-year observational gap after 1713
• Juno’s 2017 flyby revealing the vortex extends 200 to 500 kilometers deep at pressures of 100 bar
• The acoustic-heating mystery where a cold storm shoots sound waves that boil the sky to 1600 Kelvin
• The shrinking, flaking spot projected to turn circular by 2040, and the debate over whether it is dying