There Is A Storm On Another Planet That Has Raged For Centuries

It is bigger than the entire Earth, and it has been spinning for longer than we have watched it.

On one of the giant planets in our solar system there is a swirling storm so vast it could swallow our entire world with room to spare. And astonishingly, humans have been watching it churn for hundreds of years.

Unlike a hurricane here, which blows itself out in days, this monster has no coastline to slow it down and no solid ground to break it apart. On a planet made mostly of gas, a storm can just keep spinning almost indefinitely.

Astronomers have tracked it across the centuries, noticing it slowly shift in size and colour over time. It is not frozen or permanent, but it is one of the longest-running weather events humans have ever laid eyes on.

It puts our own weather into humbling perspective. We fret over a stormy weekend, while an alien tempest wider than Earth has been raging quietly through every generation that ever looked up and pointed a telescope its way.