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.........THE SPOT IN Hi RES..........
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.. As I say on this page, I believe the Great Red Spot may actually have been caused by an ancient impactor forming a permanent crater that would float around in the slush. One problem with the common belief those like Sagan and the current concensus that GRS is a permanent hurricane is that observers over the years have noticed a hollow inside the general view of it with good viewing conditions. And hurricanes don't have an outside border, like the walls of a town, as you see in the pictures, but they have an eye with smoothed out swirls over time. Both the border and the nonconvex geometry are in favor of it being dug out by an impactor. Craters have structure like this and tropical storms don't.
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On this site, the author notes, "The years of observations, coupled with those from the other observatories, reveals how the storm is incredibly stable despite turbulence, upheavals and close encounters with other anticyclones that affect the edge of the storm system". Like no tropical storm known of the thousands on record, there are no permanent tropical storms on earth.
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On this Wikipedia site about the atmosphere of Jupiter, "Great Red Spot", the author comments, that "While winds around the edge of the spot peak at about 120 m/s (432 km/h), currents inside it seem stagnant, with little inflow or outflow." Though this would be obvious if the structure was like a large bowl with the walls shielding the winds inside this wouldn't be common in a storm which has an increasing pressure gradient inward to the eye.
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In the GRS storm explanation the central clockwise flow observed counter to the wider clockwise flow seen is caused by the same forces that cause hurricanes on earth, if it was caused by an ancient impact instead there might either be a thinner region at the base under the clockwise plume with the crater having been more like a large ring or cup with the base eroded away, or not having been formed by the impactor perhaps by incomplete conversion of the compounds of the impactor to make a complete crater complete with the bowl all the way down to the base. Thus the lower regions of the GRS might be much the same as the rest of Jupiter at that altitude beneath the higher atmosphere or generally more like the higher altitude winds that would be the source of the inflow of air from the outside over the walls. Because we know the general heat flow of Jupiter is more outward than in, with the first explanation, the impact basin without the base, the otherwise well insulated areas of the air of the lower altitude would flow from the foundation more than elsewhere because being a tropical storm, it would be more like a lava flow with a volcano than a tropical storm, although as you can see, to compare weather on other worlds to either is not completely simple because of much different chemistry, wind speed, and pressure. In truth this could be rather like a sort of air volcano because if it was lava it would have solidified and filled up the GRS ages ago and this seem plausable with the more dense air of Jupiter. So a better explanation may be that there is no deeper well to the interior; if we believe in the impactor and its result instead of the tropical storm explanation the forces involved to create the warmer inner plume may be mostly about air pressure. If the flow is generally right to left even if no eye is formed the spiraling flow formed by the flow of the air over the top of the wall to the right which would also slow down the air inside the crater to perhaps 300 mph from 400 reducing pressure. It takes some 100 hours for the air to traverse the spot so the forces may be so well balanced the central plume would not actually be moved off center much even if it's ultimate cause would be the general right to left flow. In this model it would be to the left to some degree depending on the general pressure of flow as it changes and with the amount of centrifugal force the general spin would make to stabilize it against the flow. The plume's heat would mostly be caused by the friction of the air moving over the wall to the right and with more stability inside the spot the heat may also seperate more from the cool where elsewhere in the air the turbulence wouln't cause this. The tropical storm explanation would seem to have much higher heat gradients of the plume if like the storms on earth, while the observed change as on this site is just three degrees. It's even possible there is mostly the cause by air friction and a thin base of the spot so more heat would rise up from the base in a hybrid crater/air volcano model. The problem would be there would be more heat than just three degrees so it would seem the base of the GRS might be a complete seal. This would allow it to be able to float and not otherwise sink and sail around in the slush as has been seen with it's motion both with and against the general flow relative to the rest of the air seen by observers in the last 150 years or so. This would allow it's theoretical density to be high for reduced erosion over geologic time.
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..Tropical storms are a way of moving heat from the tropics to higher latitudes in a bubble with much of the heat flowing by implosion, so they have a smoother flow of pressure. In all the photographs if the GRS while I've seen in 20 to 30 years there was no eye in any of the pictures, a wall or border was visible in most. Here's a more recent picture with the border in the second image on the page. The author of the site is concerned with the heat and clockwise motion of the central zone, this is not unusual like a common cyclone on Earth at high and low altitude, no eye is there to see us! This would be because the air flows over the side like a bowl with water if you try it in the faucet and most of the bubbling and lower speed swirl keeps the eye from forming. If most of the flow is from one side into the bowl and over the other side with some change of phase with height in the center, the pressure may be to the side mostly so no eye might form by this and the smaller centrifugal force. Another possible cause of the central flow is a central peak like impacts sites on the moon and mars below and not yet seen at lower altitudes inside the spot. In the image there's a North and South band of airflow around "the central walls" not an inward spiral, there is some seen in the picture but this seems to just be around the wall, and the explanation here is if the wall is like a crater wall like other craters on the moon it would be like a round wall of mountains, so there would be spiralling in and the inward flow is through these higher mountain passes and broken up into smaller spirals we see as it flows in. The airflow at the higher and lower zones could be by the limit of pressure of the walls so the air just flows around above and below not in a spiral mostly. In many pictures there is a definite v shape to the left and right and this may be because the general wind flows both to the W and E above and below the spot so the v's outward on both sides might be caused by the outflow of liquid to convert to solid by change of phase, here too there are no storms on earth that have a v on both sides. The 400 MPH airflow of Jupiter has strong forces involved; to maintain a permanent storm against all the turbulence would take a strong storm with a definite eye, hurricanes are much less common in the solar system than impact sites, and none are permanent. In the first infrared image there is a hot region around the lower edge of the GRS and this could be because the wind is flowing both against the border of the crater and with it with strong heat, and the reason the border is hot is because of friction too as the air flows above. A low altitude region around the outer sides of the Great Spot, as in this image would be caused by how it would be worn by deeper atmosphere that's unable to go over the border of the amazing ancient impactor's website on another world. The high altitude lower density clouds would make it over to the inside, while the higher density clouds would be more able to wear away the spot on the side to the small degree they can (if a solid impact basin, not a cyclone) but with reduced pressure with higher altitude. The low altitude area seen around the sides to the deeper zone would agree with the idea of a solid spot with some of its structure caused by erosion. Cyclones on Earth have no outside lower density channels, they're powered by the inflow of heat in a continuous change from higher to lower pressure so there is no wall like that seen in the image on cyclones caused by atmospheric heat flow, but a rock or island above the water line of a stream may have this. The water can't go over the top so by the laws of fluid motion the higher pressure to the sides has faster flow of the fluid and it could perhaps dig in deeper around the sides as the bed of the stream wears away. Like a crater on Mars where there is often a cometlike (three sided, crater, side, side) plume formed by the silt trailing away from the structure to the side from the wind or water though on both sides because of opposite winds above and below and more to the left because the W wind is stronger due to rotational forces of Jupiter. There are often turbulences seen around the Great Spot but since no alluvial fan to the left (downstream of the flow of the atmosphere) in the pictures is usually seen there may be a more solid mostly permanent plume below the clouds we can't see, a definite possibility. These formations would imply that there isn't a great deal of erosion of the spot over just periods of years (even though changes in the Spot over geologic time may influence the magnetic field of the sun and the Earth's weather as I say above). If it's a permanent cyclone as Sagan believes, it would move around the planet much faster because of the 400 mile per hour winds. The low erosion would be explained by the spots constituent mass being more dense and solid than the rest of the surrounding flow, this would fit in the explanation that the Red Spot is of outside origin from mass that would have impacted Jupiter like a comet, as the theory predicts;
Here's an image of the plumes (on the left side of the Spot)
http://www.solarviews.com/cap/jup/redspot.htm
The higher altitude atmospheric plumes fit in with the idea of the spot more as a hollowed out solid structure with the air flowing over and around it because the side downwind to the left would have low pressure that would form the plumes on one side more than the other like a boats propeller with low pressure. A cyclone on the other hand is stable on all sides because it's held in one more round shape by the balance of the pressure so it wouldn't have the plumes. To maintain the round shape there would in general be more balanced pressure, it seems asymmetrical with pressure continually changing more on one side than the other, not in radial gradient like a hurricane. Solid mountains on earth have plumes on one side, found less commonly in storms. In most of the images like on the link below (see "Three Color Filter Image of Jupiter and Ganymede (P-20945C)") many plumes are to the N and away from the wind to the left of the spot but none below it, this would be because the tropical bands of Jupiter spin faster and so the change in pressure with the drop in pressure would be more to the N causing more of the plumes.
Here's an image of the plumes (on the left side of the Spot)
http://www.solarviews.com/cap/jup/redspot.htm
The higher altitude atmospheric plumes fit in with the idea of the spot more as a hollowed out solid structure with the air flowing over and around it because the side downwind to the left would have low pressure that would form the plumes on one side more than the other like a boats propeller with low pressure. A cyclone on the other hand is stable on all sides because it's held in one more round shape by the balance of the pressure so it wouldn't have the plumes. To maintain the round shape there would in general be more balanced pressure, it seems asymmetrical with pressure continually changing more on one side than the other, not in radial gradient like a hurricane. Solid mountains on earth have plumes on one side, found less commonly in storms. In most of the images like on the link below (see "Three Color Filter Image of Jupiter and Ganymede (P-20945C)") many plumes are to the N and away from the wind to the left of the spot but none below it, this would be because the tropical bands of Jupiter spin faster and so the change in pressure with the drop in pressure would be more to the N causing more of the plumes.
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Why Other Features of Jupiter May Be Allowed With This Causology That The Great Red Spot May Have Been Caused By An Earth Weather Cooling Impactor
More NASA images of Jupiter...
More NASA images of Jupiter...
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