木星大红斑附近的风正在加速

The Great Red Spot visible on Jupiter is a swirling anticyclonic storm, the largest of its kind in the Solar System – large enough to fit our entire planet within. Now, a new analysis has revealed the winds around the edge of the spot are mysteriously speeding up.

木星上可见的大红斑是一个旋转的反气旋风暴，是太阳系中同类风暴中最大的一个——大到足以容纳我们整个星球。现在，一项新的分析显示，该地点边缘的风正在神秘地加速。

Using data collected from the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers looked at the patterns of the storm from 2009 to 2020, measuring a wind speed increase in the outer edge of 8 percent over that time.

利用从哈勃太空望远镜收集的数据，研究人员观察了2009年至2020年的风暴模式，测量出在这段时间内，风暴外缘的风速增加了8%。

That's an increase of a little less than 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) per hour for every year that measurements were taken – not huge, but significant, and only measurable because of the high-resolution imagery that Hubble is able to capture.

在每年的测量中，这一增长率略低于每小时2.5公里(1.5英里)——不是很大，但意义重大，而且只有哈勃能够捕捉到高分辨率图像才能测量。

Outer and inner ring wind speeds. (Wong et al, Geophysical Research Letters, 2021)

外圈和内圈风速。(Wong等人，《地球物理研究快报》，2021年)

"When I initially saw the results, I asked 'Does this make sense?' No one has ever seen this before," says planetary scientist Michael Wong, from the University of California, Berkeley.

“当我最初看到结果时，我问‘这有意义吗?’以前没有人见过这种情况，”加州大学伯克利分校的行星科学家Michael Wong说。

With the colored clouds on the edges of the storm now reaching speeds of up to 640 kilometers (398 miles) per hour in a counter-clockwise direction, the next question is what's causing the acceleration – and there's no easy answer to that.

由于风暴边缘的彩云现在以逆时针方向达到了640公里(398英里)每小时的速度，下一个问题是什么导致了加速——这个问题没有简单的答案。

Some possibilities were ruled out by the study and the collected data though: neither changes in the wind shear (or angle) from the surrounding atmosphere, nor changes in temperature across different altitudes are thought to be responsible. For now, the underlying cause eludes experts.

然而，这项研究和收集的数据排除了一些可能性:无论是来自周围大气的风切变(或角度)的变化，还是不同海拔高度的温度变化，都与此无关。目前，专家尚不清楚潜在原因。

We know from previous research that the Great Red Spot is shrinking in size over time, which is another mystery to be solved: until more direct and more detailed measurements of the gigantic storm can be taken, we're going to have a lot of unanswered questions.

从之前的研究中我们知道，随着时间的推移，大红斑的大小正在缩小，这是另一个有待解决的谜团：在对这场巨大风暴进行更直接、更详细的测量之前，我们将面临许多悬而未决的问题。

Astronomers have been observing Jupiter's most recognizable feature since the 17th century, with continuous observations recorded since 1878. Across that time it's become more circular, as well as getting smaller.

自17世纪以来，天文学家一直在观测木星最易辨认的特征，自1878年以来一直有记录。随着时间的推移，它变得越来越圆，也越来越小。