Endless Thread - Close Encounters of the Hexagonal Kind

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Endless Thread goes to space! First, host Ben Brock Johnson goes deep on radio signals of unknown origin, with an assist from real-life radio astronomer and Reddit MVP Yvette Cendes, aka, Andromeda321. Then, producer Kalyani Saxena takes Ben down the metaphorical black hole of Saturn's hexagonal storm, a massive vortex twice the width of the Earth that's inspired internet conspiracy theories every bit as unweildy. Show notes: This storm never ends: Saturn’s north pole (Reddit) Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn (NASA) Cassini: Saturn's Perplexing Hexagon (NASA) Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. It was researched and co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Kalyani Saxena, and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus. Episode art credit of NASA. Sponsor message: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/ENDLESS Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee

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Producer Koliani Saxana, how much do you love space and can you give it to me in some sort of space metric? I love space as much as like four Jupiters. Whoa. But I am scared of space as much as 10 Neptunes. Wow. Okay.

All right. I like it. So we are here to talk about a couple of space stories today, both of which have come like signals traveling the great expanse to us via Reddit. And one thing that I like about the space communities on Reddit is that they are vast also, just like space. There's a lot of them. And they're like, just like any good subreddit, they kind of develop their own space jokes. But they're also full of nerds and experts. Yeah, the sweet spot, the space sweet spot.

Do you know the phrase, it's always the pleities? No, but it does make me think of like a Greek tragedy. And I don't know if that's accurate. Well, you know, you're not far off on the Greek, right? Because, you know, a lot of our names for particular stars and star clusters and things like that are derived from Greek, right? And the things that we, you know, when we were first observing the stars, right? In Greek mythology and things like that. So the Pleiades is a group of stars.

They're also sometimes called the Seven Sisters. And they are visible with the naked eye in the same. sky. And so one of the things that I think is kind of funny and that I watched kind of develop on Reddit a few years ago now is people kept going into the stargazing subreddit, R-slashash stargazing, and I think also the astronomy subreddit. And like with pictures that they had taken, like they'd seen it with their naked eye, they took a picture with their latest iPhone, and then they would like post it and be like, what is this? You know, just kind of like, you know, what is this thing.

I see where this is going. The answer is that it's always the Pleities. And it was this thing that was like at first, it was like kind of annoying to people. It was like, dude, it's like, please like stop posting this thing. Because again, you can just see it. You can walk out in, you know, walk outside if you're in a place with low light pollution. And you can see this star cluster. But if you're coming into a space where like everybody knows a little bit of something about

something, they're like, please, come on, come on, come on, come on. So the thing that, of course, like that happened, which I think is ultimately that always the final destination of this kind of thing, is there is now a subreddit called It's Always Pleiades. Really what I want to talk about today is just the level of nerdery and you're going to tell us a little bit about the level of conspiracy theories that connects to the various space subreddit, the galaxy, if you will, of space subredits. Yeah, the great space mysteries out there. Exactly.

And by the way, yes, I live in Western Massachusetts, which means, yes, listeners, I also know that the Pleaides is also the logo on every Subaru I sit behind as I drive around Western Mass. Okay. Recently I came across a post that piqued my interest and a comment, a top comment that I really loved. It's from phiz.org, p-h-h-s.org, which is obviously a science website. The post has, in quotes, astronomers discover long period radio transient of unknown origin. Okay. All right.

Tell me more. This is essentially a like regularly occurring radio. signal, it occurs at regular intervals, and whenever we, you know, discover this kind of thing, I think to the lay person, that can feel like, oh my God, is it aliens? Right? Right. Is someone trying to talk to us? Yeah, definitely. Is someone trying to talk to us? And of course, you know, we've sent out signals. And anyway, this is, this is where people's heads go automatically. Spoiler alert, it's not aliens. No. I mean, it's just, sorry to, I'm disappointed and reassured.

And at the same time. So, funnily enough, the top comment is from a user who is actually an astronomer. Actually, she's kind of famous on Reddit. Her name is Yvette Sendis. She's an assistant professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Oregon. She studies a bunch of stuff, like title Disruption Events. when stars, dying stars get pulled into black holes. She looks at exoplanets, all these kinds of things that, as she says, I think, go bump in the night.

But she has the top comment on this, like, oh, my God, is it aliens post? And she always starts her comments or often starts her comments with Radio Astronomer here. TLDR, still probably not aliens. She explains very clearly and concisely that there are lots of things in space that have a periodic signal. She says the most famous are pulsars, which are neutron stars that spin rapidly and have a radio beam leading us to see a radio, quote, pulse every few seconds. So, you know, she is pointing out that this latest signal that's been discovered, it has a stable pulse profile over a 36-minute period. which is definitely unusual. And while we don't know, you know, the authors of the latest paper don't know what's causing it yet,

it could be an unusual white dwarf store, the core of a dead star, like what the sun will be someday. It could be a number of things. But long story short, it is not probably, not aliens. Probably. Yeah. Well, it's good. She's a good scientist. She's caveating.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly, like any good scientist. She does say finding unusual signals that repeat in weird timescales, isn't that unusual and happens somewhat often in radio astronomy? She says her favorite example called, quote, the great galactic burper was observed to burst 10 minutes every 77 minutes and did so for several years, but hasn't been recorded since 2007. Huh. I just loved that detail, like, burping, belching stars. That just for some reason, that cracks me up. Yeah, like the concept of a star doing what happens to me after I eat a bunch of dairy is like, it's crazy. I mean, we share that. So I did call Yvette up to make absolutely sure she didn't think it was aliens and also to get a very simple description of what radio astronomy is. It's not listening to things so much.

It's really studying radio waves, and radio waves are part of the entire electromagnetic spectrum of different kinds of radiation, right? You've got visible light, you've got x-rays, you've got gamma rays, and then you've got radio waves, which are below 100 gigahertz. And radio waves are really special because they can represent these kind of different physical processes that happen in space but are not observable in the other parts of the spectrum. So one example is the environment, for instance, around a black hole. This is a place where there's not a lot of light escaping. And we can't see radio waves. But if something happens that's really big, it creates shock waves. And then that makes electrons spin in a certain way.

This is according to Yvette. And you're only really going to see that or be able to get data or information from that kind of thing. Or from around a black hole, for instance, with radio waves. Okay, that makes sense. The good, maybe bad news is that it's never aliens, and it's actually never been aliens since radio astronomy was invented. Yvette told me this, that she said the guy who invented radio astronomy,

like as soon as they started observing radio waves and radio information in this way, people were like, is it aliens? And even from Jump, the first person who invented radio astronomy, you know, said, it's not aliens. And that's been happening since it was invented over 50 years ago. Which is not that long of a span of time when you consider how long space has been around. So I don't think we should say never aliens because you never know. It's never aliens so far.

It's never aliens so far. Exactly. But shout out to Yvette and her lovely posting on Reddit. She goes on Reddit by the name Andromeda 321. So if you want to follow her or follow the work that she does on Reddit, you can find her that way. And shout out to all the nerds and space lovers on the various space subreddits who are interested in this stuff and asking questions and doing the fun stuff. Whenever we're talking about the possibility of aliens, we can dip into the weird, the weird zone.

Yes. And Kalyani, you have a story about that. It's been a kind of like a long-running theme, at least that I've seen on Reddit. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. Dean Russell here. Senior producer for WBUR podcasts. Scientist Carl Sagan once said, Finding Truth demands the rigor of science and the freedom of imagination. WBUR's New Kids podcast has both.

The Midnight Rebellion uses the science of climate change to imagine a future gone wrong. And you need to set it right. All episodes are out now. The Midnight Rebellion. Listen at WBUR.org slash midnight or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We're back. Koliani, you have yourself gone on an expedition like any brave astronaut.

And you've come back with. some information. So I did actually have to be quite brave for this story. I had to go back to geometry and learn about a very intriguing shape at Saturn's North Pole. And I'm going to send you some pictures now from NASA. Take a little look-see, if you will. Okay. So what sticks out to you from this picture? What's notable about the shape? Okay, well, I'm sort of cheating because I asked you to look into this and I know I know what from which you speak and it is

of course a hexagon and I know that because the only math I was ever good at was geometry so it was a hexagon. Yeah so that shape that you're seeing it looks a lot like a storm. It's right at the top of the planet and NASA has described this hexagon as

a hurricane like vortex. And to be clear here from what I understand it's not quite like our hurricane which rely on water and heat. So for the purposes of this conversation, it's safest to call the hexagon a vortex. And it's huge, by the way.

Twice the width of Earth and the eye itself is about 50 times larger than a typical hurricane on this planet. So like you're saying like you're saying just like lock the windows or whatever? Lock the windows. You got to get some like real industrial strength locks. Kill the bathtub? Yep. Because there's some crazy winds going on here.

Like, the hex has wind speeds double that of Earth's strongest cyclones. So I don't know if your windows are going to do the job. Yeah. So you're saying the candles and the playing cards that I have set aside and the snacks is not going to protect me. They're going to be vanquished by the winds of Saturn's hexagon. And we've actually known about this hexagon for a pretty long time. I mean, at least like a long time in human years. Saturn's hexagon was first spotted by both of the Voyager spacecrafts in the early 1980s.

We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. When the Voyager spacecrafts flew by Saturn, they couldn't get a great picture of the hexagon, but it did sort of capture our first encounter with the Saturn, if you will. Close encounters of the hex kind. Exactly. So it's pretty odd, actually, because normally when you think of a vortex, like a cyclone, a hurricane, you're thinking of a circular curved shape, a little curvy storm. You don't usually see straight lines or a hexagon, and that's got people online tingling with curiosity. I mean, who doesn't love a space mystery? And I want to flag one Reddit comment that really speaks to that, which is someone who wrote, Why is it a hexagon in the first place? I'm fine with it.

I'm not judging it. I respect it. But I'm curious. Spoken like a true Reddit commenter who's absolutely terrified of being piled on. You don't know. But it's actually a source of a lot of mystery. People online are really interested in where this came from. And it's sparking a little bit of conspiracy.

I would say there's like two. camps with the conspiracy. There's people who are having fun. And I want to talk about those people first, because we've got to have a little fun before we have a little... Not fun? Not fun. Yes. Before we have some bad times. Here's some comments from a Reddit post that really made me laugh. One of them says astronomers need to look out for the giant Allen wrench that was used to assemble our solar system. Someone else has said, it's most likely bees, right? Which, I actually think makes the most amount of sense because if you look at honeycombs, they're kind of like hexagonical, right? All right, pause. It's Kalyani from after we recorded this episode with a note to my past self. Past Kalyani, the word you are looking for here is hexagonal.

I know that sounds like a pompous British aristocrat, but it is right. I did a lot of reading of that word before recording, but I did a lot of reading of that word before recording, but not a lot of saying it out loud. So you will hear this pronunciation a few more times in this episode. Trust me, I know. Hexagonal. Okay, back to the past. Yeah, that's right.

It does vaguely resemble a beehive. So anyways, aside from the jokes and fun that people are having with the hexagon, there's also a contingent of people who take this pretty seriously. Oh, boy. Yeah. We're going to need a few deep breaths before we get into some of this. There's some pretty detailed conspiracy theories. In my research, the main one that came up was a sect of people who believe in something called Saturn's Black Cube.

Have you ever heard of that? You know, I feel like I've been just very slightly down this rabbit hole and then immediately forgot everything that I ever learned, maybe for the best. but my oxygen is flowing through my space suit. It's okay. I'll be okay. Let's go. So let me do a little of explaining on what this is. I need to issue a caveat here, which is that, like, I don't have a mind for conspiracy.

I'm not very good at it. So I found sort of breadcrumbs is how I would describe my journey down this conspiracy rabbit hole. And it started with a post on Reddit from about seven years ago. that was called Saturn and Saturn Black Cube symbolism. It was super, super long. I have to be real. I skimmed a lot of it. But here's the section that I found interesting,

and I'm going to read a little bit from it. The Saturn Black Cube is derived from the shape one can superimpose upon an image of the hexagonal storm that rages continuously on Saturn's North Pole. Theorists submit that pretty much anything cube-shaped in mainstream society is a secret devotion to Saturn. And then they give a few examples here. The Black Cube at Mecca, the Jewish to fill in various images in pop culture and advertising.

Additionally, they believe that Saturn is satanic, an alien slash reptilian, and represents Illuminati and NWO-esque machinations at play. Is it machinations? How do you say that word? I don't know. It's kind of like a uranus, Uranus, situation, to be honest. Exactly. I don't know what NWO is, but I'm sure it's a layer of something. It's, I'll tell you what, it's a new world order. Oh, okay.

And I believe it refers to conspiracy theorists who think that like the globalists, the globalists are trying to take over. Okay, we're going to get there. From there, I started looking a little further, and then I found my way to a subreddit called R-Saturn-Cube. how it describes itself on Reddit. The first line is, light has no fellowship with darkness. We are committed to exposing the global occult agenda. All related aspects are covered such as God, the concealed primeval cube, alien entities, the day of the storm, the time matrix, agendas of ancient and modern secret fraternal orders, and secret messages contained within an ancient art and modern media.

Yeah. The The Saturn Cube, we're not even at the kicker yet. The Saturn Storm Cube theory is the theory that a secret cult in devotion to Saturnian power controls the world governments, religions, banks, societies, etc. If only all these theorists had gone through the part of sixth grade where you had, where like the part of school was like basically like, what you need to do is like the first sentence of the paragraph. has to actually then be explained by the rest of the paragraph. These people are like the kitchen sink energy of these people is completely out of control. Guys, get an editor. Come on.

Get an editor. Get a focus group. So the subreddit was founded in 2021. But as far as I can tell, there's still new folks that are finding their way to this conspiracy. see. Here's one post that I found from three days ago. The title says, starting to see the cube everywhere, looking for real sources. The person says, hi, everyone. I've been diving into the Saturn Storm Cube theory lately, and honestly, it's blowing my mind. Once you start noticing the cube symbolism in media and religion, it's literally impossible to unsee it. I'm still pretty young

and new to all of this, so I'm trying to piece together the history of the Saturnian cabal. And the time matrix. Does anyone have a good starting point or books that really break down how this relates to world governments and secret societies? I really want to understand the bigger picture of the concealed primeval cube without getting lost in too much noise. Thanks for any help. Oh boy. To me, there's a couple of things that are mentionable here. Number one, like when I hear lizard people in cabal, obviously, like alarm bells go off for me because of,

the nature of some of these conspiracy theories. But also, like, I'm down with, like, a certain level of mysticism. Like, if you want to tell me about, like, ancient civilizations and the possibility of aliens, like, I'll get down with you and watch some ancient aliens or whatever. But, like, I'm not going to take that stuff seriously without actual, like, scientific evidence. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. People really start to lose it when they start to just, like,

like lean into symbolism so hard that it just becomes this like extremely chaotic energy. And also they just like lean hard always in the same direction, which is there's the secret guys who are going to get there controlling everything. You know, and it's just I don't buy it. Humanity's too messy for that. Yeah. And I'm glad that you flag that because that's like kind of the main thing that I really wanted to talk about, which is that this Saturn's Black Cube conspiracy theory is treading. really familiar conspiracy theory ground.

Like there's some very clear anti-Semitic dog whistles tropes there, the use of the word cabal, the idea that there's a secret group of people controlling banks in society. Like those are really dangerous and harmful tropes that have been used to demonize Jewish people through, you know, through history. Yeah. I think it's pretty important that we say that and we point that out. And I also think that like you commented on this earlier, but this is like a Mishman. of a ton of different conspiracy theories.

We've got a little bit of the Illuminati, a little bit of aliens. Like there's just like a real kitchen sink. It's real kitchen sink vibes, man. Yeah, like a big stew. Yeah, it's a veritable all you can eat buffet of ideas. Yeah. For me, it was so odd to go from, oh, this is a cool feature on Saturn to, oh, my God, we're at harmful conspiracy theories.

in like three to five clicks. You know, it didn't take me long to get there. And that was stunning. Yeah. And it's, you know, on this subreddit, I was looking through the rules and the community guidelines. And one of the guidelines says certain posts directly calling out a certain group are removed to safeguard the sub from removal.

And then they go into depth saying because Reddit.com administrators enforced one of their sitewide rules on a Saturn Storm Cube. discussion. Post specifically calling out a certain group are now removed on Saturn Storm Cube to protect all of its priceless resources. If you have found this sub, there shouldn't be a need to explain which group you can't criticize. Use your best judgment. Wow. So they're like walking right up to the line of hate speech, but not crossing, not putting a toe over the line because they know they'll get bonked by the Reddit admins. There is also like a level, when you get into this kind of subreddit,

there is, we should also like acknowledge a level of shit posting and like silliness that happens where it's like there are people just trying to be edge lords and trying to like, you know, trying to sort of, you know, post jokes and stuff like that. But it's still like often kind of like teeters into this zone where it's like, ah, you're just being a jerk, man. So conspiracies aside, I actually do want to talk briefly about some of the actual science going on here.

Scientists are pretty interested and intrigued by it, too. It actually took NASA until 2006 to get a really good picture of the hexagon, which shout out to the Cassini Space Probe, which got us those pictures. Nice. atmosphere on purpose in 2017. RAP Cassini Space Prope, you did your big one. RIPCasini. Scientists were really taken aback when they got these visuals. In a 2007 statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Kevin Baines, who was an atmospheric

expert and a member of the Cassini team, said, we've never seen anything like this on any other planet. But experts do have some explanations that are based in science, that they've covered. up with in the years since we've gotten these pictures. I want to start with a clip of a 2014 New York Times video, which features former Cosmic Affairs correspondent Dennis Overby. The hexagon is a narrow jet stream that circles the North Pole. Researchers think that friction with the slower clouds on either side of it creates eddies, mini storms that push the jet stream into a wave-like shape as it goes around. By spinning columns of water at different speed,

scientists have been able to reproduce the six-sided pattern in the lab. So that's kind of a basic explainer. I'm liking it. I like the prayer bells as well. That's nice. Yeah. And there's one other piece of information to consider here, which I got from NASA, and I'm going to do my best to explain, which is that we talked a little bit earlier how unusual it is on Earth to see a hexagonal cyclone, a hurricane. You just, you wouldn't see that. And what NASA says is that Saturn's conditions are simply different than Earth, which makes sense. They're different planets. So Earth is not a uniform planet. It has water, land, ice, snow.

All of those different things cool and heat at different rates. Earth also has mountains which go up into the sky and disturb the atmospheric flow. So that's like things that Earth has that Saturn does not. So essentially, Saturn has like less things in. its atmosphere that would disrupt the formation of that kind of hexagonal shape is another explanation that NASA put forward at one point. I mean, also way more likely than Satanist lizard people or whatever it is. Like I just, all of these things, and they're amazing in and of themselves.

Like these different theories from actual scientists are really cool. It's really cool to think about this different surfaces of planet. and how that would contribute to the way that weather moves on a planet. That's fascinating to me. I also just think, like, the only reason that we know there is even a difference between a cube or a square and a hexagon is, like, that stuff surrounds us in nature. So I find it weird that we, like, would see a simple shape that, like, already exists in nature around us, which is even the reason that we have a name for a shape. like hexagon and then we like and we're like oh no no man on saturn it's weird it's weird on saturn it doesn't make sense on saturn it's weird and like that's what good science is uh i think in a

lot of ways is like exploring these things that that capture our attention but pretending that it's like some sort of mystical magical thing like i just i just don't get it man There are still two small little mysteries here for scientists to figure out, which is that they're not quite sure why Saturn has a hexagonal jet stream only in the north and not in the south. And they also, and this is kind of the kicker, they don't know why this hexagon has been going on for so long. Like after all these decades, it was first spotted in the 1980s.

And this storm, if it is a storm or a vortex, has been holding the same shape for decades. That's pretty, that's pretty striking. But they don't know why yet. But I'm sure we'll figure it out at some point, maybe. Yeah, as soon as we find that hex wrench, we'll know the answer. As soon as we find that a hex wrench or a little cassini that we can send out there. We need another couple of little casinos. We need a little more cassini in this, in the solar system.

Well, I promise that I was going to play you a little bit more audio just for some fun, which is that before Cassini was plunged into Saturn's atmosphere, it actually did gather radio emissions from the planet, which NASA converted into sound. You know what? It sounds like a hexagon. It's a real hexagon sound. Yes. I mean, it gives me a little shiver of my spine. It sounds like what space should be. sound like. And it also triggers a little bit of that like primal fear about like, oh, we are so small

and such a big vacuum. Agreed. It's a lovely sound. It's a wild sound. So Kalyani, before we go, I want to return briefly to our friend from the top, Yvette Sendis, the radio astronomer, also known as U-Slasandromeda 321, on credit. Believe it or not, she has commented on some of the most popular posts and a recent post about Saturn's North Pole. Wow, full circle. Tell me more. Full, full hexagon. Full hexagon. So she did recently comment just, just days ago, and she started her comment. Can you guess how she started her comment? I'm a radio astronomer, Life Radio Astronomer.

Astronomer here. Oh, there we go. Short, concise. She says, this makes it sound more mysterious than it really is in talking about the fact that we can't explain why this storm is hexagonal. She says, it has something to do with turbulent flow in the gas giant atmosphere, of which there are a lot for all gas giants. And there are multiple detailed simulations and experiments that can give you.

a hexagon shape at the end of it, but we have no good way of distinguishing between them to find the correct one at this time. Source, I teach a solar system class sometimes. Ooh, well, that's basically what we unpacked a little earlier. And I love that like, yeah. Anytime there's a question about gas, like space gas, she's on the scene. She's got the answers. She's on the scene, man. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. Stories for today's episode were brought, researched, and co-hosted by me and Ben Brock Johnson. This episode was reported by Kalyani Saxena and me.

It was produced by Grace Tatter. It was edited by Meg Kramer, Mix and Sound Design by our production manager and ancient alien Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is Amory Sieverdson, Dean Russell, Chiosna Bernadou, Emily Jankowski, and our managing producer Samata Joshi. Endless Thread is a podcast about the blurred lines between online communities and the great galactic burper. Have an online space mystery, untold history, or other wild story from the internet. Email us at Endless Threat at WBUR.org.