So, The Last Array was almost definitely a bunch of satellite dishes, but when ghost says "Up the hill. The building with the radar. That's the Skywatch," he may have been accurate. That may be a radar dish. We can't really tell, because they're all reflector antennae. Then he says "We're in. This was one of Skywatch's old array stations: a link to the lunar colonies." He MAY be talking about the building, which has more than that massive reflector, and may have a massive pile of radio transmitters, with a hidden reflector we just don't see for communication (remember, the big ones only come out during the story mission), or they might communicate using microwaves, informally called radar (like radar ranges/microwave ovens), as we currently do with point to point satellites, though between planets it seems unlikely. They may have invented some kind of space magic though that makes using microwaves feasible between the Earth and the moon, and they may continue to use them for legacy communication with old cell phones, wifi networks, etc.

So, using complicated techniques of denial, it could work, and I like my colloquial explanation.

However, using Occam's razor, yeah, they totally screwed up. In fact, almost everything related to astronomy in this game is completely inaccurate. Oh well! Space magic.

Either that, or Ghost doesn't know the difference. Not sure which is more disturbing, really.

We've been watching this thing since Kepler pretty much uninterrupted. While it is a mystery to us exactly why it continues, new research and computer modeling indicates it has something to do with vertical winds and gases keeping the storm stable. Initially, scientists thought it continued to gain energy by sucking up smaller vortices. This doesn't explain its current longevity, but the vertical winds keep it running in mathematical models potentially indefinitely. Because of this, many astronomers saw no reason to buy into the 2030 thing from 2014 that you're talking about.

Considering we know not what mechanism exactly keeps it going, we cannot predict anything. The idea that it will be gone by 2030 is due to extrapolation of trends found in very recent years using a straight linear regression best fit line on the data. We haven't really had very good measurements of the red spot for more than 70 years, and in its cartoonishly long lifespan, that is nothing. Right now, it's shrunken from times in living memory of many of our forumgoers. I show students every week the red spot, or bright pink spot, as I call it, and it is pretty small, much smaller than photos from around Pioneer's time...but this doesn't necessarily mean anything. See photos. Guess which is which.

This may be a normal ebb and flow of the red spot, or it might actually be leaving. We don't really know, and all the astronomers, even the ones mentioned in the press releases touting this attention grabbing headline, say they don't really know, just that it's possible.

I was under the impression information, data, and artifacts from the golden age and before were rare.

Which is why we build the Grimoire by finding them in the field, as opposed to having it built from the start.

You just blew my mind.

I was under the impression information, data, and artifacts from the golden age and before were rare.

Which is why we build the Grimoire by finding them in the field, as opposed to having it built from the start.

The Grimoire could easily have been constructed out of past data. The fact that it displays today's Red Spot could mean as little as that the Tower has access to images from today's astronomers.

I was under the impression information, data, and artifacts from the golden age and before were rare. Hence all the patrol missions to scan stuff.

Not to mention how it could have easily been an oversight on Bungie's part.

This is expected to disappear by 2030.

Source?

All scientists everywhere. Just google it.

I did research it. If the current rate of degradation we've seen in the last 20 years continues unabated, then yes, it will probably no longer be visible by 2030. However, the consensus seems to be that we don't really know what sustains the storm in the first place. Based on our current models of how storms work, this thing should have lasted all of four years total.

Scientists #1 and 2: HERESY! We can reliably extrapolate any trend line with only two points. It is science! Don't be a denier! Think of the forums! Think of the planetariums! Think of the government funding!

They then proceed to dash out the room to retrieve their grant writing pencils.