The shrinking of the red spot on Jupiter

This has been going on for some time but exactly why the shrinkage should become of concern to mainstream media at this point is possibly due to some PR over publication on the subject – go to http://phys.org/print319380202.html (among other news sources). Lots of chatter about the red spot and speculation on what might be happening – but no sign of it giving birth to anything of note (even a cosmic object). The red spot has declined from 41,000km in size to 16,000km over the last 40 years – and that is shrinkage on a big scale. Having said that why the red spot came into being in the first place is largely an unknown – or what it actually is (assumed to be a storm track of some kind) or whether it is a temporary or permanent feature of Jupiter.