Finally, he built computerized movies so he could watch the patterns as the Sun rotated. The blobs move around the solar disk, like a time-lapse movie of a satellite watching clouds over the Earth. And like a satellite image, patterns that set on one side of the Sun rise 14 days later on the opposite limb. The giant cells are indeed giant, large enough to swallow the planet Jupiter. Larger cells may be found, Hathaway said, but that would start to approach the size of the Sun itself.
Giant cells are far more than an oddity.
It will be a tad more complex than that. Studying the giant cells will help scientists predict where sunspots will go next. In turn, these can directly affect satellites and power and communications systems on Earth. Confirmation of giant cells and eventual understanding of their activities will also help us understand why the sun rotates as it does, faster at the equator and slower towards the poles. Gas moving away from the equator should make polar gases move faster.