Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Glacier Timelines
Over the past 150 years, Switzerland’s glaciers have retreated up the alpine slopes, eaten away by warming temperatures induced by industrialization. But such changes can be difficult for people to visualize, so artist Fabian Oefner set out to make these changes more comprehensible. These photographs — showing the Rhone and Trift glaciers — are the…
Cloud Convection on Titan
Saturn’s moon Titan is a fascinating mirror to our own planet. It’s the only other planetary body with surface-level liquid lakes and seas, but instead of water, Titan’s are made of frigid ethane and methane. Like Earth, Titan has a weather cycle that includes evaporation, condensation, and rain. And now scientists have made their first…
Crown Splash
When a falling drop hits a thin layer of water, the impact sends up a thin, crown-shaped splash. This research poster shows a numerical simulation of such a splash in the throes of various instabilities. The crown’s thick edges are undergoing a Rayleigh-Plateau instability, breaking into droplets much the way a dripping faucet does. On…
Searching for the Seiche
On 16 September 2023, seismometers around the world began ringing, registering a signal that — for 9 days — wobbled back and forth every 92 seconds. A second, similar signal appeared a month later, lasting about a week. Researchers tracked the signal’s origin to a remote fjord in East Greenland, where it appeared a glacier…
A Sprite From Orbit
A sprite, also known as a red sprite, is an upper-atmospheric electrical discharge sometimes seen from thunderstorms. Unlike lightning, sprites discharge upward from the storm toward the ionosphere. This particular one was captured by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. That’s a pretty incredible feat because sprites typically only last a millisecond or so.…
Branching Dendrites
This award-winning aerial image by photographer Stuart Chape shows a tidal creek in Lake Cakora, New South Wales, Australia. At first glance, it looks much like any river delta, with branching dendritic paths that split into smaller and smaller waterways. That’s deceptive, though, because very different forces shape this creek. Because tides move in and…
See the Solar Wind
After a solar prominence erupts, strong solar winds flow outward from the sun, carrying energetic particles that can disrupt satellites and trigger auroras if they make their way toward us. In this video, an instrument onboard the ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter captures the solar wind in the aftermath of such an eruption. The features seen here…
A Variety of Vortices
Winds parted around the Kuril Islands and left behind a string of vortices in this satellite image from April 2025. This pattern of alternating vortices is known as a von Karman vortex street. The varying directions of the vortex streets show that winds across the islands ranged from southeasterly to southerly. Notice also that the…
Capturing River Waves
Rainfall, ice jams, and dam breaks create surges of high flow that make their way down a river in a wave that stretches tens to thousands of kilometers in length. Traditionally, scientists monitor such flow waves using river gauges, which measure river height at specific locations. But gauges are few and far between on many…
Dancing Metal Droplets
Droplets of a gallium alloy are liquid at room temperature. When spiked with aluminum grains and immersed in a solution of NaOH, the droplets change shape and move in a random fashion. This video delves into the phenomenon, describing how a chemical reaction with the aluminum grains changes the local surface tension and creates Marangoni…