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  • Superfluid Heat Transfer

    Superfluid Heat Transfer

    Near absolute zero, as atoms slow down, some materials become a superfluid, a type of matter with zero viscosity. Superfluids do all kinds of strange things like generate fountains, leak from sealed containers, and form quantized vortices. Theorists also predicted that in a superfluid heat would slosh back and forth like a wave, even without any flow. They call this “second sound” and researchers have now detected it for the first time.

    In a typical experiment, we’d use an infrared camera to see how heat moves in a substance, but at the frigid temperatures of superfluids, that’s not possible. Instead, the team developed a method that measured the temperature of their atomic gas using radio frequency. When their lithium-6 fermions were at a higher temperature, they resonated with a higher radio frequency. Using radio frequency to probe the substance, they were able to observe exactly when heat stopped diffusing like in normal matter and switched to the superfluid second sound state. Since superfluids may live at the heart of neutron stars, further experiments will help us understand these exotic forms of matter. (Image credit: J. Olivares/MIT; research credit: Z. Yan et al.; via MIT News and Gizmodo)

  • Saharan Dust

    Saharan Dust

    In late January, dust from the Sahara blew westward toward the Cabo Verde archipelago before turning northward toward Europe. During winter and spring, Saharan dust tends to stay at lower altitudes, where it can be carried by the northeast trade winds. In contrast, from late spring to early fall, dust rises higher, carried westward by the Saharan Air Layer; there, the dust can help suppress both the formation and intensity of the Atlantic’s hurricanes.

    On the left side of the image scant clouds trace von Karman vortex streets behind the archipelago, marking the atmospheric disruption caused by the rocky islands. (Image credit: L. Dauphin; via NASA Earth Observatory)

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    Liquid Metal Printing

    Engineers have developed a new 3D-printing technique that uses molten aluminum to quickly manufacture large-scale parts. This Liquid Metal Printing method deposits the metal into a bed of tiny glass beads, which hold the metal in place while it cools. In minutes, they can produce furniture-sized parts, but that speed comes at a cost in resolution; the printed parts are rough, but they have the strength to withstand further machining by bending, milling, etc. The process is also well-suited for reusing scrap metal. The team hopes their method will be a useful prototyping tool as well as a possible manufacturing technique in architecture and construction. (Image and video credit: MIT News; research credit: Z. Karsan et al.)

  • Open Call for the Traveling Gallery of Fluid Motion

    Open Call for the Traveling Gallery of Fluid Motion

    This year’s Traveling Gallery of Fluid Motion will be hosted in Salt Lake City. There’s currently an open call to scientists and artists for submissions inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci. From the organizer:

    This particular exhibition aims to showcase the historical interplay between art and science, with Da Vinci serving as a guiding luminary whose multifaceted genius continues to inspire innovation and creativity.

    Artists and scientists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines are invited to submit their works, whether new creations or existing pieces, that delve into the fascinating themes of fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, and flight. The exhibition will take place at The Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah, during the Fall/Winter season of 2024.

    We welcome submissions in any medium, size, or stage of production, including, but not limited to video, photography, painting, 3D printed models, sculpture, installation, mixed media, and beyond. Although not a requirement, artists and scientists are encouraged to explore the intersections between art and science by drawing inspiration from Da Vinci’s legacy while infusing their unique perspectives and interpretations.

    Submission Deadline: April 1, 2024

    You can find out more on Instagram and apply for consideration here. (Image credit: L. Da Vinci; submitted by Azar P.)

  • Swirls Off South Australia

    Swirls Off South Australia

    Summer winds along Australia’s Bonney Coast push coastal waters offshore, triggering the upwelling of colder waters from depths below 300 meters. These cold waters from the deep are nutrient-rich, thanks to all the decomposition that happens along the ocean floor. The infusion of nutrients triggers an explosion of life, visible here in the form of a green phytoplankton bloom along the shelf break. In turn, the phytoplankton attract fish and blue whales. Even great white sharks are drawn to the cornucopia. (Image credit: W. Liang; via NASA Earth Observatory)

  • Skittering Drops

    Skittering Drops

    Drip some ethanol on a hot surface, and you’d expect it to spread into a thin layer and evaporate. But that doesn’t always happen, and a recent study looks at why.

    Ethanol is what’s known as a volatile liquid, meaning that it evaporates easily at room temperatures, well below its boiling point. When dropped on a uniformly heated surface above 45 degrees Celsius, the drop contracted into a hemisphere and then began to wander randomly across the surface. Researchers trained an infrared camera on the drop from below (above image), and found an unsteady, roiling motion inside the drop. These asymmetric flows, they concluded, drive the drop’s erratic self-propulsion. They suspect the mechanism may explain why some ink droplets wind up in the wrong place on a page during ink-jet printing. (Image and research credit: P. Kant et al.; via APS Physics)

  • Rough Surfaces

    Rough Surfaces

    In fluid dynamics, we’re often concerned with flow moving past a solid surface — air past an airplane wing, water past fish scales, oil between moving parts — and those surfaces are rarely perfectly smooth. Rough surfaces affect the flow near them, sometimes in unexpected ways. Here, researchers show a rough surface’s effect on the eddies of the atmospheric boundary layer. Put differently, this poster shows how buildings, trees, and other features influence the lowest layer of the atmosphere. From the tiny gaps between buildings to the eddies towering many times higher, the turbulence reflects roughness’s effects. (Image credit: J. Kostelecky and C. Ansorge)

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    “Perfect Sky”

    It’s all blue skies in Roman De Giuli’s short film, “Perfect Sky.” Created with paint, ink, and glitter on paper, it’s a relaxing piece of fluid art. Put on your headphones, take a deep breath, and plunge in. You’ll see lots of gorgeous Marangoni effects, some low Reynolds number mixing, and various instabilities. (Video and image credit: R. De Giuli)

  • The Unusual Auroras of Mars

    The Unusual Auroras of Mars

    Earth, Saturn, and Jupiter have auroras at their poles, generated by the interaction of their global magnetic fields with the solar wind. Mars has no global magnetic field, only remnants of one frozen into areas of its crust; yet it, too, has auroras. Mars’s auroras are rarer and discrete. They occur most often over the southern hemisphere, and researchers now think they know why.

    Four billion years ago, we think Mars had a global magnetic field, much like Earth does. But somehow the planet lost that field. The traces that remain are caught in the minerals of its crust, much like the ancient magnetic fields recorded in areas of the Earth’s sea floor. These magnetized regions of Mars’s crust, shown above as contours in pink and blue, are where the discrete auroras occur.

    Using data from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, which orbits Mars, the team discovered a pattern. They found that auroras occur most often when the magnetic lines of the incoming solar wind run antiparallel to the magnetic field lines of the crust. This suggests that the auroras happen as a result of magnetic reconnection, a process where antiparallel magnetic field lines rearrange themselves, releasing energy as a result. Reconnection events provide an opportunity for electrons from the solar wind to accelerate into Mars’s atmosphere, exciting molecules there and generating the auroras. So far we’ve only caught the auroras in UV light, but hopefully one day we’ll see them in visible light as well. (Image credit: R. Lillis et al.; research credit: C. Bowers et al. and B. Johnston et al.; via APS Physics)

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    Tracking Break-Up

    In fluid dynamics, researchers are often challenged with complicated, messy flows. With so much going on at once, it’s hard to work out a way to keep track of it all. Here, researchers are looking at the break-up of two colliding liquid jets. This setup is often used to break rocket fuel into droplets prior to combustion. This video shows off a new data analysis tool that lets researchers break the flow into different parts, track them in time, and extract data about the changes that happen along the way. (Video and image credit: E. Pruitt et al.)

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