Nothing showcases the incredible power of our atmosphere like storms, and no one does stormchase photography like Mike Olbinski. In this vignette, he shows a stunning line of supercells caught near sunset on July 17, 2022. The high shear–combined with the setting sun–put on an incredible show. Dust blown up in a haboob, microbursts and downpours in the distance, and lots of churning, roiling turbulence. (Video and image credit: M. Olbinski)
Artist Thomas Blanchard likes to create wild visuals from a mixture of mundane ingredients like ink, soap, oils, and ferrofluids. In this latest video, he’s mixed chemical reactions and physical phenomena into something reminiscent of a god’s eye staring across time and space, creation and destruction. (Video and image credit: T. Blanchard)
We’re terribly spoiled these days when it comes to footage of lava and volcanic eruptions. Back when I started FYFD, I could find very few decent photos of lava flows to illustrate posts. And now, thanks to drone cameras, we have a glut of absolutely gorgeous footage of flowing lava. This particular example comes from photographer Jan Erik Waider, who specializes in the ice, fire, and flows of northern landscapes.
Waider’s lens offers us a detailed, almost abstract view of these rivers of lava. I especially enjoy his shots looking directly down on lava. Watching the cooled rock rafting along on the lava is like seeing a fiery version of sea ice floes. (Video and image credit: J. Waider; via Laughing Squid)
Seaweed sways in the surf in this photograph by Billy Arthur. I always love how waves look like a stormy sky when viewed from below. This image is extra neat because of the contrast with the sunbeams shining through the still surface on the right side of the image. Sun and storm on the verge of colliding. (Image credit: B. Arthur/BWPA; via Colossal)
Photographer Lisa K. Kuhn captured a spectacular lenticular cloud over Mount Shasta in this image from the Sony World Photography Awards. These lens-shaped clouds occur most often near mountains and other terrain that forces air to flow up and over it. As the air cools, water condenses out, forming the cloud. When the air flows down and warms, condensation is no longer possible. The end result is a cloud that appears stationary against the mountain, even though air is continuously moving past. Add in the long sun angles and beautiful colors of near-sunset and the results are incredible. (Image credit: L. Kuhn; via Colossal)
A tiger skin cake forms a distinctive pattern of light and dark patches as it bakes. Its current popularity seems to have expanded outward from China; I found a lot of Swiss-roll-style recipes that use it as an outer wrapper. Here, researchers look at how the wrinkled surface forms. The viscous batter quickly forms a solid skin on its surface, and, as the cake grows, the skin is forced to bend and wrinkle to accommodate the growth. Interestingly, the length-scale of the wrinkling pattern depends on the batter’s depth. For larger stripes, use a thicker layer of batter! (Image credit: K. Koutova et al.)
Looking down on a Icelandic geothermal pool gives a view into a dragon’s eye in this drone image by photographer Miki Spitzer. It won the Gold distinction in the World Nature Photography Awards’ “Planet Earth’s landscapes and environments” category. I particularly like how the mineral-rich stains left by evaporating water highlight the texture of the ground nearby, giving the impression of the dragon’s scales. (Image credit: M. Spitzer/WNPA; via Colossal)
Wet fur forms a spiral of spiky hairs in this image by photographer Ben Dalgleish. For thin and flexible fibers like hair, a little moisture lets them clump together, forming stiffer (but still flexible) shapes. The technical term for this water-meets-flexible-solid phenomenon is elastocapillarity, and it lets you do things like wind a wire with a bubble. It also makes a big difference when washing hair, including in space. (Image credit: B. Dalgleish/BWPA; via Colossal)
Fabrics flutter in seemingly impossible ways in artist Thomas Jackson‘s images. But despite first appearances, each photograph is true to life; the fabrics are suspended on taut lines. Their dance is driven by wind energy, drag, tension, and flow–not manipulated pixels. I love the (turbulent) energy of them! (Image credit: T. Jackson; via Colossal)
Flow visualization is both an art and science in fluid dynamics. Here, researchers were interested in studying the separation bubble that forms over a backward-facing ramp–a shape that shows up, for example, on an aircraft. In these areas, the flow over the surface separates, leaving an unsteady, recirculating bubble.
That’s the flow that researchers are visualizing here. They’ve done so by adding tiny helium-filled soap bubbles to the flow. With bright lights illuminating the bubbles, each one leaves a streak in a photograph, showing where the bubble moved during the time the camera’s shutter was open. Although images like these are beautiful, they can also be analyzed by computers to extract the underlying flow that created the image. (Image and research credit: B. Steinfurth et al.; see also here)
