The young star cluster NGC 602 sits some 200,000 light years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Seen here in near- and mid-infrared, the cluster is a glowing cradle of Keep reading
Tag: instability
“The Ballet of Colors”
Thomas Blanchard’s short film “The Ballet of Colors” plunges viewers into a warm spectrum of roiling oil and paint. Fluid dynamically speaking, it could be subtitled “the Plateau-Rayleigh instability” thanks Keep reading
Ultra-Soft Solids Flow By Turning Inside Out
Can a solid flow? What would that even look like? Researchers explored these questions with an ultra-soft gel (think 100,000 times softer than a gummy bear) pumped through a ring-shaped Keep reading
Visualizing Unstable Flames
Inside a combustion chamber, temperature fluctuations can cause sound waves that also disrupt the flow, in turn. This is called a thermoacoustic instability. In this video, researchers explore this process Keep reading
Instabilities in Competition
When two liquid jets collide, they form a thin liquid sheet with a thicker rim. That rim breaks into threads and then droplets, forming a well-known fishbone pattern as the Keep reading
The Mystery of the Binary Droplet
What goes on inside an evaporating droplet made up of more than one fluid? This is a perennially fascinating question with lots of permutations. In this one, researchers observed water-poor Keep reading
Jets, Shocks, and a Windblown Cavity
As material collapses onto a protostar, these young stars often form stellar jets that point outward along their axis of rotation. Made up of plasma, these jets shoot into the Keep reading
The Best of FYFD 2024
Welcome to another year and another look back at FYFD’s most popular posts. (You can find previous editions, too, for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and Keep reading
Growing Flexible Stalactites
Icicles and stalactites grow little by little, each layer a testament to the object’s history. Here, researchers explore a similar phenomenon, grown from a dripping liquid. They’re called “flexicles” in Keep reading
“Alive Painting”
Artist Akiko Nakayama’s intuitive grasp of fluid dynamics is so good that she manipulates liquids live to musical accompaniment. Her dendritic paintings — made from a combination of acrylic paint Keep reading