Granular materials like sand and beads can shift and flow in fluid-like ways, but they’re much harder to predict. Part of this is due to the way friction between individual Keep reading
Tag: planetary science
Understanding Jupiter
The swirling clouds of Jupiter hide a complicated and mysterious interior. For decades, scientists have worked to puzzle out the inner dynamics of Jupiter’s atmosphere and what could be going Keep reading
Namibia From Above
From above, we see an all-new perspective on the flows of air and water that shape our world. Although they look like abstract art, these aerial photographs of Namibia by Keep reading
Forming Asteroids
Amidst the swirling gas and dust surrounding young stars, asteroids and planets form. Just how these bodies come together – especially before they are massive enough to exert any significant Keep reading
Watery Veins
Glacial river veins wend and meander through these aerial photographs of Iceland by photographer Stas Bartnikas. Rivers naturally change their course over time, but here seasonal melts and the slow Keep reading
Titan’s Dust Storms
Earth and Mars are well-known for their dust storms, but a new source of extraterrestrial dust storms is joining them: Saturn’s moon Titan. Titan already shares unusual similarities to Earth: Keep reading
Zones and Stars
Large-scale rotating flows, like planetary atmospheres, tend to organize themselves into zones. Within a zone, flow remains essentially in an east-west direction and serves as a barrier that keeps heat Keep reading
Forming Europa’s Bands
Jupiter’s icy moons, Europa and Ganymede, are home to subsurface oceans. These moons also experience strong tidal forces from their parent planet and sibling moons that squeeze and deform them Keep reading
2D Turbulence
Turbulence, the chaotic regime of fluid dynamics, is a complicated beast. It’s hard to analyze or predict, but we do understand some general ideas about it, like the fact that Keep reading
Dust Envelopes Mars
Day has turned into night for NASA’s Opportunity rover as a massive dust storm envelopes Mars. The first signs of the dust storm were reported May 30th, and over the Keep reading