FYFD

Tag: science

  • Ocean Bubbles Capture Carbon

    Ocean Bubbles Capture Carbon

    As humanity pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the ocean absorbs about a quarter of it. This exchange happens largely through bubbles created by breaking waves. When waves grow large enough to break, their crests curl over and crash down, trapping air beneath them. The turbulence of the upper ocean can push these buoyant bubbles meters under the surface, where the gases inside them dissolve into the surrounding water. This is how the ocean gets the oxygen used by marine animals, but it’s also how it gathers up carbon dioxide.

    Current climate models often approximate this process using only the wind speed, but a recent study took matters a step further by modeling wave breaking and bubble generation, too. While they found a global carbon uptake that was similar to existing models, the researchers found their breaking wave model showed more variability in where carbon gets stored. For example, more carbon got absorbed in the southern hemisphere, where oceans are consistently rougher, than in the northern hemisphere, where large landmasses shelter the oceans. (Image credit: J. Kernwein; research credit: P. Rustogi et al.; via Eos)

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  • Shining in the Sky

    Shining in the Sky

    Shades of blue, green, and purple light the Icelandic sky in this image from December 2023. Incoming solar wind particles hit oxygen and nitrogen atoms high in the atmosphere, exciting their electrons and creating this distinctive glow. We’re currently near the peak of our Sun’s 11-year solar cycle, meaning that high numbers of sunspots and outbursts will continue, likely giving us more stunning auroras like this one. (Image credit: J. Zhang; via APOD)

    An aurora in shades of blue, green, and purple.
    An aurora in shades of blue, green, and purple.

    P.S. – This post–this one right here–is FYFD’s 4000th post! When I started this blog back in 2010 as a graduate student, I never imagined that I would have so much to write about the physics of fluids. But this subject is one that just keeps on giving, so I keep on writing. Thanks for joining the fun! – Nicole

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    “Magnetic Vortex”

    The Macro room team is back with a video featuring their signature colorful cleverness. This time they’re using a magnetic stirrer to swirl up some mesmerizing flows. It’s well worth a watch. (Video and image credit: Macro Room)

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  • The Start of a Supernova

    The Start of a Supernova

    Stars about eight times more massive than our sun end their lives in supernovas, incredible explosions that rip the star apart. The earliest stages of this explosion are something we’ve never observed firsthand, until now. A new study reports observations of the supernova explosion SN 2024ggi, detected here on Earth on 10 April 2024. Only 26 hours later, researchers pointed the Very Large Telescope at it, capture data that revealed its oblong shape as the initial explosion reached the star’s surface.

    What you see above and below are not the actual supernova. They are an artist’s conception of the event, based on the researchers’ observation data. That data is enough to rule out several existing supernova models and will no doubt guide new models of star death going forward. (Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada; research credit: Y. Yang et al.; via Gizmodo)

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    Entraining Bubbles

    Every time I fill a glass at my refrigerator, I watch how the falling jet creates a cloud of bubbles. The bubbles form when the impacting water jet pulls air in with it, though, as this video shows, the exact origins can vary. Here, researchers take a closer, slowed-down look at the situation; they connect disturbances in the jet and waves at its base to the entrained bubbles that form. (Video and image credit: S. Relph and K. Kiger)

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  • Quantum Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

    Quantum Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

    The Rayleigh-Taylor instability–typically marked by mushroom-shaped plumes–occurs when a dense fluid accelerates into a less dense one. But researchers have now demonstrated the effect at quantum scales, too.

    For their experiment, the group used a Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms and made the interface between them by exciting half of the atoms into a spin-up state and half into a spin-down one. With the interface is place, they reversed the magnetic field gradient, inducing a force on the atoms equivalent to the buoyant force seen in conventional Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. As shown above, the interface first warped, then developed Rayleigh-Taylor mushrooms and eventually became turbulent. (Image and research credit: Y. Geng et al.; via Physics World)

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  • Whorls of Sea Ice

    Whorls of Sea Ice

    Fresh snow shines white on the southern end of Greenland in this satellite image, taken in late February 2025. Whorls of sea ice sit off the coast, where they trace out patterns that reflect the winds and ocean currents of the region. Arctic sea ice typically reaches its largest extent by early March before experiencing a long season of melting. Both the presence and absence of sea ice have a large effect on the Arctic regions. Sea ice helps dampen wave activity; without it, seas are higher and more dynamic, creating more aerosols that seed cloud cover in the Arctic and elsewhere. (Image credit: L. Dauphin; via NASA Earth Observatory)

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  • “500,000-km  Solar Prominence Eruption”

    “500,000-km  Solar Prominence Eruption”

    It’s difficult at times to fathom the scale and power of fluid dynamics beyond our day-to-day lives. Here, twists of the Sun‘s magnetic field propel a jet of plasma more than 500,000 kilometers out from its surface in an enormous solar prominence eruption. To give you a sense of scale for this random solar burp, that’s bigger than ten times the distance to satellites in geostationary orbit. (Image credit: P. Chou; via Colossal)

  • The Balvenie

    The Balvenie

    Photographer Ernie Button explores the stains left behind when various liquors evaporate. This one comes from a single malt scotch whisky by The Balvenie. The stain itself is made up of particles left behind when the alcohol and water in the whisky evaporate. The pattern itself depends on a careful interplay between surface tension, evaporation, pinning forces, and internal convection as the whisky puddle dries out. (Image credit: E. Button/CUPOTY; via Colossal)

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    How to Keep Water From Freezing

    When supercooled, water can remain a liquid even below its freezing point. As explained in this Minute Physics video, this happens because of a tug-of-war between effects in the water. Generally speaking, having impurities in the water or smacking the bottle will shift that battle enough for freezing to win out. But it’s possible–theoretically, at least–to create a situation where supercooled water can never freeze. (Video and image credit: Minute Physics)

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