Massive black holes drag and warp the spacetime around them in extreme ways. Observing these effects firsthand is practically impossible, so physicists look for laboratory-sized analogs that behave similarly. Fluids Keep reading
Tag: vortices
Supernova Rings
Some 20,000 years ago, a massive star blew off a ring of dust and gas that expanded into the surrounding interstellar medium. Later, in 1987, the star exploded as supernova Keep reading
Tornadoes in a Bucket
In nature, some powerful tornadoes form additional tornadoes within their shear layer. These subvortices revolve around the main tornado, causing massive destruction in their wake. In the laboratory, researchers create Keep reading
Inside a Soap Bubble
Every child learns to blow soap bubbles, but it’s rare that we have a chance to look inside them and see the flow there. In this poster, researchers seed a Keep reading
Exoplanet Heating
WASP-96B is a tidally-locked exoplanet between the size of Saturn and Jupiter. This hot, massive planet lies close to its star, orbiting in less than three-and-a-half Earth days. A recent Keep reading
Walking in the Wake of a Cylinder
A cylinder in a flow produces a series of alternating vortices known as a von Karman vortex street. Changing the flow speed and rotating the cylinder both allow researchers to Keep reading
Listen to a Martian Dust Devil
A lucky encounter led the Perseverance rover to record the first-ever sound of a dust devil on Mars. The rover happened to have its microphone on (something that only happens Keep reading
A Fractal Raft From a Spinning Top
File this one under Cool Things I Would Have Never Thought Of. In this video, researchers play around with the flow around a spinning top and end up creating a Keep reading
Mixing Effectively
Mixing two fluids is a tougher task than you might think. One of my favorite asides from a fluids lecture concerned how to mix fruit into yogurt in an industrial Keep reading
Spinning Off-Axis
To make a vortex in the laboratory, researchers typically set a tank on a rotating platform and allow the water to drain out a hole in the center of the Keep reading