turbulence – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 An Injection of Chaos Solves Decades-Old Fluid Mystery https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-injection-of-chaos-solves-decades-old-fluid-mystery-20220104/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-injection-of-chaos-solves-decades-old-fluid-mystery-20220104/#respond Tue, 04 Jan 2022 15:14:04 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=111480 The post An Injection of Chaos Solves Decades-Old Fluid Mystery first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Fluids can be roughly divided into two categories: regular ones and weird ones. Regular ones, like water and alcohol, act more or less as expected when pumped through pipes or stirred with a spoon. Lurking among the weird ones — which include substances such as paint, honey, mucus, blood, ketchup and oobleck — are a vast variety of behavioral enigmas that have stumped researchers over the...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-injection-of-chaos-solves-decades-old-fluid-mystery-20220104/feed/ 0 An Unexpected Twist Lights Up the Secrets of Turbulence https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-unexpected-twist-lights-up-the-secrets-of-turbulence-20200903/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-unexpected-twist-lights-up-the-secrets-of-turbulence-20200903/#respond Thu, 03 Sep 2020 15:50:21 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=91477 The post An Unexpected Twist Lights Up the Secrets of Turbulence first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> It’s time to feed the blob. Seething and voracious, it absorbs eight dinner-plate-size helpings every few seconds. The blob is a cloud of turbulence in a large water tank in the lab of the University of Chicago physicist William Irvine. Unlike every other instance of turbulence that has ever been observed on Earth, Irvine’s blob isn’t a messy patch in a flowing stream of liquid, gas or plasma...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-unexpected-twist-lights-up-the-secrets-of-turbulence-20200903/feed/ 0 New Math Proves That a Special Kind of Space-Time Is Unstable https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-math-proves-that-a-special-kind-of-space-time-is-unstable-20200511/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-math-proves-that-a-special-kind-of-space-time-is-unstable-20200511/#respond Mon, 11 May 2020 15:00:52 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=85702 The post New Math Proves That a Special Kind of Space-Time Is Unstable first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Four years ago, while still a graduate student at Princeton University, Georgios Moschidis took on a problem that likely wasn’t going to pan out. His adviser asked him to mathematically prove that a certain configuration of space-time is unstable — to show, in other words, that any small change to it would ultimately lead to a breakdown in the space-time itself. His adviser...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-math-proves-that-a-special-kind-of-space-time-is-unstable-20200511/feed/ 0 The Map of Mathematics https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-map-of-mathematics-20200213/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-map-of-mathematics-20200213/#respond Thu, 13 Feb 2020 17:30:36 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=79431 The post The Map of Mathematics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-map-of-mathematics-20200213/feed/ 0 Mathematicians Prove Universal Law of Turbulence https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-prove-universal-law-of-turbulence-20200204/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-prove-universal-law-of-turbulence-20200204/#respond Tue, 04 Feb 2020 15:30:57 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=80958 The post Mathematicians Prove Universal Law of Turbulence first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Picture a calm river. Now picture a torrent of white water. What is the difference between the two? To mathematicians and physicists it’s this: The smooth river flows in one direction, while the torrent flows in many different directions at once. Physical systems with this kind of haphazard motion are called turbulent. The fact that their motion unfolds in so many different ways at once makes them...

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