Why These Scientists are Smashing Vortexes Head-On

How do vortexes lead to turbulence? Scientists at Harvard decided to use a high-speed camera, colorful dye, and vortex cannons to find out. » Subscribe to Seeker! http://bit.ly/subscribeseeker » Watch more Elements! http://bit.ly/ElementsPlaylist » Visit our shop at http://shop.seeker.com Turbulence is one of the least understood phenomena in physics—scientists don't have a mechanistic framework to describe how vortexes drive cascades of energy that lead to turbulence. But turbulence is all around us. You’ve likely felt it on airplanes or seen it form whirlpools in sinks, so to try and develop a framework scientists at Harvard busted out a high speed camera, some colorful dye, and, wait for it, vortex cannons The researchers observed three generations of an orderly cascading cycle before everything broke down into turbulence and they think this could point to a universal mechanism of how energy cascades down until it dissipates, regardless of scale. Find out what this turbulence work could mean for the future of weather prediction, mapping oceans, and more in this Elements. #turbulence #harvard #vortexcannons #vortex #science #seeker #elements Read More: Climate Change Is Already Increasing Turbulence on Flights https://www.sciencealert.com/climate-change-is-already-making-air-travel-bumpier "In general, the greater the temperature contrast between the equator and the pole, the stronger the jet stream will blow from west to east across the North Atlantic, steering and energizing storm systems along with it." Take a Look at Some of the Most Fascinating Vortex Formations https://interestingengineering.com/take-look-most-fascinating-vortex-formations "When vortices are formed, they can complexly move, stretch, twist, and interact with the surrounding fluid. Once a vortex is moving, it carries with it angular and linear momentum, energy, and mass." New research finds tornadoes form from the ground up, contrary to popular thought https://phys.org/news/2