#turbulence — Public Fediverse posts

Thanks to the world's most powerful solar telescope, scientists have captured the solar surface in unprecedented detail and captured photos and videos of solar plasma vortices. These images were obtained using the Inouye Telescope, the world's largest solar telescope, located atop a mountain in Hawaii. Ubiquitous magnetized Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities at the edges of magnetic flux concentrations, long predicted theoretically, have been discovered.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10871-3

#astronomy #sun #turbulence #physics #solar_dynamics #solar_activity

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics 08/08/2026

Although it’s holiday season for some, it’s time once more for another Saturday update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further four papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 167 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 615.

I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also show the DOI for each paper.

The first paper to report this week was published on Tuesday 4th August in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies with the title “Small-scale turbulence alongside large-scale turbulence in a z=1.87 star-forming galaxy with an outflowing wind, revealed by multi-point structure functions” by Itzhak Goldman (Afeka College, Israel). A previous study by the author found evidence of large and small scale turbulence in the star-forming galaxy CSWA13, suggesting that star clusters and large clumps within the galaxy could be driving this turbulence.

The overlay for this paper is here

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/117036181269903989

The second paper for this week, published on Thursday 6th August in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “From Clumps to Sheets: Geometry Controls the Temperature PDF of Multi-Phase Gas” by Zirui Chen and S. Peng Oh (UC Santa Barbara, USA). This study uses 3D hydrodynamic simulations to show that the temperature probability distribution functions (PDFs) of multi-phase turbulent gas differ significantly under interstellar medium (ISM) and circumgalactic medium (CGM) conditions.

The overlay looks like this:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/117047322340826393

The third paper of the week, published on Thursday 6th August in folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics is “First Detection of Extensive Air Showers Using a Small-Aperture Fluorescence Telescope” by M. Zotov (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia) and 7 others based in Russia and Armenia. The study reports the first-ever detection of extensive air showers from ultra-high-energy cosmic rays using a compact fluorescence telescope, employing both conventional and deep learning analysis methods.

The overlay is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/117047408583672745

The fourth and final paper of the week was published on Friday 7th August in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics: “TDCOSMO XXVI: Uniform Lens Modeling of Eight Doubly Imaged Quasars“, by Ryan Brady (Stony Brook University, USA) and 9 others based all around the world, presents a new method for analyzing doubly imaged quasars using the Hubble Space Telescope, revealing that arc surface brightness is key to precision in mass model measurements.

The overlay is here:

The officially-accepted version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/117053056092162466

That’s all for this week. We have about a dozen more papers accepted and waiting for the authors to put the final version on arXiv, which they will presumably do when they’re back from holiday. I’ll do an update next weekend and we’ll see!

💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: 🦅💨 The nankeen #kestrel, a tiny Australian #falcon, flies with exceptional stability in turbulent winds, inspiring one international #research team.

Wind tunnel #experiments showed wing and tail extensions helped #birds maintain lift and reduce #flight irregularities. The team aims to integrate these features into small #drones as #climatechange increases atmospheric #turbulence.

👉 https://www.popsci.com/technology/falcon-aircraft-turbulence/

#biomimicry #nankeekestrel #engineering #robotics #climate #aviation #australia #animals #technology #tech

Droplets in dense sprays live much longer than expected. The surrounding vapor saturates locally, delaying evaporation.

What controls the system is not the droplet, but the evolving vapor field.

🔗 https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/ms1r-7jb9

#PhaseChange #Evaporation #Turbulence #Droplets #Physics

Droplets in dense sprays live much longer than expected. The surrounding vapor saturates locally, delaying evaporation.

What controls the system is not the droplet, but the evolving vapor field.

🔗 https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/ms1r-7jb9

#PhaseChange #Evaporation #Turbulence #Droplets #Physics

Droplets in dense sprays live much longer than expected. The surrounding vapor saturates locally, delaying evaporation.

What controls the system is not the droplet, but the evolving vapor field.

🔗 https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/ms1r-7jb9

#PhaseChange #Evaporation #Turbulence #Droplets #Physics

Droplets in dense sprays live much longer than expected. The surrounding vapor saturates locally, delaying evaporation.

What controls the system is not the droplet, but the evolving vapor field.

🔗 https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/ms1r-7jb9

#PhaseChange #Evaporation #Turbulence #Droplets #Physics

Droplets in dense sprays live much longer than expected. The surrounding vapor saturates locally, delaying evaporation.

What controls the system is not the droplet, but the evolving vapor field.

🔗 https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/ms1r-7jb9

#PhaseChange #Evaporation #Turbulence #Droplets #Physics

“Inferno”

Nothing showcases the incredible power of our atmosphere like storms, and no one does stormchase photography like Mike Olbinski. In this vignette, he shows a stunning line of supercells caught near sunset on July 17, 2022. The high shear–combined with the setting sun–put on an incredible show. Dust blown up in a haboob, microbursts and downpours in the distance, and lots of churning, roiling turbulence. (Video and image credit: M. Olbinski)

Aflutter in the Breeze

Fabrics flutter in seemingly impossible ways in artist Thomas Jackson‘s images. But despite first appearances, each photograph is true to life; the fabrics are suspended on taut lines. Their dance is driven by wind energy, drag, tension, and flow–not manipulated pixels. I love the (turbulent) energy of them! (Image credit: T. Jackson; via Colossal)

“Sidewall Symphony”

Flow visualization is both an art and science in fluid dynamics. Here, researchers were interested in studying the separation bubble that forms over a backward-facing ramp–a shape that shows up, for example, on an aircraft. In these areas, the flow over the surface separates, leaving an unsteady, recirculating bubble.

That’s the flow that researchers are visualizing here. They’ve done so by adding tiny helium-filled soap bubbles to the flow. With bright lights illuminating the bubbles, each one leaves a streak in a photograph, showing where the bubble moved during the time the camera’s shutter was open. Although images like these are beautiful, they can also be analyzed by computers to extract the underlying flow that created the image. (Image and research credit: B. Steinfurth et al.; see also here)

“The Haboob”

Haboobs are a dust storm driven by the strong winds at the forefront of weather fronts and thunderstorms. Those powerful winds pick up dust in arid and semi-arid landscapes, creating billowing, turbulent clouds that appear downright apocalyptic.

This particular haboob formed in Arizona in August 2025 and was caught in timelapse by photographer and storm chaser Mike Olbinski. The visuals–as always–are incredible. Definitely watch to the very end, as the haboob advances on the runway at Sky Harbor Airport. The tension is palpable as you watch flights line up and try to make it off the ground before the haboob swallows them. (Video and image credit: M. Olbinski)

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 07/02/2026

It’s Saturday once more so time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further six papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 24 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 472.

I will continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience) to encourage you to visit it. Mastodon is a really excellent service, and a more than adequate replacement for X/Twitter which nobody should be using; these announcement also show the DOI for each paper.

The first paper to report this week is “The Impact of Star Formation and Feedback Recipes on the Stellar Mass and Interstellar Medium of High-Redshift Galaxies” by Harley Katz (U. Chicago, USA), Martin P. Rey (U. Oxford, UK), Corentin Cadiou (Lund U., Sweden) Taysun Kimm (Yonsei U., Korea) and Oscar Agertz (Lund). This paper was published on Monday 2nd February 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It introduces MEGATRON, a new model for galaxy formation simulations, highlighting that feedback energy controls star formation at high redshift and highlighting the importance of the interstellar medium.

The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116000695648050758

The second paper is “Photometric Redshifts in JWST Deep Fields: A Pixel-Based Alternative with DeepDISC” by Grant Merz (U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and 6 others, all based in the USA. This paper was published on Monday February 2nd 2026 in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. This paper explores the effectiveness of the DeepDISC machine learning algorithm in estimating photometric redshifts from near-infrared data, demonstrating its potential for larger image volumes and spectroscopic samples

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116000777572439111

Next, published on Wednesday 4th February in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “Inferring Interstellar Medium Density, Temperature, and Metallicity from Turbulent H II Regions” by Larrance Xing (U. Chicago, USA), Nicholas Choustikov (U. Oxford, UK), Harley Katz (U. Chicago) and Alex J. Cameron (DAWN, Denmark). This paper argues that supersonic turbulenc affects the interpretation of H II region properties, potentially impacting inferred metallicity, ionization, and excitation from in nebular emission lines, motivating more extensive modelling.

The overlay is here:

The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116011384659092223

The fourth paper this week, also published on Wednesday 4th February, but in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, is “A Systematic Search for Big Dippers in ASAS-SN” by B. JoHantgen, D. M. Rowan, R. Forés-Toribio, C. S. Kochanek, & K. Z. Stanek (Ohio State University, USA), B. J. Shappee (U. Hawaii, USA), Subo Dong (Peking University), J. L. Prieto Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) and Todd A. Thompson (Ohio State). This study identifies 4 new dipper stars and 15 long-period eclipsing binary candidates using ASAS-SN light curves and multi-wavelength data, categorizing them based on their characteristics.

Here is the overlay:

The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116011460612040834

Fifth, and next to last this week we have “Unveiling the drivers of the Baryon Cycles with Interpretable Multi-step Machine Learning and Simulations” by Mst Shamima Khanom, Benjamin W. Keller and Javier Ignacio Saavedra Moreno (U. Memphis, USA). This paper was published on Thursday 5th February 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This study uses machine learning methods to understand how galaxies lose or retain baryons, highlighting the relationship between baryon fraction and various galactic measurements.

The overlay is here:

The accepted version can be found on arXiv here, and the fediverse announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116016883984380622

Finally for this week we have “The Bispectrum of Intrinsic Alignments: II. Precision Comparison Against Dark Matter Simulations” by Thomas Bakx (Utrecht U., Netherlands), Toshiki Kurita (MPA Garching, Germany), Alexander Eggemeier (U. Bonn, Germany), Nora Elisa Chisari (Utrecht) and Zvonimir Vlah (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia). This paper was accepted in December, but publication got delayed by the Christmas effect so was published on February 6th 2026, in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. This study uses N-body simulations to accurately measure three-dimensional bispectra of halo intrinsic alignments and dark matter overdensities, providing a method to determine higher order shape bias parameters.

The overlay is here:

You can find the published version of the article here, and the Mastodon announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116022562915557971

And that concludes this week’s update. I will do another next Saturday.

Radiant Waves

Photographer Kevin Krautgartner captures the powerful waves of Western Australia from above. His latest series, Waves | Ocean Forces, features luminous turquoise waves, crystalline foam, and brilliant beaches. I could delight in staring at them for hours. Fortunately, he sells prints on his website! (Image credit: K. Krautgartner; via Colossal)

“Glacial River Blues”

Glacier-fed rivers are often rich in colorful sediments. Here, photographer Jan Erik Waider shows us Iceland’s glacial rivers flowing primarily in shades of blue. While the wave action and diffraction in these videos is great, the real star is the turbulent mixing where turbid and clearer waters meet. Watch those boundaries, and you’ll see shear from flows moving at different speeds which feeds the ragged, Kelvin-Helmholtz-unstable edge between colors. (Video and image credit: J. Waider; via Laughing Squid)

The Best of FYFD 2025

Happy 2026! This will be a big year for me. I’ll be finishing up and turning in the manuscript for my first book — which flows between cutting edge research, scientists’ stories, and the societal impacts of fluid physics. It’s a culmination of 15 years of FYFD, rendered into narrative. I’m so excited to share it with you when it’s published in 2027.

As always, though, we’ll kick off the year with a look back at some of FYFD’s most popular posts of 2025. (You can find previous editions, too, for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.) Without further ado, here they are:

• Charged Drops Don’t Splash
• Strata of Starlings
• Espresso in Slow-Mo
• The Incredible Engineering of the Alhambra
• Uranus Emits More Than Thought1
• Kolmogorov Turbulence
• Bow Shock Instability
• How Particles Affect Melting Ice
• The Puquios System of Nazca
• Cooling Tower Demolition
• A Glimpse of the Solar Wind
• Bubbling Up
• A Sprite From Orbit
• Cornflower Roots Growing
• How Sunflowers Follow the Sun

What a great bunch of topics! I’m especially happy to see so many research and research-adjacent posts were popular. And a couple of history-related posts; I don’t write those too often, but I love them for showing just how wide-ranging fluid physics can be.

Interested in keeping up with FYFD in 2026? There are lots of ways to follow along so that you don’t miss a post.

And if you enjoy FYFD, please remember that it’s a reader-supported website. I don’t run ads, and it’s been years since my last sponsored post. You can help support the site by becoming a patron, buying some merch, or simply by sharing on social media. And if you find yourself struggling to remember to check the website, remember you can get FYFD in your inbox every two weeks with our newsletter. Happy New Year!

(Image credits: droplet – F. Yu et al., starlings – K. Cooper, espresso – YouTube/skunkay, fountain – Primal Space, Uranus – NASA, turbulence – C. Amores and M. Graham, capsule – A. Álvarez and A. Lozano-Duran, melting ice – S. Bootsma et al., puquios – Wikimedia, cooling towers – BBC, solar wind – NASA/APL/NRL, Lake Baikal – K. Makeeva, sprite – NASA, roots – W. van Egmond, sunflowers – Deep Look)

1. I know what I did. ↩︎

Imagine being a brilliant physicist/mathematician and still avoiding the most important problems because your career depends on publishing frequent papers, not solving the biggest mysteries in the world.

That's why you can't do things like this in academia.

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-06-24/spanish-mathematician-javier-gomez-serrano-and-google-deepmind-team-up-to-solve-the-navier-stokes-million-dollar-problem.html

#NavierStokes #GoogleDeepMind #DeepMind #MillenniumProblems #Existence #Smoothness #Fluid #FluidDynamics #Turbulence #Dynamics #TurbulentFlows #Research #Engineering #Physics #Math #Maths #Mathematics #UnsolvedProblems #BiggestMystery #Flows #MillionDollarProblem

“Legend”

Filmmaker Roman De Giuli returns to his roots with this short fluid-filled film inspired by the color gold. He combines paint, ink, powders, and particles in a mix of micro- and macroscale photography. As always, the results are a mesmerizing plethora of fluid phenomena: Marangoni flows, turbulence, vorticity, viscous fingering and so much more. (Video and image credit: R. De Giuli)

#fluidDynamics #fluidsAsArt #instability #physics #science #surfaceTension #turbulence

Simulating a Sneeze

Sneezing and coughing can spread pathogens both through large droplets and through tiny, airborne aerosols. Understanding how the nasal cavity shapes the aerosol cloud a sneeze produces is critical to understanding and predicting how viruses could spread. Toward that end, researchers built a “sneeze simulator” based on the upper respiratory system’s geometry. With their simulator, the team mimicked violent exhalations both with the nostrils open and closed — to see how that changed the shape of the aerosol cloud produced.

The researchers found that closed nostrils produced a cloud that moved away along a 18 degree downward tilt, whereas an open-nostril cloud followed a 30-degree downward slope. That means having the nostrils open reduces the horizontal spread of a cloud while increasing its vertical spread. Depending on the background flow that will affect which parts of a cloud get spread to people nearby. (Image and research credit: N. Catalán et al.; via Physics World)

#aerosols #biology #coughing #COVID19 #diseaseTransmission #droplets #flowVisualization #fluidDynamics #physics #science #sneezing #turbulence

Bitcoin Miners Navigate Record Challenges and August’s Dual Difficulty Hike - Bitcoin miners faced another uphill battle this month, marking the second straight... - https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-navigate-record-challenges-and-augusts-dual-difficulty-hike/ #difficultyadjustment #computationalpower #averageblocksize #transactionfees #bitcoinprice #blockrewards #btchashrate #difficulty #foundryusa #resilience #turbulence #challenge #btcprice #btcvalue #downturn #hashrate #antpool