#turbulence — Public Fediverse posts

“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)

What does turbulence look like in a quantum fluid?

Researchers are exploring how Bose–Einstein condensates shift from weak to strong turbulence, revealing how energy cascades behave when quantum mechanics takes over.

🔗 https://physicsworld.com/a/what-happens-when-a-bose-einstein-condensate-becomes-turbulent/

#QuantumPhysics #Turbulence #BEC #FluidDynamics #physics

Screams amid ‘drop tower’ turbulence on Cathay Pacific flight from Brisbane, 10 injured

Ten passengers and crew members were injured when a Cathay Pacific Airways flight from Brisbane to Hong Kong…
#NewsBeep #News #Business #AirportAuthority #AU #Australia #Brisbane #CathayPacific #CX #HongKong #NorthLantauHospital #saturday #Socialmedia #turbulence
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/689330/

Screams amid ‘drop tower’ turbulence on Cathay Pacific flight from Brisbane, 10 injured

Ten passengers and crew members were injured when a Cathay Pacific Airways flight from Brisbane to Hong Kong…
#NewsBeep #News #Business #AirportAuthority #AU #Australia #Brisbane #CathayPacific #CX #HongKong #NorthLantauHospital #saturday #Socialmedia #turbulence
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/689330/

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)

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. ↩︎

Turbulence-Suppressing Polymers

Adding just a little polymer to a pipe flow speeds it up by reducing drag near the wall. But the effects on turbulence away from the wall have been harder to suss out. A new experiment shows that added polymers suppress eddy formation in the flow and reduce how much energy is lost to friction and, ultimately, heat. In particular, the researchers found that polymer stress helped stabilize shear layers in the flow and prevent them from destabilizing into more turbulent flow. (Image credit: S. Wilkinson; research credit: Y. Zhang et al.; via APS)

#dissipation #elasticTurbulence #fluidDynamics #instability #physics #polymerEffects #science #turbulence #viscoelasticity

We will be hosting the 10th International #Conference on Rayleigh-Bénard #Turbulence in #Lyon (1-5 June 2026) !
Abstract submissions are now opened.

The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers from different fields to explore the latest advancements in high Rayleigh number #convection. A full day will review critical connections between #turbulent #thermal #convection and #geophysical processes.

More information on https://rbc2026.sciencesconf.org

#science

We have a new toy: a dji Dock 3 with Matrice 4D #multicopter! 🥳

With this and our PARASITE payload on top, we can automate our atmospheric profiling flights and do *even more* #turbulence measurements for #windEnergy, #mountainWeather and improving #weatherForecast parametrisations 🌦️ 💪

#drone

#CopterPortrait Meet Flik¹, the #multicopter we developed our first #PARASITE payload for. It's a commercial dji Mavic 3E drone typically used for photography. Here, Flik is measuring for the #TeamX campaign in #Austria, which will eventually improve #mountainWeather forecasts.

🌡️ Our PARASITE system (running ❄️ #NixOS) has several ventilated meteorological sensors on board for temperature and relative humidity.

💨 From all the data we get from copter and sensors we derive a fast 3D wind measurement. So yes: We can now measure #turbulence with a copter, without the need for an actual anemometer: The copter is our anemometer!

✅ Comparisons in #Falkenberg with a @DeutscherWetterdienst tower shows that the data quality is comparable to ultrasonic anemometers - the current gold standard of operational turbulence measurements.

¹ yes, from #Pixar's #BugsLife 🐜 😉

#meteorology #boundaryLayer

Our fleet of #multicopter​s is growing as we prepare for our part in the #TeamX¹ campaign in 🇦🇹 #Austria next month.

We'll provide valuable in-situ #temperature, #humidity, #wind and #turbulence measurements with our custom meteorological PARASITE system on multiple copters in parallel across the Inn valley. This data will help with understanding wind shear in mountainous regions and eventually improve
#mountainWeather forecasts.

Our PARASITEs carry several atmospheric sensors and we derive the turbulent 3D wind vector from the copter movements. @nobodyinperson suggested to name them like #BugsLife characters 🐛😉. He put a nicely customized ❄️ #NixOS in there to stay in control of the software, integrate it all and sync data e.g. to a #forgejoAneksajo instance (#forgejo with #gitAnnex support), our own or the one of @fzj_rdm during the VITAL campaign last year.

#Austria #Österreich #Inntal #Innsbruck #meteorology

¹https://www.teamx-programme.org/observational-campaign/

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