Tiny Brine Shrimp Reveal How to Reverse the Flow of Energy in Turbulence
Sea Monkeys Show Scientists How to Rewrite a Rule of Turbulence
Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh discovered that a small, properly angled obstacle can flip the direction of energy cascade in a two-dimensional turbulent system—a rule previously thought fixed. Using brine shrimp to generate turbulence, they showed that geometry controls whether energy flows from large scales to small or vice versa. The finding could reshape our understanding of fluid dynamics and inform applications from pollution control to drug design.
Big whorls have little whorls which feed on their velocity, and little whorls have lesser whorls and so on to viscosity.