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Turbulence

Suddenly it's chaos

Nature volume 424, pages 1002–1003 (2003)Cite this article

Injecting vortices into a rotating sample of superfluid helium-3 shows a sudden switch from smooth to chaotic behaviour, and throws light on turbulence — one of the last unsolved problems of classical physics.

Leonardo sketched it. Hydrodynamicists model it. Turbulence in fluid flows is universal. Not only does it impinge directly on human existence, but it affects physical behaviour on all scales, from the dynamics of galaxies to particle motion inside the atomic nucleus. Turbulence is clearly important and we know a great deal about it, but there is no satisfactory theory for it. One way forward is to attack the problem in its simplest form, as A. P. Finne et al. have done in their experiments reported in this issue (Nature 424, 1022–1025; 2003).

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Figure 1: Superfluid turbulence.

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  1. Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK

    George Pickett

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  1. George Pickett
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Correspondence to George Pickett.

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Pickett, G. Suddenly it's chaos. Nature 424, 1002–1003 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/4241002a

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