Swirls

Satellite image of Norway’s Bear Island acquired on July 13, 2023, by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows Von Kármán vortices in the clouds and swirling tendrils of a phytoplankton bloom in the Norwegian and Barents Sea. Fluid dynamics put on a spectacular show around Norway’s remote Bear Island. Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American physicist, is well-known within NASA for helping found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But in atmospheric science circles, he is most celebrated…

If you weren’t already buying the Reddit IPO rumors, the internet’s beating heart of deeply niche microcultures just introduced a rebrand, refreshing its iconic logo and rolling out some new visual vibes. Reddit’s most obvious visual update is a new design for Snoo, the anthropomorphic red and white robot mascot synonymous with Reddit since its earliest days. Image Credits: Reddit Compared to the now-ancient initial version of Snoo, the new Snoo looks very slick. The new mascot replaces the flat design of the…

Swirling patterns etched into the surface of the Moon appear to be linked to changes in the shape of that surface, after all.In a close study of mysterious features known as lunar swirls, scientists have found that at least two of them are linked to lunar topography. This is a clue that could help scientists finally figure out what causes these bright curlicues, the origin of which has so far eluded explanation."The canonical interpretation of lunar swirls is that topography has no bearing on the location or shape of the…

Claims the US government has secretly retrieved crashed alien spacecraft and their non-human occupants are hardly new. They are firmly entrenched in post-war American UFO lore and conspiracy theory, inspiring the most famous narrative in ufology: the "Roswell incident".Now, however, journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal have injected fresh vigor into these aging claims – apparently with the Pentagon's approval.In an article for science and technology news site The Debrief, they report the US government, its…

Jupiter is the fifth planet in the solar system, and it is by far the biggest one. In fact, it is twice as big as all the other planets in our solar system combined. Jupiter is also known as the Gas Giant due to a dense atmosphere of hydrogen and helium with windy clouds of ammonia. It also has the most moons in the solar system, with 92 confirmed moons with orbits, according to International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.Today's NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day is a snapshot of Jupiter's swirls, formed due…

Eddies have been overlooked for too long. These turbulent swirls of water, ranging in size from a few kilometers to hundreds of kilometers across, peel off large ocean currents and mix heat and carbon dioxide into deeper ocean layers, like cream stirred into coffee. They are the most energetic feature of the ocean, critical to getting climate models right—but also largely invisible to satellites, except when they happen to sweep up a massive bloom of green…

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the Flame Nebula, also known as NGC 2024. It is a large star-forming region in the constellation Orion that lies around 1,400 light-years from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (University of Virginia); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)The Flame Nebula, also known as NGC 2024, is a large star-forming region in the constellation Orion that is located approximately 1,400 light-years from Earth. It’s a portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex,…