This beautiful shot was made for the first episode of Richard Hammond’s: Engineering Connections, which was dedicated to the Airbus A380. Apparently, wind tunnels can look like the lair of the wicked witch in an old Disney animation movie.
But there’s no magic involved here. Just the two vortexes generated by the A380’s first set of wings. This test showed that it would be impossible for the A380 to fly with those. They weren’t long enough to generate the lift necessary to make this behemoth fly. The problem was that engineers couldn’t expand the wings, as they would exceed airport regulations.
They had to find another solution, a better wing shape. Watch this for the answer: