32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Vortices are beautiful and mysterious, found at every imaginable scale — from soap bubbles to black holes. They’re so ubiquitous, in fact, that we tend to overlook them. But new research shows that studying the simplest vortices could glean surprising scientific insights.

Just look at the wonderful vortex shining in rainbow colours in the photo above. It was captured by a group of physicists at the University of Bordeaux, France, who heated soap bubbles from below to create large vortices like this one. The researchers discovered that these swirling vortices look like — and behave like — super storms you see in satellite weather images. They’re related-and that means that simple soap vortices could help meteorologists understand the extreme weather phenomena that threaten millions of lives every year.

Scientists say that “vortices are prominent features of fluid flows and span length scales ranging from an insect’s length to planetary sizes”. The following images of natural or man made vortices, whirlpools, maelstroms and cyclones prove it — and we’ve ranked them from the absolute smallest to the (known!) largest. Enjoy.

These dipolar vortices were generated in the wake of an adult water strider.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: John Bush, MIT


An incense smoke vortex.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Philippe Teuwen


In your bathtub: a plughole vortex.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Dave Stokes


A vortex forms over a drainage ditch on a street covered in floodwaters.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Julio Cortez/AP


A whirlpool at a public garden pool.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Matthew Hunt


Here’s a laser light visualisation of the vortical flow above a F/A-18 model.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA


Flow patterns of fluorescent oil on a 5.8 per cent scale model of a hybrid wing body during wind tunnel tests.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA/Langley Research Center/Preston Martin


Water swirling in salinity tanks at Britain’s first-ever mainland desalination plant, which is known as the Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works, in Beckton, England.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images


Researchers made the air vortex behind this landing plane visible using coloured smoke.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA


HMS Dragon’s Lynx helicopter fires infra red flares during an exercise over the Type 45 destroyer, leaving smoke vortices behind.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Dave Jenkins/UK Ministry of Defence


The Way of Vortex is a viewing platform installed at the bottom of the Oh-naruto Bridge in Tokushima, Japan. Tourists can admire the famous Naruto Whirlpools from here.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: Kounosu/Wikimedia Commons


Tens of thousands of Muslim pilgrims move around the Kaaba inside the Grand Mosque during the annual Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Hassan Ammar/AP


A Japanese TV screen grab of a fishing boat stuck in a giant whirlpool in Ibaraki during the 2011 tsunami.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Via imgur


Swirls of green and red appear in the aurora over Whitehorse, Yukon.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: David Cartier, Sr./NASA


As air flows over and around objects in its path, spiralling eddies — known as Von Karman vortices — may form in the clouds. These vortices were created over the Aleutian Islands.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA/LandSat


Low-level winds rushing over the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of northwestern Africa created these cloud vortex streets (aka Von Karman vortices). The Hubble Space Telescope is visible in the lower right corner.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA


Phytoplankton bloom in the North Atlantic. The vibrant colours are from tiny organisms — phytoplankton — that grow explosively, forming a giant arc hundreds of kilometres across, extending from west of Ireland to the Bay of Biscay.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team/NASA


A large phytoplankton gyre — a very well-defined spiral eddy — is visible through the haze off the east coast of Japan.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: SeaWiFS Project/NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/ORBIMAGE


Typhoon Haiyan approaching the Philippines.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Composit image: 2013 EUMETSAT/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center


A NASA computer model of the forceful winds of Hurricane Sandy.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: NASA/GSFC/William Putman


Hurricane Danielle photographed by an Expedition 24 crew member on the International Space Station.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA


Hurricane Felix photographed from the International Space Station.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA


The northern ice cap of Mars.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS


Saturn’s north polar hexagon. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft’s wide-angle camera on November 27, 2012.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute


The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI


This image from the Cassini orbiter shows the progress of a massive storm on Saturn.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton University


Planet Jupiter: These oval-shaped vortices are located south of the Red Spot. The east to west dimension of the leftmost oval is 9000 kilometres — for reference, the diameter of the Earth is 12,756 km.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA


Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and small cloud vortices.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: Voyager 2/NASA/JPL


Neptune’s Great Dark Spots, a series of anticyclonic storms, each about the same size as Earth.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Photo: NASA/JPL


Spiral galaxy M81.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wisconsin/D.Pooley & CfA/A.Zezas; Optical: NASA/ESA/CfA/A.Zezas; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J.Huchra et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA


Spiral galaxy NGC 4921.

32 Mesmerising Photos Of Vortices, From Soap Bubbles To Spiral Galaxies

Image: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA


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