Swirling Science

Credit: H. Kellay and T. Meuel

What do you seen in this soap bubble?

Researchers at the University of Bordeaux saw something surprisingly similar to a hurricane, an observation that launched a new mathematical model that can help project where cyclones will go.

By measuring vortexes as they moved across heated soap bubbles, the researchers were able to develop a model to predict where they’d end up. The same principles hold for hurricanes and tropical storms, the scientists said. Nevertheless, the model is best at predicting early storm tracks, not the late-in-the-game swerves made by many big storms.