{"id":388132,"date":"2019-06-26T15:01:57","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T19:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=388132"},"modified":"2019-06-26T15:01:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T19:01:57","slug":"finding-order-in-the-chaos-of-turbulence-388132","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/finding-order-in-the-chaos-of-turbulence-388132\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding order in the chaos of turbulence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turbulence can be found in places large and small, from exploding supernovae and sprawling ocean currents, to the unstable plasmas that form within tiny fusion fuel cells bombarded with lasers.<\/p>\n

And yet, as seemingly chaotic turbulence unfolds in a cascade of smaller swirls and eddies\u2013and then even smaller swirls and eddies within<\/em> those swirls and eddies\u2013something unexpected happens, Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ researchers say.<\/p>\n

Those smaller swirls and eddies start to behave remarkably alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs this process unfolds, creating these smaller and smaller structures, it loses memory of the first thing that triggered the flow into a turbulent state,\u201d says Hussein Aluie<\/a>, assistant professor of mechanical engineering<\/a> and co-author of a paper published in Physical Review Letters<\/a>.<\/em> \u201cThis loss of memory makes those structures at the small scales behave in a universal fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, Aluie and lead author Xin Bian, a PhD student in his lab, have described a new set of conservation laws\u2013fundamental laws describing natural processes\u2013that are unique to turbulent flows within magnetic fields.<\/p>\n

This has led to a set of simplified equations that can be potentially applied in multiple areas of research, including:<\/p>\n