Perpetual ocean

March 25, 2012 6:51 AM

Beautiful HD video of whirlpools flowing around rocks, courtesy of NASA and neatorama.
posted by mediareport (10 comments total)

You just made my piratin' job a lot easier. Try and catch me now!
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:57 AM on March 25, 2012 [3 favorites]

Fantastic, complexity, coriolis
posted by elpapacito at 7:09 AM on March 25, 2012

WOW!
posted by dhruva at 7:38 AM on March 25, 2012

Beautiful link!

I think those are mostly mesoscale eddies, and not whirlpools around rocks. Vortex shedding shedding tends to be on a smaller scale than most of those, and occurs downstream of the obstacle. These are created and sustained by instabilities in the flow, like the shear near a strong current or the type of instability that can occur along density gradients.

I love vortices.

http://www.geol.sc.edu/cbnelson/eddy/eddy.htm has more on them.
posted by arahantrain at 7:40 AM on March 25, 2012 [3 favorites]

Yet another example of the natural beauty of raw data uncovered by the Goddard SVS. This group got some well-deserved attention in the last week for a pair of videos marking the 1000th day of the LRO mission, which you may have seen.

Can you believe Perpetual Ocean was rejected from the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival? Knuckleheads!

I think those are mostly mesoscale eddies, and not whirlpools around rocks.
I think that was mostly poetic license.
posted by rlk at 8:36 AM on March 25, 2012 [6 favorites]

Reminds me of a Van Gogh sky.
posted by crunchland at 8:50 AM on March 25, 2012 [6 favorites]

I want that in google earth.
posted by delmoi at 10:07 AM on March 25, 2012

Those moon visualizations are great, rlk, thanks.
posted by mediareport at 10:08 AM on March 25, 2012

Here's another map with the same data.
posted by delmoi at 1:36 PM on March 25, 2012

Some little dot somewhere on that amazing video is someone complaining on the internet.
posted by booklovers at 3:51 PM on March 26, 2012