Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University

It seems perfectly natural to expect that two motorists who depart from the same location and follow the same directions will end up at the same destination. But according to a Johns Hopkins University mathematical physicist, this is not true when the “directions” are provided by a turbulent fluid flow, such as you find in a churning river or stream. Verifying earlier theoretical predictions, Gregory Eyink’s computer experiments reveal that, in principle, two identical small beads dropped into the same turbulent flow at precisely the same starting location will end up in different – and entirely random – destinations. An article about the phenomenon appears in a recent issue of Physical Review E.