Bubble Experiment Finds Universal Laws
Physicists have found examples of “universality” in a system of confined bubbles. The work could help researchers understand the strange behavior of singularities.
Each time a drop drips from a faucet, nature performs a magic trick. Breaking one blob into two calls for passage through a singularity — a single point where physical quantities flirt with the infinite. As the neck connecting the two blobs thins to nothing, the fluid pressure and speed race upward toward infinity, as if they were being divided by zero. Here, the equations used to describe fluids suffer a mathematical explosion. Order returns only after the sudden break.
Physicists have found examples of “universality” in a system of confined bubbles. The work could help researchers understand the strange behavior of singularities.
Each time a drop drips from a faucet, nature performs a magic trick. Breaking one blob into two calls for passage through a singularity — a single point where physical quantities flirt with the infinite. As the neck connecting the two blobs thins to nothing, the fluid pressure and speed race upward toward infinity, as if they were being divided by zero. Here, the equations used to describe fluids suffer a mathematical explosion. Order returns only after the sudden break.