Scientists believe they have found Earth's equivalent of black holes.
Some of the largest ocean eddies in the southern Atlantic Ocean are mathematically equivalent to the black holes identified by astronomers, according to scientists from Switzerland and the United States.
Black holes are believed to be tears in the fabric of space-time that suck in any matter that comes too close, including light.
The researchers say huge whirlpools do the same thing with water that black holes do with light.
Circular water paths surround them so tightly that nothing caught up in them escapes.
The number of such eddies, which can measure more than 140km in diameter, is reportedly on the rise in the Southern Ocean, increasing the northward transport of warm and salty water.
Scientists believe these water bodies could moderate the negative impact of melting sea ice in a warming climate.
But up until now they have been unable to quantify this impact because their exact boundaries have remained undetectable.
A new paper, published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, has outlined a new mathematical model to detect these water-transporting eddies.
George Haller, professor of nonlinear dynamics at ETH Zurich, and Francisco Beron-Vera, professor of oceanography at the University of Miami, used a sequence of satellite observations to detect the rotating edges of giant eddies, which they found were indicators of the whirlpools within.
They said the water moving around the giant ocean eddies mathematically behaved the same way as photon spheres around a black hole.
In space, light beams at a certain distance do not spiral into a black hole but instead bend and come back to their original position, forming a circular orbit known as a photon sphere.
The same thing happens with giant eddies — the fluid particles move around the whirlpool in a closed barrier similar to the path of light in a photon sphere.
The new model is expected to help resolve a number of oceanic puzzles, ranging from climate-related questions to the spread of environmental pollution patterns.
Source: Science 20
Author: Erin Tennant, Approving editor: Fiona Willan
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