Fun with fluids at Maryland Day 2008! We built two large vortex cannons, ordered some theatrical smoke machines, and set it all up in the sun for a few thousand of our closest friends. Smoke rings rolled across the Physics Building lawn and a good time was had by all. See our photos! And don't forget the science: these vortex cannons demonstrate many of the principles at work in our studies of superfluid vortices.

We've added a new section to our site, Interesting Data, for sharing past experimental data that may be of interest to the scientific community. A few data sets are posted already and more will come soon. Feel free to take a look—we welcome collaboration.

The three meter experiment now spins under motor control—watch our YouTube movie! We are debugging the system with water as a test fluid, and will soon make Lagrangian flow measurements in collaboration with colleagues from the group of J. F. Pinton. Sodium experiments will follow. more…

Read Dr. Lathrop's talk, “Building Laboratory Models of Planetary Cores”, given at the 2007 MHD Laboratory Experiments for Geophysics and Astrophysics workshop in Catania, Italy.

Construction of our three meter spherical system (larger picture) is nearing completion, and we expect experiments to begin this fall. more…

Interested in a general introduction to the magnetorotational instability? We've contributed an article to Wikipedia.

Dr. Lathrop recently chatted with Geoff Watts of the BBC radio show Leading Edge about Earth's magnetic field, our laboratory models, field reversals, and weather prediction. The piece, entitled “Pole to pole,” was broadcast as part of the 28 June 2007 episode; you can hear the audio online.

Recent quotes: Mention of our work, as well as quotes from Dr. Lathrop, have appeared in a June 2007 article entitled “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in Discover magazine and a 10 May 2007 article entitled “Origin of Earth's Magnetic Core Remains a Mystery” on LiveScience.

In the April 2007 issue of Physics Today is the feature article “Quantum Turbulence”. It cites the Bewley et al. paper that describes some of our work in superfluids.

We've identified the likely presence of inertial waves, which seem to be forced by over-reflection, in our 60 cm sodium experiment. Shown here are experimental measurements (left) and theoretical predictions (right) of the magnetic field produced by two wave modes. You can read our manuscript, submitted to Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics.

We're contributing to scientific knowledge in the public domain: see the new inertial waves article on Wikipedia.

Our technique for visualizing quantized vortices in superfluid helium has been published in the 1 June 2006 issue of Nature. You can read the full text or download a PDF. You can also read more about our ongoing work with superfluid vortices.

The dynamo problem is the focus of the cover article of the February 2006 Physics Today. Our work in particular is mentioned near the end of the article.

Quantum effects on the millimeter scale: the intricate shapes shown here are networks of quantized vortices in turbulent superfluid helium. We believe these are the first direct observations of phenomena of this kind. more…

Our work has been featured in a number of public outlets lately—you can read about us in Discover magazine or Geotimes magazine; you can also see us on PBS's NOVA.

Ever wondered what magnetic fields sound like? You can hear the humming of magnetic fields from our experiments (sped up by 20x) in MP3.

This image (click for a larger version) shows a color-coded power spectrum of the magnetic field in our 60cm experiment, where frequency is on the vertical axis and rotation rate ratio is on the horizontal axis. The color indicates the power, with red indicating the highest power and blue indicating the lowest. more…

Read Lathrop's talk given in Perm, Russia.

This three meter experiment (larger picture) is the latest in a sequence of laboratory models probing MHD turbulence and liquid metal flows related to the Earth's outer core. more…