fibonacci in nature fibonacci sequence in weather

student in the astronomy department at Cornell University. “There are some superficial similarities, but since the physics and scales involved is so different I don’t think we can draw any conclusions from it,” says Karen Masters, a Ph.D. One idea is that the waves are generated during a relatively close pass with another galaxy somewhere in history.ĭespite their different origins and physics, hurricanes and galaxies do look similar. “What exactly causes these density waves is not known,” according to Eric Christian of the Universities Space Research Association at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In space, the equivalent is an increased rate of star formation, which makes the spiral arms conspicuous, what with all those hot young stars belching UV radiation faster than the pants can come off a Coppertone kid. “That higher density moves along at the speed of the repair crew, not the speed of the cars,” Livio said. Over time, the highway crew moves down the road at an almost imperceptible pace, but wherever it is, you’ll find a higher density of cars. Think of cars representing the material in a galaxy, and the highway crew as a gravitational wave crest. UNDER CONSTRUCTION Livio, who is head of the science division of the Space Telescope Science Institute, imagines a spiral arm of a galaxy as a highway under construction. The material does not move with the spirals, but rather is caught up in them. The spiral arms of a galaxy are places where gas piles up at the wave crests. Gravitational disturbances called density waves, rippling slowly through a galaxy, are thought to cause it to wind up and generate the spiral appearance. As a developing galaxy’s gas, dust and stars contract into a smaller region of space, it all spins faster - just as a skater twirls more rapidly by pulling her arms in.Īstronomers don’t know exactly how a galaxy like the Milky Way gets its spiral arms. “Masses of material from which galaxies were formed had an initial amount of angular momentum,” explains Rick Perley of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The laws of physics say angular momentum must be conserved.

Once stuff moved off a straight course and began to curve toward something else, angular momentum, or spin, set in. Clumps eventually formed, and these clumps began to interact gravitationally. Why do galaxies rotate in the first place? The answer goes back to the formation of the universe, when matter raced outward in all directions. (A study in the late 1990s suggested the universe was directional, but the work was soon refuted.) SELF CONTROL Galaxies, by contrast, rotate either direction depending on your point of view - there is no known up or down in the universe. Suppose you draw a chalk line from the edge of the record to the center while it is spinning - the line will be curved even though your motion is straight. You can visualize the effect by imagining an old-fashioned record album spinning on a turntable. Storms south of the equator rotate clockwise. This Coriolis effect, as it is called, forces a counterclockwise rotation for all storms in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, Earth’s spin causes an apparent deflection of the wind to the right, as seen from above. All the while, Earth is rotating under the atmosphere. When an area of low atmospheric pressure forms, wind begins to flow toward the center of it, near the surface. Importantly, a hurricane must rotate in a certain direction.

The rotation of a hurricane owes to Earth’s spin. Gravity and angular momentum, or spin, play a role in both cases. SPINNING A STORM Other than conforming to the Golden Ratio, hurricanes and galaxies share few physical traits. “It allows the falcon to keep its prey continuously in sight.” The flight pattern allows the bird to maintain a constant angle. “They also appear, interestingly enough, when a falcon dives toward its prey,” Livio said. But logarithmic spirals appear in totally unrelated phenomena. Livio said the logarithmic spiral is a key shape for anything that grows, because with growth the ratio does not change.

Fibonacci in nature fibonacci sequence in weather