hydrodynamics
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Simulation of hidden ocean tides could lead to better sonar
There's a lot of tidal movement under the ocean's surface, but we haven't had a great understanding of it so far. Internal tides, created around continental shelf breaks, are far more difficult to predict than the ocean waves you can see. However, MIT researchers just made a breakthrough: they've accurately simulated those hidden tides for the first time. They melded a hydrodynamic model with data from a coastal sound wave study to replicate an ocean environment (in this case, a shelf break near the US' eastern coast) with a previously unseen level of complexity, complete with background elements like currents and eddies. The technique should be useful for predicting climates and fishing populations, but it could lead to a surprising amount of technological progress, too.
These PhysX (fluid simulations) are making us thirsty
While we're not exactly prepared to call this stuff water, per se, the fluid dynamics on display in the latest PhysX demonstration are quite impressive nonetheless. In fact, the viscous sloshing is so realistic that we're pretty desperate for a blue-coconut slushie at this point, though preferably one that hasn't washed upon the thighs of a weird humanoid muskrat creature.This video, as well as the two tucked after the break, were produced to demonstrate the principles outlined in a "Position Based Fluids," a paper recently published by Nvidia employees Miles Macklin and Matthias Muller. In laymen's terms, the duo have devised a less system-intensive way to render "incompressible" liquids, which is the key to ensuring realistic goo.The document contains numerous formulas and is very concerned with concepts like "tensile instability" and "vorticity confinement and viscosity," but it also features a lot of bunny rabbits, which helped our comprehension levels a great deal.
