Four Dimensional Tornadoes

[Polyhedron Dude]

One day I was thinking of what a 4D tornado would look like - and came up with this:

The top part (where it connects to the clouds) - would look like a huge whirling smoke ring (instead of just a spinning disk). As you scan down, this smoke ring would get thinner and larger, and more chaotic - with twists and turns everywhere - and is constantly in motion - the part near the ground would be huge - possibly miles across - it would look like a horribly twisted, thin smoke ring. This tornado could even twist into figure 8 sections, and split the tornado into two pieces in those areas - quite a storm aint it.

Polyhedron Dude

[alkaline]

That sounds like quite a complicated structure. I wonder if such a thing could ever be simulated. Does anyone know if they can even simulate 3d tornadoes yet? as far as i know, they still don't completely understand them. So what's the reason you decided that it should be like a whirling smoke ring? i assume it's the fact that in a spherical shape, when the equator of the sphere is spinning, the poles don't move, but in a smoke ring, every point on them is moving.

[Polyhedron Dude]

So what's the reason you decided that it should be like a whirling smoke ring? i assume it's the fact that in a spherical shape, when the equator of the sphere is spinning, the poles don't move, but in a smoke ring, every point on them is moving.

The smoke ring shape is very stable - I originally thought of a swirling plane like tornado - but the outer edges of it may be unstable - they would either eat away the tornado - or expand it until it reconnected to itself (if that happened, you would have the smoke ring tornado. Smoke-ring tornadoes may be so stable that they may stay for a LONG time causing a lot of destruction, possibly even twisting off smaller ones. Tetronian storm chasers would really be in for a treat

Polyhedron Dude

[alkaline]

Is there some kind of law or theory that explains why smoke rings are so stable?

[pat]

Is there some kind of law or theory that explains why smoke rings are so stable?

I believe the theory goes that the air rushing through the middle of the ring eddies causing a toroidal whorl. That whorl itself feeds into the rushing air in the middle, thus providing a positive feedback loop.

[Keiji]

welcome to the forum :wink:

[alkaline]

is there a name for this theory, or do you know where it was originally stated?

[pat]

It's been known for a long time, but if you search for smoke rings on this page from the Journal of Pyrotechnics, you'll get one reference.

They got people really thinking about how atoms could be layed out according to this history of physics page.

And, the last post on this page of vortex discussion gives a good explanation of why they are stable.

I searched for "smoke rings" "stability" on google.

[Jay]

Why wouldn't a 4-d tornado follow the laws of analogy? Why wouldn't the top part be a a giant sphere that whirling around a planar axis, along with the rest of the thing?

Many things exist in nature that aren't stable. Just because smoke rings may be stable doesn't necessarily mean that that is the way it would work in 4d.