
Black Hole Analogue Discovered in South Atlantic - mpweiher
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/518416/black-hole-analogue-discovered-in-south-atlantic-ocean/
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Groxx
That is one of the biggest stretches I've read in a while. Bravo.

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nhebb
tl;dr (emphasis added):

" _Solutions to this problem turn out to be mathematically equivalent to
photon spheres around black holes_ in cosmology [...] As an application, we
uncover super-coherent material eddies in the South Atlantic ..."

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.2352](http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.2352)

I'm not a physicist, but I interpret this to mean that it isn't an analogy of
the gravitational pull of a black hole. Instead, the fluid motion around black
holes and large oceanic eddies are mathematically similar.

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wldlyinaccurate
I wonder if the author knows that Edgar Allan Poe's _A Descent into the
Maelström_ is entirely fictional...

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teddyh
Not _entirely_ fictional.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskstraumen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskstraumen)

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twiceaday
I was hoping this would be about "Dumb Holes" where the medium moves inwards
faster than the speed of sound thus not letting any sound escape.

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spiritplumber
OK, so does that mean we get to make giant robots? I can forgive Guillermo Del
Toro for getting the wrong ocean.

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ekianjo
I can't forgive Del Toro for making an horrible movie about robots anyway.
That was painful to watch.

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Vaskivo
Aww, come on! Just try turning on your "eight year old switch" and you'll find
that it's a really enjoyable movie.

I also believe it's a great family movie that's not a comedy or animation
movie (or sappy Disney family movie). The setting is smart enough for a grown
up to enjoy (the movie has a lot of "show don't tell" that justify, to some
degree, some of the more implausible elements) and the plot is simple enough
for a young kid to understand.

With that said, I'm a big fun of the Giant Robot genre of anime, so I probably
enjoyed the movie more than the usual moviegoer.

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contingencies
Does anyone else see the ultimate artifice of a mathematical world of pure
logic build upon physically grounded computers .. ie. all modern computing ..
as a direct philosophical parallel to this physical phenomena? As change is
the only constant, eventually the external system will shift, the boundaries
enabling inner-equilibria will break down, and chaos pours in.

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moocowduckquack
Don't worry. That's just the point where you have to turn it off and on again.

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calcsam
Forgive my physics ignorance here, but black holes can suck in matter by
becoming arbitarily more dense. This isn't possible for such sinkholes, so how
can they suck in stuff without expanding?

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damian2000
I think they refer to areas of water that are basically still, not moving sort
of like the eye of a hurricane.

> they are essentially independent of their environment, surrounded by a
> seemingly impenetrable boundary and with little, if any, of the fluid inside
> them leaking out.

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hownottowrite
[http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/December/1012070...](http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/December/10120701.asp)

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eruditely
Needs at least some empirical validation/dis-confirmation.

