Nature hasn’t revealed all of its mysteries to humanity, and it may never will. But that can also be considered part of its beauty, as the great physicist Richard Feynman once suggested. However, scientists often uncover nature’s secrets, and a recent event proves it.
The blue whirl fire has puzzled scientists for years, but now they may finally have an answer for how the phenomenon can emerge from fire tornadoes.
Blue whirl can be used as a source of energy
Until scientists figure out how to use the blue whirl as a source of energy, they have first to understand as much as possible how the phenomenon works. Scientists from the University of Maryland created a computer simulation of the blue whirl and started to compare it with the flame forming in the lab.
The outcome was that the whirl is made of “a diffusion flame and premixed rich and lean flames — all of which meet in a fourth structure, a triple flame that appears as a whirling blue ring,”.
Xiao Zhang, one of the scientists involved in the study, announces tht something big is on its way:
“This is a first step to applying the blue whirl to a more practical application,”
Joseph Chung, another scientist involved in the study, says that blue whirls have not been seen in nature. There’s still a mystery for why and under what conditions the blue whirls emerge in nature.
The fire itself is one of nature’s most interesting phenomenons. Known as the quick oxidation of a material in the exothermic process of combustion, fire releases light, heat, and various reaction products. The heat occurs because of the conversion of the weak double bond in molecular oxygen, O2.
The new study was published in Science Advances.
