Monday, January 31, 2011

Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability, Twisting Contrails And The Lunatic Fringe

A member of the UFO conspiracy set dragged my blogpost from three years ago regarding twisting contrails (as observed by Traci Sotuela in Dixon, CA) into a discussion forum attempting to explain an interesting picture that appears to be of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.

Despite superficial similarities, twisting contrails are a different phenomena, and probably shouldn't be brought up in this context. Part of me wanted to say, "hey, stop!" But it's important to remember that we live in a big, wonderful world full of amazing things, and we can't learn much if we don't compare and contrast things that might look similar, but are, in fact, different.

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