Subscribe to CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter for the latest on groundbreaking discoveries and scientific progress in the cosmos. Scientists have achieved a significant breakthrough in unraveling the intricate pattern and structure of turbulence—a natural occurrence found in various fluid systems including water flow, ocean currents, chemical reactions, blood circulation, storm formations, smoke plumes, and even stellar plasma. Despite the chaotic and erratic nature of turbulent flow, physicists have long strived to grasp and model this phenomenon using mathematical equations and computational tools. Yet, achieving a precise simulation of complex turbulent flows has remained a daunting challenge, defying researchers’ understanding for over two centuries.
In a recent study published in Science Advances on January 29, an international team of scientists introduced a novel method inspired by quantum computing to simulate turbulence. This innovative approach holds the promise of revolutionizing the study and prediction of turbulence, potentially enhancing the design of aircraft, vehicles, propellers, artificial organs, and refining weather forecasting accuracy, noted Nik Gourianov, the lead researcher from the University of Oxford.
Gourianov emphasized that while turbulence has long presented an unsolved puzzle requiring wind tunnels for practical applications like aircraft wing design, advancements such as theirs are gradually breaking new ground in this field. Unlike conventional methods that rely on deterministic algorithms with fixed initial conditions, the team’s probabilistic modeling of turbulence incorporates random fluctuations, offering a fresh perspective on this complex phenomenon.
Employing a quantum-inspired algorithm to analyze turbulent flows, the researchers achieved computational results in a fraction of the time compared to traditional methods on supercomputers. Quantum computers, which process information using quantum bits (Qbits) capable of representing multiple states simultaneously, enabled the team to leverage tensor networks for simulating a quantum system and accelerating computations.
James Beattie, a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University’s department of astrophysical sciences, commended the team’s innovative approach for simplifying complex calculations and optimizing memory usage in their fluid simulations. Beattie, uninvolved in the research, highlighted the remarkable progress achieved, underscoring the significant leap in computational efficiency and memory optimization exemplified by this study.
“This is an exciting advancement in modeling turbulence,” he said. The mystery of turbulence is a complex one, with the latest study representing “amazing progress,” yet it does not provide the full story, as noted by Beattie. The study fails to address the scale-related issues, particularly how turbulent vortices of different sizes interact with one another. Turbulence is a multi-scale problem, spanning from thousands of light-years to less than a foot. Understanding how these scales communicate with each other is crucial.
Simulating turbulent fluids is challenging due to the need to resolve numerous scales in the simulation, leading to high memory usage and computational demands, necessitating the use of large supercomputers. The recent research has impressed Yongxiang Huang, a researcher at Xiamen University in China, who praised Gourianov and the team for their innovative method that reduces memory usage and computational complexity. However, Huang agrees that the study does not provide a complete picture due to the vast range of scales involved.
Turbulence is famously known as the oldest unsolved problem in physics, with Werner Heisenberg pondering its mysteries until his final days. Gourianov believes that the new technique’s computational advantages open up previously unexplored areas of turbulence physics, offering new opportunities for scientific investigation. Nevertheless, the enigma of turbulence remains unsolved, requiring revolutionary algorithms or computing hardware beyond current capabilities.
Gourianov emphasized that despite the efforts of many brilliant scientists, the puzzle of turbulence remains far from being resolved. To stay updated on more CNN news and newsletters, sign up at CNN.com.
