Gadgetory

when we think of tornadoes we tend to synonymously envision the devastation that follows after all with wind speeds approaching 300 miles per hour and vortex diameters of over two miles it seems like the natural thing to do they can level entire towns toss cars ten miles away and even rip up the foundations of concrete buildings but the natural phenomenon though as infrequent as they may appear to be are not unique to earth consider this pulling up a plug from the tub of water creates a vortex but now while it makes sense for the water to move downward what causes the rotation ultimately the billions and billions of water molecules that are being pulled toward a very small opening become repulsed by well billions of other water molecules they bounce off of each other as they attempt to cram themselves into a tighter space as a result the water utilizes a vortex to reduce the amount of intermolecular friction and more importantly increase the total travel time between the water at the surface of the tub and the plug at the base of it you can try this at home yourself at first lifting up the plug won't do much of anything to the water at the surface yet over time disturbances at the surface will eventually yield this spiraling tornado effect the point of this analogy is similar behaviors can be experienced in gases aka atmospheres of planets when water evaporates it must absorb heat this is what allows each individual water molecule to break its polar bonds with the surrounding water molecules think about what it takes to boil a pot of water water has a very high heat capacity meaning that it requires a relatively large amount of energy in order to increase its relative temperature by just one degree now let's envision this process taking place in the opposite direction when water condenses that is changes from a boiling stage to a liquid state it must release a large amount of heat rather than absorb a large amount of heat when this happens in a supercell a cloud that has a considerably high altitude typically a cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud cold air can do the same but move downward toward the surface so you can kind of see things play out here the hot air is less dense than the moisture and cold air in clouds when the cold air and moisture are forced downward fast this can pull those clouds with it and form a vortex the vortex becomes a tornado once it finally touches the ground so this whole process can also be said of dust devils which are just basically tornadoes minus the moisture so at first a dust devil on Mars doesn't seem all that strange I mean Mars is mostly a desert right but when you consider this the fact that Mars has almost no atmosphere all things get a little strange in fact our own moon would rival Mars for who has the denser atmosphere scientists at NASA say that if you were an astronaut on the surface of Mars and experienced a dust devil up close you wouldn't feel much wind but you would certainly feel the rocks and sand and other large debris that would be carried along with the dust devil itself so where else in the solar system do you envision tornadoes and dust devils forming certainly not a planet like mercury right a place like Venus seems to be a good candidate it has clouds it has an atmosphere it has high winds but it's a very very harsh and cruel place just watch this video to learn more about that does Jupiter's Great Red Spot count as a tornado or is that more of a hurricane I mean what's really the difference between the two others in fact that one's really big and one's pretty small and compact Neptune is dark spot maybe Saturn's hexagonal vortexes at its pulse there are several candidates to choose from just an our solar system alone and maybe someday we'll be able to narrow those results this is science studio thanks for learning with this