It seems that analogies between fluid flow and other physical processes continue to proliferate. Add to that list the analogy between a hydraulic jump (think smooth-shallow to rough-deep transition in a sink under a running tap) to a white hole (think black hole running backwards in time). Physicists at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France recently showed through "...an experimental demonstration that the circular hydraulic jump represents a hydrodynamic white hole...".

Hydraulic Jump in a SinkImage License: Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) by James Kilfiger

They postulate that the equations that describe a hydraulic jump are exactly equivalent to those that describe a white hole. I know fluid mechanics is important to many practical applications, but could this be more evidence that the elusive grand theory of everything is wrapped up in the governing equations of fluid flow? :-)

Notes

• Source: Wired
• Paper: G. Jannes, R. Piquet, P. Maissa, C. Mathis, G. Rousseaux, "Experimental demonstration of the supersonic-subsonic bifurcation in the circular jump: A hydrodynamic white hole", arXiv:1010.1701 [physics.flu-dyn]
• Other fluid analogies:
  • Shock wave - traffic and crowd movement
  • Hydraulic computer to model the economy
• Model hydraulic jumps in Caedium: Free-Surface Tank-Filling CFD Simulation