Scientists find 'black holes' in the sea

Scientists believe they have found some of the largest ocean eddies on Earth, similar to the mysterious "black holes" of space.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Miami have reportedly found the ocean eddies in the southern Atlantic Ocean and say they are mathematically equivalent to black holes.

According to RedOrbit, an ocean eddy is a huge whirlpool created when water flows past an obstacle. Ocean eddies have influence over the Earth's climate and are over 90-miles in diameter, rotating and drifting across the sea.

There is a rise in the number of eddies in the Southern Ocean, increasing the northward transport of warm and salty water.

Scientists believe these ocean eddies could moderate the negative impact of melting sea ice in a warming climate.

ETH Life reports that black holes are objects in space with a mass so great that they attract everything that comes close to them - nothing can escape, not even light. With ocean eddies, nothing can escape from the inside of the loops, not even water.

Using mathematical models, the researchers isolated water-transporting eddies from a sequence of satellite observations.

They detected their rotating edges, which the scientists found were indicators of the whirlpool within.

"Mathematicians have been trying to understand such peculiarly coherent vortices in turbulent flows for a very long time," said George Haller, Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at ETH Zurich, in a statement.

According to Earth Sky, the results are expected to help resolve a number of oceanic puzzles, ranging from climate-related questions to the spread of environmental pollution patterns.

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