Flow at Ultra-High Reynolds and Rayleigh Numbers: A Status Report

Because of their extremely low viscosity, liquid helium and ultra-cold helium gas provide ideal media for fundamental studies of fluid flow and turbulence at extremely high Reynolds numbers. Such flows occur in aerospace applications (satellite reentry) and other extreme conditions, where they are difficult to study. A cryogenic-helium wind tunnel would allow one to model these flows in a laboratory at much more benign conditions. Such studies have not been feasible because, using these flu...