Unusual Bubbles Friday

When I used to magically find myself at the Children's Museum in Boston growing up (I never knew how I got there, I just would occasionally all of a sudden realize that I was somewhere amazing), my favorite room was the bubble room, in which giant tables of soapy water waited to be turned into giant bubbles with all kinds of interesting bubble tools. My poor parents.

I had no idea that dolphins also enjoy bubbles. Don't believe me? Check out that smirk they always have. And watch this video:

This is a curious behavior that seems to have been observed pretty often in dolphins, who are apparently way too intelligent and good at hydrodynamics for us to trust them. Here's a quick explanation of what's going on, provided by Deep Ocean:

"Dolphins create bubble rings by blowing air in a water vortex ring: by flipping a fin they create a vortex ring of water. The then blow air in the ring, which goes to the center of the vortex ring. In the water vortex ring the natural location of the air is in the center of the vortex. When air and water move in a circular path like they do in the vortex ring, air and water are separated due to the centripetal force. Since density of water is larger than air, water moves at the outside, while the air ends up in the middle."

It's basically like blowing smoke rings. Only underwater. By dolphins. If you're interested in the science behind this and want to use some formulas to make your own rings, say, in the bathtub, click here. Humans can apparently make them, too. If you just like looking at pretty pictures, however, here's a progressive image:

Then there's this video, covering a completely different field of strange bubbles. This time, we're looking at a spheroid of water suspended in the zero gravity of space. Basically, it's like an inverse bubble, made of water suspended in air instead of air suspended in water:

Unfortunately, the miracle you're witnessing is completely overshadowed by the narrating astronaut's voice. I can't believe they let a guy with a voice like this into space....if I had to share an upside-down treadmill with him, I'd absolutely get the "space jitters." It's like this guy went up into space and then the singularity came and killed everyone on earth and now it's 10 years later and this guy is still just quietly orbiting by himself with no one to talk to but his giant water bubble and a Flip cam.