Extraordinary and beautiful examples of toroidal vortices produced by dolphins, beluga whales, humpback whales, volcanoes, hydrogen bombs, and man. A toroidal vortex, also called a vortex ring, is a region of rotating fluid moving through the same or different fluid where the flow pattern takes on a toroidal (doughnut) shape. The movement of the fluid is about the poloidal or circular axis of the doughnut, in a twisting vortex motion. Examples of this phenomenon are a smoke ring or a microburst. Vortex rings were first mathematically analysed by the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, in his paper of 1867 On...
