Nobel laureate in physics Richard Feynman once described turbulence as “the most important unsolved problem of classical physics.”

Understanding turbulence in classical fluids like water and air is difficult partly because of the challenge in identifying the vortices swirling within those fluids. Locating vortex tubes and tracking their motion could greatly simplify the modeling of turbulence.

But that challenge is easier in quantum fluids, which exist at low enough temperatures that quantum mechanics — which deals with physics on the scale of atoms or subatomic particles — govern their behavior.