The vortex atoms

Abstract

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the emergence of vortices in fluids was a challenging topic. Mastering vortices in the laboratory with coloured smoke or water had become accessible since the late 1850s, but these sporadic experiments did not help to provide an insight into the laws of vorticity. Thus, theoreticians tried to grasp the problem mathematically; first and foremost, Hermann von Helmholtz, in his seminal and widely recognized paper in 1858, postulated the existence of vortices based on vortex strings (Wirbelfäden) in an ideal fluid – a frictionless and incompressible fluid with constant density. Because of these idealized conditions Helmholtz arrived at a similarly idealistic vortex theory claiming the eternal existence of vortices in ideal fluids. If vortex strings in ideal fluids, e.g. the ether, exist in perpetuity, then vortices are assumed to be more perennial then atoms. It was William Thomson, the later Lord Kelvin, who pleaded vortex atoms with “infinitely perennial specific quality”. These observations led to the development of an early “string theory”. Although completely illusory, this string theory occupied the greatest minds of this time.