"Turbulence was a problem with pedigree. The great physicists all thought about it, formally or informally. A smooth flow breaks up into whorls and eddies. Wild patterns disrupt the boundary between fluid and solid. Engery drains rapidly from large-scale motions to small. Why? The best ideas came from mathematicians; for most physicists, turbulence was too dangerous to waste time on. It seemed almost unknowable. There was a story about the quantum theorist Werner Heisenburg, on his deathbed, declaring that he will have two questions for God: why relativity and why turbulence. Heisenburg says, "I really think he may have an answer to the first question."
~Chaos, James Gleick
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