Satellites Glimpse ultra-powerful "black Hole" whirlpools in Atlantic.

Satellites have shown two mysterious 'black hole'
whirlpools in the South Atlantic ocean - ultra powerful
“vortexes” which suck water down into the depths.
The whirpools - never witnessed before - would suck
down ships, debris and even living creatures, moving 1.3
million cubic metres of water per second.
Two of the black holes - or “maelstroms” - have been
sighted in three months by physicists from Zurich and
Miami.
The powerful vortices of current have been described as
‘maelstroms’ and are ‘mathematical analogues’ for
black holes – which is to say they do exactly the same
with water that black holes do with light.
The discovery could give new insights into how oceanic
currents transport debris and may even have
implications for climate change studies.
Astronomical black holes bend space and time into a
perpetually collapsing vortex. Light itself bends around
them, which enables astronomers to recognise their
existence.
Similarly, these oceanic maelstroms funnel current into
an almost permanent spiral, trapping debris, oil and
potentially living creatures in a body of water. Hardly
anything leaks out.
The scientists used Edgar Allen Poe’s 1841 story ‘A
descent into a Maelstrom’ to describe their discovery:
“The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt
of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into
the mouth of the terrific funnel…”
The ability to apply the same mathematical principles to
water currents on earth as black holes in space is an
unexpected side-effect of the theory of general relativity.
This phenomenon has been observed in the South
Atlantic and South-western Indian Ocean, using satellite
imagery designed to spot the aquatic equivalent of
black hole currents. According to scientists, the
maelstroms are prevalent in this area thanks to the
southbound Agulhas current in the Indian Ocean.
In a three-month period, two perfect matches were
found to mimic black hole behaviour, “We have found
exceptionally coherent material belts in the South
Atlantic, filled with analogues of photon spheres around
black holes,” said George Haller, from the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in Zürich and Francisco Beron-
Vera at the University of Miami in Florida, who worked
on the study.
The phrase ‘photon spheres’ refers to the light that is
trapped around astronomical black holes, and in this
instance is comparable to the rings of debris that are
forming around these ocean maelstroms. As Haller and
Beron-Vera’s findings note, ‘these vortices will capture
and swallow nearby passively floating debris.’
In their research findings, Haller and Beron-Vora express
their surprise at finding real-world examples that hold
so closely to the theoretical equations. ‘Vortices in
turbulence are often envisaged as rotating bodies of
fluid, traveling as coherent islands in an otherwise
incoherent ambient flow. This… …view is appealingly
simple, yet challenging to apply in actual vortex
detection.’
The maelstroms are detected by their rotating edges,
which the scientists found were reliable indicators of the
vortex within, based on pioneering research carried out
by Stephen Hawking on black holes: ‘Intuitively, one
expects that any…vortex in the fluid must contain such
a singularity in its interior, just as all black holes are
expected to contain Penrose-Hawking singularities. This
expectation turns out to be correct’.
The singularities, as they have been termed, last for
months at a time, moving across the ocean without
interference from other currents.
Thus they can transport water of different temperatures
and salinity to other areas of the ocean, potentially
influencing the regional climate.
Haller and Beron-Vera found that the vortices
transported water in a north-western direction 30%
faster than had previously been reckoned – at a rate
equating to 1.3 million cubic metres of water per
second.
In addition, the maelstroms were found to occur four
times deeper in the ocean than previously estimated; the
study found examples as deep as 2000m below the
surface.