Movement Patterns in Whirling Dervishes' Skirts Linked to Force that Makes Cyclones Spin [VIDEO]

Researchers have successfully reproduced in mathematical form the patterns of movement created by the flowing surface of the skirts of the Whirling Dervishes, a popular tourist attraction in Turkey and religious movement commemorating the 13th century Persian poet known as Rumi. 

The Dervishes spin around in a single spot, creating patterns that don't always appear to make sense.

"The dancers don't do much but spin around at a fixed speed, but their skirts show these very striking, long-lived patterns with sharp cusp-like features which seem rather counterintuitive," co-author of the study James Hanna, from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, said in a statement.

Writing in the New Journal of Physics, Hanna and her colleagues say they have cracked the code, citing a force linking the rotation of the Earth with the direction of weather patterns.

Known as the Coriolis force, the effect is created by the Earth's rotations and accounts for the deflection of objects on a rotating surface. On a macro level, the Coriolis force causes winds to be deflected clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and is the reason cyclones rotate.

Applying this to the Dervishes' skirts, Hanna said: "Because the sheet is conically symmetric, material can flow along its surface without stretching or deforming. You can think of the rotating Earth, for example, with the air of the atmosphere free to flow around it.

"The flow of a sheet of material is much more restrictive than the flow of the atmosphere, but nonetheless it results in Coriolis forces. What we found was that this flow, and the associated Coriolis forces, plays a crucial role in forming the dervish-like patterns."