92 fl The Secret Lij2 fe NatureWonderland, through the coils of the UPA, about three times counter-
clockwise, then along another spiral in a clockwise sense, feeling him-
self being swept along, losing count of the turns. Deciding to follow
the rotation of the thread as seen from outside rather than by moving
along it, Ron went back up to the top of the UPA and got out of its
vortex.This enabled him to establish an essential feature of the threads:
they were one single thread.
Following a few clockwise turns, as seen from above, the path went
down a narrow vortex, made a very tight turn, came up around itself
in a 180-degree turn, went back up, winding about itself for perhaps
another half turn, then made a violent corkscrew motion and passed
out through the wall of the walnut-UPA as what appeared to be a me-
andering second thread. This established that the two separate threads
observed outside the UPA were actually part of one continuous thread.
At no time was a break seen in the path. So where did the bubbles
come from and where did they go? Moving back close to a thread,
Ron noticed that as a bubble in the thread entered the walnut it got
suddenly larger and became a puff of mist.This occurred at the surface
and caused a slight shock wave to dissipate inside the walnut while the
bubble disappeared before reaching the graceful gentle curve inside
its host. On the other side of the walnut, relatively smaller bubbles
streamed gently out through the other end of the thread, appearing as
if fiom nothing.
On closer inspection, the bubbles seemed to Ron to be created in
the corkscrew spiral near the exit because there was no sign of bubbles
at the start of this spiral. As the bubbles flowed back into the walnut,
instead of forming a puff like those entering from the other thread,
they simply shrank down to nothing.
Whenever bubbles reversed direction, the tail would fade away, to
reappear on the opposite side. On the bubble's bow, small concentric
circles like shock waves formed along the surface, like a cap. Bubbles
seemed to consist of nothing but a boundary surface, with no struc-
tural features inside. Bubbles in what to Ron was thread number two
started out as mere squiggles of energy, pointed at both ends.Then the
squiggle got fatter, turning into the stable tadpole shape.