A rogue wave is a tower of water that appears out of nowhere in a sea of smaller waves, and researchers are still uncertain about how they form. Experiments have produced them in water tanks with mechanical systems such as paddles, but now a team has generated rogue waves more realistically, using wind. The observations support the commonly held notion that a self-focusing effect can drive rogue wave formation. The new experimental technique could help researchers refine predictions of rogue waves, which threaten ships and drilling platforms.
Rogue waves were long considered to be a sailors' myth, but in 1995, a 25-meter-high wave was recorded by instruments on an oil platform in the North Sea [1]. That freak occurrence inspired researchers to recreate rogue waves in the lab. Typically, those experiments involved long, straight wave tanks with mechanical wave generators, such as paddles, that created wave trains with a specific wavelength.
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