Although physics is successful in grasping many remote and extreme phenomena, it is often of little help with common problems encountered in life. In De rerum natura, Lucretius describes the random motion of dust seen in a ray of sunlight, an early hint at the motion of atoms in a vacuum. Yet nowadays, we know more about atoms than about the turbulent air motion revealed by dust.

A direct numerical simulation would provide gigabytes of raw data, but this would just be the starting point. Statistical properties, such as mean transport of air mass, of temperature and of chemicals, must be considered. Wall friction and noise emission (pressure fluctuations) are relevant in aerodynamics. The gradients of wind and concentration of transported chemicals have intriguing, intermittent fluctuations, which can control chemical reactions. The emergence of coherent flow structures is also remarkable, but is often difficult to characterize unambiguously.

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