They also occur in wind patterns, including hurricanes and tornadoes. They are present in air and flame forms known as vortexes and whorls. And they occur in the way things fall in the atmosphere, from leaves to aircraft. In the human body, the spiral pattern of the heart's bioelectric impulses causes the chambers to beat with a spiral pulsing rhythm. Brain waves, comprised of neuron impulses, seem to flow along the neurons and down the spinal cord in a spiral pattern.
Some evidence shows bioelectrical spiraling in the labor impulses during birth.
Finally, we see spiral forms omnipresent throughout the visible and invisible universe, in galaxies, accretion disks around black holes, coalescing interstellar clouds and many other forms of matter and energy. We need to discover how and why flames propagate in microgravity, and under what conditions flame propagation changes. The initial and on-going basic reason for NASA's combustion studies is to learn about spacecraft fire safety. Readers can learn more about flames in space at the Microgravity Combustion Research home page .