It comes blasting out of the blue on your airplane flight: sudden bumpiness and sometimes even a violent plummeting. It arrives without warning, and it can be more than frightening, since it causes tens of millions of dollars in injury claims every year.

A new turbulence detection system now being tested is alerting pilots to patches of rough air as they fly through clouds. The system, designed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and tested by United Airlines on commercial flights, is designed to better protect passengers from injuries caused by turbulence while reducing flight delays and lowering aviation costs.

Ever spilled your drink on an airline due to turbulence? Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are finding new ways to understand the phenomenon - both on Earth and on Titan.

More than a mile beneath the Atlantic’s surface, roughly halfway between New York and Portugal, seawater rushing through the narrow gullies of an underwater mountain range much as winds gust between a city’s tall buildings is generating one of the most turbulent areas ever observed in the deep ocean.

Picture the flow of water over a rock. At very low speeds, the water looks like a smooth sheet skimming the rock's surface. As the water rushes faster, the flow turns into turbulent, roiling whitewater that can overturn your raft.Turbulence is important in virtually all phenomena involving fluid flow, such as air and gas mixing in an engine, ocean waves breaking on a cliff and air whipping across the surface of a vehicle.