Wind Tunnel Bulletin #08: Action, please!

<p>Today, time means schedules, clamped into a grid of days, hours and minutes. Instead, the ancients saw time as a river. But maybe time is wind?</p> <p>We dedicate our new bulletin to the many actors in and around a wind tunnel and particularly in our own wind tunnel. A new team has been formed; three new members have joined the Research Focus in Transdisciplinarity; a scientist was in residence; and an associate doctorate is underway (<em>Update</em>, pp. 150–153). A new group also means a new network of actors producing a new idea of the wind tunnel. That is what the ANT, a prominent methodology in science theory, implies with its famous slogan “Follow the actors.” Yes, we follow the actors of the wind tunnel: the <em>Models</em> that resist the wind (pp. 154–155) and the <em>People</em> who set up the wind (pp. 156–159). The <em>Camera</em>, which is the subject of our new research project, and its twin sister <em>Light</em> (pp. 160–161), which might be the most underestimated actor in the wind tunnel. Surely <em>Instruments</em> act in wind tunnels (pp. 162–163), since they measure the wind, and – invisibly, but everywhere – the <em>Wind</em> itself (pp. 164–165). In this issue we also want to point out the blatant gender imbalance in the wind-tunnel business. Therefore we dedicate our Frontispiece to the first female professor of physics in Europe, who studied and published mostly – quelle surprise! – on fluid dynamics (pp. 148–149). All these actors, including us, form a family of sisters and brothers. And so we say “Action, please!” to let us all come together and to become ourselves in front of and behind the camera. “Action, please!” Our metaphor and time machine, the wind tunnel, will sync us.</p>