Vortices... There is another world you have not yet encountered. In the early and mid 1800s physicists deeply explored vortices as the basis for all ideas about how the world worked. The most successful result revolutionized all our lives. It was by James Clerk Maxwell. As he was completing his "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" several of his associates with a math background told him to ditch the references to vortices and just keep his two basic functions CURL and essentially splaying out (see the vortex?) that are the fundamental functions of magnetism, electricity, and light. The electromagnetic field. He published his Treatise in 1879. He agreed, and ditched the references to the field of vortices which he agreed he did not need to describe his laws.

Here is an article I wrote on Maxwell if you are not familiar with him.

I have held to the view that vortices have more to give. Good to see others have as well.

https://medium.com/liecatcher/who-is-james-clerk-maxwell-c14a956d530

But I am a computational cognitive neuroscientist. We can predict, based on how brains compute, that something like the 'superformula' will (did) happen, and explain the science of why there is always going to be more knowledge strictly because of how brains compute. Here is how your brain computes. And the evidence in plain sight that it does compute this way with the zillions of little vortices it spins up and down EVERY SECOND between your ears.

https://medium.com/liecatcher/how-your-brain-computes-41ebe7428ff9

Thanks for the references to Johan Geilis. I am familiar with his concept, but didn't know who the guy was behind it. A helix, of course, is just a vortex in a hole where the diameter doesn't change.

And, in case you haven't figured it out yet, an electromagnetic transverse wave (e.g., light or radio) paints just such a moving helical vortex in a fixed diameter that can be alternatively characterized as eternal helical spinning in such a tube at the speed of light. Twas Maxwell that coined the term "transverse electromagnetic wave." And this turned into the superformula of his day.

I've argued elsewhere that thought of as a fixed diameter vortex, you can make sense of electric and magnetic attraction, and repulsion. Throw away the vortex, and all you get is a (+1,-1) and angular momentum, or "spin."