The Self-Tailing Winch and Torus Tension

Dr. Steven B Halls | November 2025

This material was originally posted to Facebook on 2025-11-26 - view original post.

The self tailing winch (for sailing) seems like a good analogy for the center of "churning..." pictograms on B and C, and I chose those because the artist added in some extra wave going around the center column. See my previous post with more "churning of the ocean milk" and some cross-linking examples of tori to make a barrier. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DE6Kz1NXb/

A self-tailing winch for sailing is a good analogy for the center of churning pictograms, where rotation happens inside a torus. Connected spirals spinning the same direction each pull on the tube to create tension, which may be the mechanism holding 2D barrier surfaces together, and spiral tubes that taper on each end are visible in some images.

Some artists apparently were already thinking about rotation happening, so my "discovery" is akin to discovering a nearby bakery, but it makes me happy anyway. I am really pleased to add "tension" to the symbolism vocabulary. In the past, connected spirals like image D, E and especially J were confusing. One spiral seems to outflow and connect to the next spiral that seems to inflow. That's likely true, but if all the spirals are spinning the same direction (like image K), then each is pulling on the tube to create tension, and this may be the mechanism to hold 2D barrier surfaces together strongly. Same for surfaces of flux tubes.

Image G has carefully made spiral tubes that taper on each end, which I wasn't expecting to see, and also on image I. I'll be watching for more examples.

Is there any reason why a flux tube crossing interstellar space would need to stay tiny? Is there a mechanism why it might inflate in that part of the journey? Posing a question, in hopes an answer crosses my path in the future. More examples: https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/churning/ https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/crosslink/ https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/connected-spirals/ https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/spinning-rotating/ This topic is about something rotating inside every torus, and the hypothesis that some of the horizontal outflows of a torus are tubes that can connect to other tori and cross-link with them.