Updated: 4/24/07

OK, so this very cool photo is not about bad guys, but we thought our readers would appreciate it, anyway. These are two vortices (whirling motions) caused by the wingtips of a passing C-17 Globemaster III over the Atlantic Ocean last year. Sometimes called a "smoke angel," the patterns are visible by flares the plane just released, which are trailing down into the sea. Kudos to the U.S. Air Force's Sgt. Russell E. Cooley IV, who shot this pic.

And thanks to the Bad Guys blog reader who kindly sent in the link (and wants to stay anonymous). Credit where credit is due: We first saw this on a site called the Chamorro Bible, which has some other striking photographs. For more on the physics of vortices and related phenomena, check out the Gallery of Fluid Mechanics.

Correction: The vortices are caused not by jet engines, as originally written, but by the aircraft's wingtips. Thanks to Bad Guys reader Mike Broadbent for pointing that out. (This is why I'm a writer and not a physicist.)