"In the search for the miraculous, we find that its often right before our very eyes but we fail to see it. " - Jason L. Silva
Perhaps a cytoplasm vortex at the nano scale differs from water vortices at the macro scale that people are used to observing, so that evidence of them goes unrecognized for 40 years? The "internal helix" in centrioles was first observed in the 70s, or, the first mention I have seen at least is from 1967.
Water molecules have a width of 0.275 nanometers, and the centriole is 500 nm high and 250 nm wide, and the width is dynamic since the entire centriole as a turbine-pump contracts to pump cytosol through the central axis also causing it to rotate similar to a turbine.
In most vortices a strong sub pressure (vacuum) is generated in the center, and concentrates substances, seen as a string of particles following the sub pressure. In the cytosol vortex within the centriole as a turbine-pump, the vacuum string is about the width of a microtubule wall (see middle and bottom image), roughly 5 nm, the same width as 18 water molecules if each has a diameter of 0.275 nm. Because the centriole itself is rotating, the sub pressure string in the cytosol vortex, the part of the vortex that is discernible in electron photographs, is spiralling down the central axis of the centriole, also taking a more turbulent path at times (see bottom image. )
