This is what researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. hope to achieve with a toy-sized model of a hybrid plane. The image above shows a 5.8 percent scale model of a futuristic hybrid wing body, coated in fluorescent oil before being blasted with air.

The team sent the hybrid plane through a subsonic wind tunnel to document and “see” the flow patterns of air when it passes over and around the model.