  We study the behavior of threads and polymers in a turbulent flow. These
objects have finite spatial extension, so the flow along them differs slightly.
The corresponding drag forces produce a finite average stretching and the
thread is stretched most of the time. Nevertheless, the probability of
shrinking fluctuations is significant and is known to decay only as a
power-law. We show that the exponent of the power law is a universal number
independent of the statistics of the flow. For polymers the coil-stretch
transition exists: the flow must have a sufficiently large Lyapunov exponent to
overcome the elastic resistance and stretch the polymer from the coiled state
it takes otherwise. The probability of shrinking from the stretched state above
the transition again obeys a power law but with a non-universal exponent. We
show that well above the transition the exponent becomes universal and derive
the corresponding expression. Furthermore, we demonstrate synchronization: the
end-to-end distances of threads or polymers above the transition are
synchronized by the flow and become identical. Thus, the transition from
Newtonian to non-Newtonian behavior in dilute polymer solutions can be seen as
an ordering transition.
