Vincent Van Gogh Taught Some Physics In ‘Starry Night’, Scientists Find Out
Photo 199967867 © Gianni Tonazzini | Dreamstime.com
Who knew that Vincent van Gogh was not just a starry-eyed artist but also an accidental physicist? His 1889 masterpiece The Starry Night is suddenly turning heads in the scientific community for staying true to life.
Recent research has revealed that the swirling night sky in the iconic painting closely follows the mathematical principles of turbulence. So while van Gogh was capturing the beauty of the stars, he was also unwittingly illustrating complex fluid dynamics. The study, published in Physics of Fluids, was a collaboration between researchers from China and France, who analyzed the luminous patterns and brushstrokes in the artwork.
They found that the swirling patterns align with Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence, which describes how energy moves between large and small scales in turbulent flows. It’s a process that typically occurs in gases and liquids, and somehow, van Gogh captured it perfectly in paint despite the concept being formulated decades after his time.
Image via Museum of Modern Art / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
By looking into the luminance in the masterpiece, the researchers found that it followed a -5/3 power law, a hallmark of Kolmogorov’s theory. Essentially, van Gogh’s whirls of color weren’t just for dramatic effect—they accurately depict the way energy behaves in turbulent systems, like the Earth’s atmosphere.
Even more fascinating, the study found hints of Batchelor-type turbulence. In layperson’s terms, van Gogh managed to depict not just one, but multiple layers of complex fluid behavior, all while peering out of his asylum window in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
This discovery sheds new light on van Gogh’s artistic process. Despite his well-documented mental health struggles, the Dutch painter possessed an uncanny ability to observe and recreate natural phenomena. His depiction of the night sky, with its dynamic clouds and twinkling stars, captures the essence of atmospheric turbulence—the very thing that makes stars twinkle and light scatter in our atmosphere.
[via Popular Mechanics, Earth.com, Live Science, images via various sources]
