“Starry Night”The painting, created by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in 1889, is one of the most intriguing works in the art world. Not only is it an impressive flashback, but the exciting swirling sky seems to provide a detailed understanding of the physics of turbulence. Now, this is confirmed by a new, in-depth analysis. The brushstrokes in Van Gogh’s work correspond to the fluid dynamics of the Earth’s atmosphere and perhaps the wider universe.
“[Картина] “It demonstrates a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” says physicist Yunxiang Huang of Xiamen University in China. “Van Gogh’s accurate representation of turbulence could be derived from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere, or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”
We can’t usually see it with our eyes, but the Earth’s atmosphere is a constantly moving, constantly changing, churning mass of fluid. Clouds can reveal this constant activity, but a deep understanding of atmospheric turbulence often requires instruments that carefully map its invisible movements.
We certainly cannot measure the atmospheric turbulence that Van Gogh depicted in his paintings. “Starry Night” But a team of scientists led by physicist Yinxiang Ma of Xiamen University was able to measure the spots to see if they matched previous research that found the turbulence depicted in the image was consistent with a theory published in the 1940s by Soviet mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov.
“Unlike previous studies that examined only part of this picture, this study considers all vortices in the picture and only the vortices according to the Richardson-Kolmogorov cascade picture of turbulence,” the researchers write in their paper.
“[Наш] the result shows that Van Gogh observed the actual flows very carefully; hence not only ““Starry Night”and their relative distance and density correspond to the physical law governing turbulent flows.”
The researchers used a high-resolution digital image of the artwork to examine the brushstrokes of 14 vortices and whirlpools in the sky depicted in the painting as an indication of atmospheric turbulence, similar to the movement of leaves in an autumn vortex.
For each of these strokes, they carefully examined the spatial properties of the paint as well as its brightness, and compared this to Kolmorogov’s theory of turbulence, which describes how energy continually flows from larger vortices to smaller ones before dissipating.
They found that the vortices in the image meet the requirements of Kolmogorov’s turbulence scaling law, which was also established by previous researchers.
But by analyzing the smallest scales of the spots, the team found that the model was also consistent with the power spectrum of scalars described by Australian mathematician George Batchelor in 1959. They found that scalars, or scaled components (i.e. eddies of different sizes), in turbulence should exhibit a power spectrum corresponding to their size.
A previous study also revealed that turbulence existed. “Starry Night”, It can also be seen in molecular clouds in space, where stars are born. A new study confirms that the artist’s intuitive understanding of nature’s physics may be deeper than we thought.
“One of the greatest Post-Impressionist painters, Vincent Van Gogh, observed turbulent currents very carefully: he was able to reproduce in his painting not only the size of the vortices/whirlpools, but also their relative distance and density,” the researchers write.
Future experimental studies on drawing turbulent flows could help us understand how the artist managed to capture turbulence not only in his depiction of the sky, but also in the physical act of drawing. The study was published on: Fluid Physics.
Source: Port Altele
