“Starry Night, a famous painting by Van Gogh that is not only beautiful. but convey an understanding of physicsAbout eddy currents (turbulent flow) very well So impressive.”
In 1888, Vincent Van Gogh had to be admitted to a sanatorium in Arles after suffering from various mental illnesses. It led to the incident that many people had heard about: Van Gogh used a knife to cut off his left ear in agony.
During those tragic times, he created works of art that have become famous to this day: ‘Starry Night’ was painted in June 1889, but shortly thereafter, in July 1890, he took his own life by shooting himself. (Didn’t die immediately. but died 2 days later)
However, the work he left behind has left today’s scientists in awe of his abilities. According to a report just published in the journal Physics of Fluids, Van Gogh demonstrated his understanding of eddy currents in nature, both large and small, in line with current physics evidence with incredible precision. The law was not established until 52 years later.
“This image reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” said Yongxiang Huang, a research team member from Xiamen University in China. Van Gogh’s It may come from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere. Or it could be an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”
turbulence in nature
There are many hidden dynamics of flow and turbulence in nature, from the swirls of hurricanes. to Jupiter’s enormous storms Scientists have observed this phenomenon since the process of star formation in the dust clouds of the universe. to small molecules that are invisible to the naked eye
But until then, he survived no matter how hard he tried. No theory can fully explain turbulence because it is unpredictable, even Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said. that it is “The most important unresolved problem of classical physics.”
But in general Turbulence involves sudden, violent movement within air or water. They often resemble vortexes. In the 1940s, Russian physicist Andrei Kolmogorov identified a mathematical link to this phenomenon.
It is related to the fluctuation of velocity in the flow with time. and the rate of energy loss in the form of friction. This has caused rapid progress to the point where today this phenomenon is called ‘Kolmogorov scaling’
Simply put, Some turbulent flows exhibit continuous energy. Large currents transfer some of their energy to smaller currents. Conversely, small currents transfer energy to smaller currents, creating smaller ‘vortexes’.
Some scientists have long believed that Van Gogh’s paintings in particular ‘Starry Night’ probably has a hidden truth about it. However, no one has ever been able to prove it, which has caused a lot of debate.
“Our study helps resolve the ongoing debate about whether the moving sky in this famous painting reflects real physics phenomena,” Huang said.
From the tip of the brush to the physics of science
Earlier in 2019, two Australian undergraduates performed a mathematical analysis of Starry Night images. and concluded that it exhibits the same turbulence as the molecular clouds from which stars form. It refers to images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
It turned out that the painting had proportions that were strikingly close to Kolmogorov’s scale. It includes not only Starry Night but also two other paintings from the same period in Van Gogh’s life, Wheatfield with Crows and Road with Cypress and Star (both from 1890).
Many people still have concerns and think that it might be a coincidence. Huang and colleagues re-analyzed the images by focusing on the spatial scales of the 14 main turbulence flows in the images, using color brightness as kinetic energy.
Then precisely measure the size of the brush strokes. And finally all the data is compared on the Kolmogorov scale with values predicted using fluid dynamics. The results are astounding today’s scientists.
“The vortex-like arrangement Van Gogh created is similar to the energy transfer mechanism in real turbulence,” the report said.
Kolmogorov’s equation predicts that energy will fall through vortices of varying sizes in the form of an inverse power law with an exponent equal to -5/3 or -1.67 in rounded decimal form. Research indicates that current in Starry Night has an exponent of -1.67 or -1.68 (depending on whether you are measuring horizontally or upwardly).
This result isn’t amazing enough. The research team also found that at the micro level, The colored patches correspond to another phenomenon known as The ‘Batchelor scale’ is named after George Batchelor, an Australian mathematician. Fluid dynamics expert
put it simply Batchelor Scale That explains how turbulence causes liquids to mix together in smaller sizes. (Instead, the Kolmogorov scale tells how energy is dispersed in turbulent flows.) This mixing can be seen in the coloring of turbulent flows on images.
This was an extremely unexpected result. The team noted that the presence of these two scales is extremely rare in the same atmospheric system. This is because large and very small structures must be observed at the same time.
“The most exciting aspect of our study lies in the simultaneous observation of the Kolmogorov and Batchelor scales,” Huang said.
This is further evidence that Van Gogh had an instinctive eye for intricately created chaos. And it was expressed in the greatest detail at a time when the laws of physics were still undefined. But Van Gogh was able to see something in nature. and would cause humans hundreds of years later to gasp.
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