Vincent van Gogh

“Starry Night, a famous painting by Van Gogh that is not only beautiful. but provide an understanding of physicsAbout eddy currents (turbulent flow) very good So impressive.”

In 1888, Vincent Van Gogh had to be admitted to a sanatorium in Arles after suffering from several mental illnesses. This led to the event that many had heard about: Van Gogh used a knife to cut off his left ear in distress.

In these difficult times, he created works of art that have become famous to this day: ‘Starry Night’ was painted in June 1889, but soon after, in July 1890, he killed himself by burning himself. (Didn’t die immediately. but died 2 days later)

However, the work he left has left today’s scientists in awe of his abilities. According to a report published in the journal Physics of Fluids, Van Gogh demonstrated his understanding of eddy currents in nature, both large and small, according to the evidence of current physics with amazing precision. The law was not established until 52 years later.

“This image shows a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” said Yongxiang Huang, a member of a research team from Xiamen University in China. It can come from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere. Or it could be an innate sense of how to experience the energy of the sky.”

disturbance in nature

There are many hidden dynamics of flow and turbulence in nature, from hurricane cycles. to giant storms of Jupiter Scientists have observed this phenomenon from 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 the turbulence because it is unpredictable, even Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman called it “The most important unsolved problem in classical physics.”

But in general turbulence involves a sudden, violent movement within air or water. Often they look like vortexes.

It is related to the change in the speed of the flow over time. and the rate of energy loss in the form of friction. This has led to rapid progress to the point where today this phenomenon is known as “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 are particularly ‘Starry Night’ may have a hidden truth about it. However, no one has ever been able to prove it, which has caused much debate.

“Our study helps to resolve the ongoing debate about whether the moving sky in this famous picture is actually a phenomenon of physics,” said Huang.

From the top 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 the stars form. It refers to images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

It turned out that the picture had proportions that were very close to the Kolmogorov 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 are still concerned and think it may be a coincidence. Huang and his colleagues reanalyzed the images by focusing on the spatial scales of the 14 main turbulent currents in the images, using color brightness as kinetic energy.

Then measure precisely 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 a big surprise to today’s scientists.

“The vortex-like arrangement created by Van Gogh resembles the energy transfer mechanism in real turbulence,” the report said.

Kolmogorov’s equation predicts the decay of energy through terms of various sizes in the form of an uneven power law with an exponent equal to -5/3 or -1.67 in rounded decimal form. Research shows that the Starry Night currently has an exponent of -1.67 or -1.68 (depending on whether you measure horizontally or vertically).

This result is not surprising enough. The research team also found, at a micro level, The colored pieces correspond to another phenomenon called the ‘Batchelor scale’ is named after George Batchelor, an Australian mathematician. Expert in fluid dynamics

put it simply Batchelor’s Scale That explains how turbulence causes liquids to mix into smaller quantities. (Instead, the Kolmogorov scale describes how energy is dissipated in turbulent flows.) This mixing can be seen in the coloring of turbulent flows on images.

This was a very unexpected result. The team noted that the presence of these two scales in the same atmospheric system is rare. This is because large and very small structures must be adhered to at the same time.

“The most interesting aspect of our study is the simultaneous observation of the Kolmogorov and Batchelor scales,” Huang said.

This is further evidence that Van Gogh had an intellectual eye for intricately created chaos. And it was expressed in detail at a time when the laws of physics were still undefined. But Van Gogh was able to see something in nature. and it would make people gasp hundreds of years later.

Find and compile

Witit Borompichaichartkul

Origin

https://pubs.aip.org

https://www.astronomy.com

https://arstechnica.com/science