Hidden turbulence in van Gogh's The Starry Night - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Physics of Fluids Année : 2024

Hidden turbulence in van Gogh's The Starry Night

Yinxiang Ma
Wanting Cheng
Shidi Huang
Yongxiang Huang

Résumé

Turbulent skies have often inspired artists, particularly in the iconic swirls of Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night. For an extended period, debate has raged over whether the flow pattern in this masterpiece adheres to Kolmogorov's theory of turbulence. In contrast to previous studies that examined only part of this painting, all and only the whirls/eddies in the painting are taken into account in this work, following the Richardson–Kolmogorov's cascade picture of turbulence. Consequently, the luminance's Fourier power spectrum spontaneously exhibits a characteristic −5/3 Kolmogorov-like power-law. This result suggests that van Gogh had a very careful observation of real flows, so that not only the sizes of whirls/eddies in The Starry Night but also their relative distances and intensity follow the physical law that governs turbulent flows. Moreover, a “–1”-like power-law persists in the spectrum below the scales of the smallest whirls, hinting at Batchelor-type scalar turbulence with a high Schmidt number. Our study, thus, unveils the hidden turbulence captured within The Starry Night.
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Dates et versions

hal-04729277 , version 1 (11-10-2024)

Identifiants

Citer

Yinxiang Ma, Wanting Cheng, Shidi Huang, François G Schmitt, Xin Lin, et al.. Hidden turbulence in van Gogh's The Starry Night. Physics of Fluids, 2024, 36 (9), ⟨10.1063/5.0213627⟩. ⟨hal-04729277⟩
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