Vincent Van Gogh is best known for his vivid paintings. One of his most famous artworks is The Starry Night, created in 1889. It depicts the night sky in a series of blue swirls and glowing yellow stars. Recently, a group of scientists from China wondered how Van Gogh’s painting compares with the physics of real skies.
The team measured Van Gogh’s swirling brushstrokes and were surprised to find that the shapes closely match current models of atmospheric turbulence. The painting accurately depicts the churning flow of air in Earth’s atmosphere. This discovery “reveals Van Gogh’s deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” says Yongxiang Huang, a physicist who worked on the project.