Turbulence in Paint

Decades after Van Gogh died, physicists noticed something strange about the swirls. The way light and dark flow across the painted sky looks consistent with how energy actually moves through turbulent fluids — the eddies inside a storm or a stream. A 2006 study found the brightness changes in his most agitated canvases follow that turbulent pattern more closely than calmer paintings do.

This is a striking resemblance, not a proven law. It suggests that during his most disturbed periods, Van Gogh's eye and hand somehow captured the rhythm of real moving air — even though no one had the math to describe it yet.