Debate Ignites Over Claim Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' Depicts Turbulence
Creatrip Team
2 months ago
A 2024 paper from researchers at Xiamen University argued that Vincent van Gogh's 1889 painting The Starry Night encodes a fluid dynamics phenomenon called turbulence, matching Kolmogorov's spectral laws. The provocative claim drew widespread media attention but triggered strong pushback from experts. In March 2025, two fluid mechanics researchers published a rebuttal in the Journal of Turbulence calling the original conclusions baseless and urging retraction. Other teams found the Xiamen method also produces similar patterns in unrelated works (e.g., Edgar Degas), suggesting the technique yields spurious matches. The debate has expanded with additional critical commentaries appearing in the original journal and elsewhere; Xiamen authors and a coauthor defended their work amid unusually harsh peer criticism.
