Is there hidden turbulence in Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night?

Abstract

In a recent article (Ma Y, Cheng W, Huang S, et al. Hidden turbulence in van gogh's the starry night. Phys Fluids. 2024;6(095140):1–11) the authors claimed to have discovered hidden turbulence in Vincent van Gogh's painting of The Starry Night, and furthermore asserted that the painting was somehow consistent with the extension of Kolmogorov (Local structure of turbulence in an incompressible fluid at very high Reynolds numbers. Dokl Akad Nauk SSSR. 1941;30:299–303.)'s famous theory for turbulent flows by Obukhov (Spectral energy distribution in a turbulent flow. Dokl Akad Nauk SSSR. 1941;32:22–24) and Corrsin (On the spectrum of isotropic temperature fluctuations in an isotropic turbulence. J Appl Phys. 1951;22:469–473. doi: 10.1063/1.1699986). We argue here that the conclusions in the paper are completely unfounded.