CNN —The dappled starlight and swirling clouds of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” are thought to reflect the artist’s tumultuous state of mind when he painted the work in 1889. Now, a new analysis by physicists based in China and France suggests the artist had a deep, intuitive understanding of the mathematical structure of turbulent flow. Batchelor’s scaling mathematically represents how small particles, such as drifting algae in the ocean or pieces of dust in the wind, are passively mixed around by turbulent flow. “I think this physical relationship must be embedded in his mind so that’s why when he made this famous ‘Starry Night’ painting, it mimics the real flow,” Huang said. “What I take away from studies like this is that (van Gogh) captured some of this universality in the beautiful (‘Starry Night’),” Beattie added.

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Persons: Vincent van Gogh’s, ”, Yongxiang Huang, Van Gogh, mutilating, van Gogh's, Huang, Andrey Kolmogorov, John Constable, De Agostini, James Beattie, Beattie wasn’t, van Gogh, ” Huang, Beattie, “, Van Gogh’s, Yinxiang, Gogh, ” Beattie Organizations: CNN, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science & College of Ocean, Sciences, Xiamen University, Princeton University, NASA's, NASA Goddard Space, NASA’s, Museum of Modern Art Locations: China, France, Saint, Provence, Soviet, Brighton, British, New Jersey, New York