Vincent Van Gogh painted his most turbulent images when insane.
The Labrador Current resembles Van Gogh’s paintings when it
becomes unstable. There is no reason that mental and geophysical
instability relate to each other. And yet they do. Russian
physicist Andrey Kolmogorov developed theories of turbulence 70
years ago that Mexican physicist applied to some of Van Gogh’s
paintings such as “Starry Sky:” The whirls and curls evoke
motion. The colors vibrate and oscillate like waves that come
and go. There are rounded curves and borders in the tiny trees,
the big mountains, and the blinking stars. Oceanographers call
these rounded curves eddies when they close on themselves much
as is done by a smooth wave that is breaking when it hits the
beach in violent turmoil. Waves come in many sizes at many
periods. The wave on the beach has a period of 5 seconds maybe
and measures 50 meters from crest to crest. Tides are waves,
too, but their period is half a day with a distance of more than
1000 km from crest to crest.