Van Gogh’s Starry Night inspires Quantum breakthrough; scientists capture exotic vortices in ultra-cold fluids

For over a century, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night has captivated art lovers with its swirling skies and glowing crescent moon. It might sound unrealistic even to imagine that van Gogh created this dream-like visual masterpiece scene from memory and imagination, not by direct observation, as he wasn’t allowed to paint outside his room.

He described seeing a “very big” morning star before sunrise and brought that vision to life with bold, thick strokes and vivid colors. With real elements like distant mountains, and imagined ones like the church steeple.

Now, nearly 130 years later, physicists have found a surprising echo of those swirling patterns not on canvas, but at the quantum level. Researchers from Japan and South Korea have, for the first time, captured a rare quantum phenomenon called the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability.

This turbulent dance between two quantum fluids produces crescent-shaped vortices that strikingly resemble the glowing moon in van Gogh’s masterpiece, revealing an extraordinary connection between art and the hidden world of quantum physics.

What is Kelvin–Helmholtz Instability (KHI)?

KHI is a common effect in everyday life. For example, you can see it in the ripples of a river, ocean waves, or streaky clouds in the sky.

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KHI happens when two fluids move past each other at different speeds, creating waves and vortices. It is common in clouds, oceans, and rivers. But until now, it had never been seen in quantum fluids.

How did scientists study KHI in Quantum fluids?

Quantum fluids are very special. They behave according to the strange rules of quantum mechanics rather than normal physics. They flow without resistance and are very hard to control. To study KHI in a quantum fluid, researchers cooled lithium gas to near absolute zero, turning it into a multi-component Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). In this state, atoms move together as one quantum wave.

The team made two parts of this condensate flow past each other at different speeds. At the boundary, they saw wave patterns just like classical KHI. But then something new appeared, strange vortices with a crescent shape known as Eccentric Fractional Skyrmions (EFSs).

Eccentric Fractional Skyrmions (EFSs) and Van Gogh’s painting

Unlike normal skyrmions, which are usually symmetrical and centered, EFSs are offset and have special points called singularities where the usual spin pattern breaks down.

These EFSs even carry half the normal quantum charge, making them very different from previously known skyrmions. Hiromitsu Takeuchi, the lead researcher, said the crescent shapes look just like the glowing moon in The Starry Night.

As quoted by Asia Research News, “To me, the large crescent moon in the upper right corner of ‘The Starry Night’ looks exactly like an EFS,” Takeuchi said.

Why is this discovery important?

Skyrmions are being studied for new technology in spintronics, which could help create faster and more efficient computers by using the spins of particles. Finding a new type of skyrmion in quantum fluids could lead to new ways to build and control these tiny structures.

This discovery also shows that our understanding of quantum topological structures is not complete and needs to be updated.

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