You're on an airplane when you feel a sudden jolt. Outside your window nothing seems to be happening, yet the plane continues to rattle you and your fellow passengers as it passes through turbulent air in the atmosphere. What exactly is turbulence, and why does it happen? Tomás Chor dives into one of the prevailing mysteries of physics: the complex phenomenon of turbulence.
Physicist Werner Heisenberg said, "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically, we can use art to depict the way it looks. Natalya St. Clair illustrates how Van Gogh captured this deep mystery of movement, fluid and light in his work.
