science and art

Did Hilma af Klint draw inspiration from 19th century physics?

Hilma af Klint, Physics, Science, science and art, science illustrations, Thomas Young / Tim Belzer / January 11, 2025

Diagrams from Thomas Young’s 1807 Lectures bear striking resemblance to abstract figures in af Klint’s work.

Hilma af Klint’s Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 17, 1915. Credit: Hilma af Klimt Foundation

In 2019, astronomer Britt Lundgren of the University of North Carolina Asheville visited the Guggenheim Museum in New York City to take in an exhibit of the works of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint. Lundgren noted a striking similarity between the abstract geometric shapes in af Klint’s work and scientific diagrams in 19th century physicist Thomas Young‘s Lectures (1807). So began a four-year journey starting at the intersection of science and art that has culminated in a forthcoming paper in the journal Leonardo, making the case for the connection.

Af Klint was formally trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and initially focused on drawing, portraits, botanical drawings, and landscapes from her Stockholm studio after graduating with honors. This provided her with income, but her true life’s work drew on af Klint’s interest in spiritualism and mysticism. She was one of “The Five,” a group of Swedish women artists who shared those interests. They regularly organized seances and were admirers of theosophical teachings of the time.

It was through her work with The Five that af Klint began experimenting with automatic drawing, driving her to invent her own geometric visual language to conceptualize the invisible forces she believed influenced our world. She painted her first abstract series in 1906 at age 44. Yet she rarely exhibited this work because she believed the art world at the time wasn’t ready to appreciate it. Her will requested that the paintings stay hidden for at least 20 years after her death.

Even after the boxes containing her 1,200-plus abstract paintings were opened, their significance was not fully appreciated at first. The Moderna Museum in Stockholm actually declined to accept them as a gift, although it now maintains a dedicated space to her work. It wasn’t until art historian Ake Fant presented af Klint’s work at a Helsinki conference that the art world finally took notice. The Guggenheim’s exhibit was af Klint’s American debut. “The exhibit seemed to realize af Klint’s documented dream of introducing her paintings to the world from inside a towering spiral temple and it was met roundly with acclaim, breaking all attendance records for the museum,” Lundgren wrote in her paper.

A pandemic project

Lundgren is the first person in her family to become a scientist; her mother studied art history, and her father is a photographer and a carpenter. But she always enjoyed art because of that home environment, and her Swedish heritage made af Klint an obvious artist of interest. It wasn’t until the year after she visited the Guggenheim exhibit, as she was updating her lectures for an astrophysics course, that Lundgren decided to investigate the striking similarities between Young’s diagrams and af Klint’s geometric paintings—in particular those series completed between 1914 and 1916. It proved to be the perfect research project during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Lundgren acknowledges the inherent skepticism such an approach by an outsider might engender among the art community and is sympathetic, given that physics and astronomy both have their share of cranks. “As a professional scientist, I have in the past received handwritten letters about why Einstein is wrong,” she told Ars. “I didn’t want to be that person.”

That’s why her very first research step was to contact art professors at her institution to get their expert opinions on her insight. They were encouraging, so she dug in a little deeper, reading every book about af Klint she could get her hands on. She found no evidence that any art historians had made this connection before, which gave her the confidence to turn her work into a publishable paper.

The paper didn’t find a home right away, however; the usual art history journals rejected it, partly because Lundgren was an outsider with little expertise in that field. She needed someone more established to vouch for her. Enter Linda Dalrymple Henderson of the University of Texas at Austin, who has written extensively about scientific influences on abstract art, including that of af Klint. Henderson helped Lundgren refine the paper, encouraged her to submit it to Leonardo, and “it came back with the best review I’ve ever received, even inside astronomy,” said Lundgren.

Making the case

Young and af Klint were not contemporaries; Young died in 1829, and af Klint was born in 1862. Nor are there any specific references to Young or his work in the academic literature examining the sources known to have influenced the Swedish painter’s work. Yet af Klint had a well-documented interest in science, spanning everything from evolution and botany to color theory and physics. While those influences tended to be scientists who were her contemporaries, Lundgren points out that the artist’s personal library included a copy of an 1823 astronomy book.

Excerpt from Plate XXIX of Young’s Lectures Niels Bohr Library and Archives/AIP

Af Klint was also commissioned to paint a portrait of Swedish physicist Knut Angstrom in 1910 at Uppsala University, whose library includes a copy of Young’s Lectures. So it’s entirely possible that af Klint had access to the astronomy and physics of the previous century and would likely have been particularly intrigued by discoveries involving “invisible light” (electromagnetism, x-rays, radioactivity, etc.).

Young’s Lectures contain a speculative passage about the existence of a universal ether (since disproven), a concept that fascinated both scientists and those (like af Klint) with certain occult interests in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, Young’s passage was included in a popular 1875 spiritualist text, Unseen Universe by P.G. Tait and Balfour Stewart, that was heavily cited by Theosophical Society founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Blavatsky in turn is known to have influenced af Klint around the time the artist created The Swan, The Dove, and Altarpieces series.

Lundgren found that “in several instances, the captions accompanying Young’s color figures [in the Lectures] even seem to decode elements of af Klint’s paintings or bring attention to details that might otherwise be overlooked.” For instance, the caption for Young’s Plate XXIX describes the “oblique stripes of color” that appear when candlelight is viewed through a prism that “almost interchangeably describes features in af Klint’s Group X., No. 1, Altarpiece,” she wrote

(a) Excerpt from Young's Plate XXX. (b) af Klint, Parsifal Series No. 68. (c and d) af Klint, Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 12 and No. 13. — (a) Excerpt from Young’s Plate XXX. (b) af Klint, *Parsifal Series No. 68*. (c and d) af Klint, *Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 12* and *No. 13*. Credit: Niels Bohr Library/Hilma af Klint Foundation

Art historians had previously speculated about af Klint’s interest in color theory, as reflected in the annotated watercolor squares featured in her Parsifal Series (1916). Lundgren argues that those squares resemble Fig. 439 in the color plates of Young’s Lectures, demonstrating the inversion of color in human vision. Those diagrams also “appear almost like crude sketches of af Klint’s The Dove, Nos. 12 and 13,” Lundgren wrote. “Paired side by side, these paintings can produce the same visual effects described by Young, with even the same color palette.”

The geometric imagery of af Klint’s The Swan series is similar to Young’s illustrations of the production and perception of colors, while “black and white diagrams depicting the propagation of light through combinations of lenses and refractive surfaces, included in Young’s Lectures On the Theory of Optics, bear a particularly strong geometric resemblance to The Swan paintings No. 12 and No.13,” Lundgren wrote. Other pieces in The Swan series may have been inspired by engravings in Young’s Lectures.

This is admittedly circumstantial evidence and Lundgren acknowledges as much. “Not being able to prove it is intriguing and frustrating at the same time,” she said. She continues to receive additional leads, most recently from an af Klint relative on the board of the Moderna Museum. Once again, the evidence wasn’t direct, but it seems af Klint would have attended certain local lecture circuits about science, while several members of the Theosophy Society were familiar with modern physics and Young’s earlier work. “But none of these are nails in the coffin that really proved she had access to Young’s book,” said Lundgren.

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

Did Hilma af Klint draw inspiration from 19th century physics? Read More »

Ten cool science stories we almost missed

bioengineering, experimental archaeology, fluid dynamics, forensic DNA, fractals, moral philosophy, music, Physics, Science, science and art, social psychology, statistical mechanics, supernova / Paul Patrick / December 30, 2024

Bronze Age combat, moral philosophy and Reddit’s AITA, Mondrian’s fractal tree, and seven other fascinating papers.

There is rarely time to write about every cool science paper that comes our way; many worthy candidates sadly fall through the cracks over the course of the year. But as 2024 comes to a close, we’ve gathered ten of our favorite such papers at the intersection of science and culture as a special treat, covering a broad range of topics: from reenacting Bronze Age spear combat and applying network theory to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, to Spider-Man inspired web-slinging tech and a mathematical connection between a turbulent phase transition and your morning cup of coffee. Enjoy!

Reenacting Bronze Age spear combat

Experiment with experienced fighters who spar freely using different styles. — An experiment with experienced fighters who spar freely using different styles. Credit: Valerio Gentile/CC BY

The European Bronze Age saw the rise of institutionalized warfare, evidenced by the many spearheads and similar weaponry archaeologists have unearthed. But how might these artifacts be used in actual combat? Dutch researchers decided to find out by constructing replicas of Bronze Age shields and spears and using them in realistic combat scenarios. They described their findings in an October paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

There have been a couple of prior experimental studies on bronze spears, but per Valerio Gentile (now at the University of Gottingen) and coauthors, practical research to date has been quite narrow in scope, focusing on throwing weapons against static shields. Coauthors C.J. van Dijk of the National Military Museum in the Netherlands and independent researcher O. Ter Mors each had more than a decade of experience teaching traditional martial arts, specializing in medieval polearms and one-handed weapons. So they were ideal candidates for testing the replica spears and shields.

Of course, there is no direct information on prehistoric fighting styles, so van Dijk and Mors relied on basic biomechanics of combat movements with similar weapons detailed in historic manuals. They ran three versions of the experiment: one focused on engagement and controlled collisions, another on delivering wounding body blows, and the third on free sparring. They then studied wear marks left on the spearheads and found they matched the marks found on similar genuine weapons excavated from Bronze Age sites. They also gleaned helpful clues to the skills required to use such weapons.

DOI: Journal of Archaeological Science, 2024. 10.1016/j.jas.2024.106044 (About DOIs).

Physics of Ned Kahn’s kinetic sculptures

Ned Kahn's Shimmer Wall, The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. — Shimmer Wall, The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Credit: Ned Kahn

Environmental artist and sculptor Ned Kahn is famous for his kinematic building facades, inspired by his own background in science. An exterior wall on the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, for instance, consists of hundreds of flaps that move in response to wind, creating distinctive visual patterns. Kahn used the same method to create his Shimmer Wall at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, as well as several other similar projects.

Physicists at Sorbonne Universite in Paris have studied videos of Kahn’s kinetic facades and conducted experiments to measure the underlying physical mechanisms, outlined in a November paper published in the journal Physical Review Fluids. The authors analyzed 18 YouTube videos taken of six of Kahn’s kinematic facades, working with Kahn and building management to get the dimensions of the moving plates, scaling up from the video footage to get further information on spatial dimensions.

They also conducted their own wind tunnel experiments, using strings of pendulum plates. Their measurements confirmed that the kinetic patterns were propagating waves to create the flickering visual effects. The plates’ movement is driven primarily by their natural resonant frequencies at low speeds, and by pressure fluctuations from the wind at higher speeds.

DOI: Physical Review Fluids, 2024. 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.9.114604 (About DOIs).

How brewing coffee connects to turbulence

Trajectories in time traced out by turbulent puffs as they move along a simulated pipe and in experiments, with blue regions indicate the puff — Trajectories in time traced out by turbulent puffs as they move along a simulated pipe and in experiments, with blue regions indicate puff “traffic jams.” Credit: Grégoire Lemoult et al., 2024

Physicists have been studying turbulence for centuries, particularly the transitional period where flows shift from predictably smooth (laminar flow) to highly turbulent. That transition is marked by localized turbulent patches known as “puffs,” which often form in fluids flowing through a pipe or channel. In an October paper published in the journal Nature Physics, physicists used statistical mechanics to reveal an unexpected connection between the process of brewing coffee and the behavior of those puffs.

Traditional mathematical models of percolation date back to the 1940s. Directed percolation is when the flow occurs in a specific direction, akin to how water moves through freshly ground coffee beans, flowing down in the direction of gravity. There’s a sweet spot for the perfect cuppa, where the rate of flow is sufficiently slow to absorb most of the flavor from the beans, but also fast enough not to back up in the filter. That sweet spot in your coffee brewing process corresponds to the aforementioned laminar-turbulent transition in pipes.

Physicist Nigel Goldenfeld of the University of California, San Diego, and his coauthors used pressure sensors to monitor the formation of puffs in a pipe, focusing on how puff-to-puff interactions influenced each other’s motion. Next, they tried to mathematically model the relevant phase transitions to predict puff behavior. They found that the puffs behave much like cars moving on a freeway during rush hour: they are prone to traffic jams—i.e., when a turbulent patch matches the width of the pipe, causing other puffs to build up behind it—that form and dissipate on their own. And they tend to “melt” at the laminar-turbulent transition point.

DOI: Nature Physics, 2024. 10.1038/s41567-024-02513-0 (About DOIs).

Network theory and Bach’s music

In a network representation of music, notes are represented by nodes, and transition between notes are represented by directed edges connecting the nodes. Credit: S. Kulkarni et al., 2024

When you listen to music, does your ability to remember or anticipate the piece tell you anything about its structure? Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania developed a model based on network theory to do just that, describing their work in a February paper published in the journal Physical Review Research. Johann Sebastian Bach’s works were an ideal choice given the highly mathematical structure, plus the composer was so prolific, across so many very different kinds of musical compositions—preludes, fugues, chorales, toccatas, concertos, suites, and cantatas—as to allow for useful comparisons.

First, the authors built a simple “true” network for each composition, in which individual notes served as “nodes” and the transitions from note to note served as “edges” connecting them. Then they calculated the amount of information in each network. They found it was possible to tell the difference between compositional forms based on their information content (entropy). The more complex toccatas and fugues had the highest entropy, while simpler chorales had the lowest.

Next, the team wanted to quantify how effectively this information was communicated to the listener, a task made more difficult by the innate subjectivity of human perception. They developed a fuzzier “inferred” network model for this purpose, capturing an essential aspect of our perception: we find a balance between accuracy and cost, simplifying some details so as to make it easier for our brains to process incoming information like music.

The results: There were fewer differences between the true and inferred networks for Bach’s compositions than for randomly generated networks, suggesting that clustering and the frequent repetition of transitions (represented by thicker edges) in Bach networks were key to effectively communicating information to the listener. The next step is to build a multi-layered network model that incorporates elements like rhythm, timbre, chords, or counterpoint (a Bach specialty).

DOI: Physical Review Research, 2024. 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.013136 (About DOIs).

The philosophy of Reddit’s AITA

Count me among the many people practically addicted to Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole” (AITA) forum. It’s such a fascinating window into the intricacies of how flawed human beings navigate different relationships, whether personal or professional. That’s also what makes it a fantastic source of illustrative common-place dilemmas of moral decision-making for philosophers like Daniel Yudkin of the University of Pennsylvania. Relational context matters, as Yudkin and several co-authors ably demonstrated in a PsyArXiv preprint earlier this year.

For their study, Yudkin et al. compiled a dataset of nearly 370,000 AITA posts, along with over 11 million comments, posted between 2018 and 2021. They used machine learning to analyze the language used to sort all those posts into different categories. They relied on an existing taxonomy identifying six basic areas of moral concern: fairness/proportionality, feelings, harm/offense, honesty, relational obligation, and social norms.

Yudkin et al. identified 29 of the most common dilemmas in the AITA dataset and grouped them according to moral theme. Two of the most common were relational transgression and relational omission (failure to do what was expected), followed by behavioral over-reaction and unintended harm. Cheating and deliberate misrepresentation/dishonesty were the moral dilemmas rated most negatively in the dataset—even more so than intentional harm. Being judgmental was also evaluated very negatively, as it was often perceived as being self-righteous or hypocritical. The least negatively evaluated dilemmas were relational omissions.

As for relational context, cheating and broken promise dilemmas typically involved romantic partners like boyfriends rather than one’s mother, for example, while mother-related dilemmas more frequently fell under relational omission. Essentially, “people tend to disappoint their mothers but be disappointed by their boyfriends,” the authors wrote. Less close relationships, by contrast, tend to be governed by “norms of politeness and procedural fairness.” Hence, Yudkin et al. prefer to think of morality “less as a set of abstract principles and more as a ‘relational toolkit,’ guiding and constraining behavior according to the demands of the social situation.”

DOI: PsyArXiv, 2024. 10.31234/osf.io/5pcew (About DOIs).

Fractal scaling of trees in art

De grijze boom (Gray tree) Piet Mondrian, 1911. — *De grijze boom* (Gray tree) by Piet Mondrian, 1911. Credit: Public domain

Leonardo da Vinci famously invented a so-called “rule of trees” as a guide to realistically depicting trees in artistic representations according to their geometric proportions. In essence, if you took all the branches of a given tree, folded them up and compressed them into something resembling a trunk, that trunk would have the same thickness from top to bottom. That rule in turn implies a fractal branching pattern, with a scaling exponent of about 2 describing the proportions between the diameters of nearby boughs and the number of boughs with a given diameter.

According to the authors of a preprint posted to the physics arXiv in February, however, recent biological research suggests a higher scaling exponent of 3 known as Murray’s Law, for the rule of trees. Their analysis of 16th century Islamic architecture, Japanese paintings from the Edo period, and 20th century European art showed fractal scaling between 1.5 and 2.5. However, when they analyzed an abstract tree painting by Piet Mondrian, they found it exhibited fractal scaling of 3, before mathematicians had formulated Murray’s Law, even though Mondrian’s tree did not feature explicit branching.

The findings intrigued physicist Richard Taylor of the University of Oregon, whose work over the last 20 years includes analyzing fractal patterns in the paintings of Jackson Pollock. “In particular, I thought the extension to Mondrian’s ‘trees’ was impressive,” he told Ars earlier this year. “I like that it establishes a connection between abstract and representational forms. It makes me wonder what would happen if the same idea were to be applied to Pollock’s poured branchings.”

Taylor himself published a 2022 paper about climate change and how nature’s stress-reducing fractals might disappear in the future. “If we are pessimistic for a moment, and assume that climate change will inevitably impact nature’s fractals, then our only future source of fractal aesthetics will be through art, design and architecture,” he said. “This brings a very practical element to studies like [this].”

DOI: arXiv, 2024. 10.48550/arXiv.2402.13520 (About DOIs).

IDing George Washington’s descendants

Portrait of George Washington — A DNA study identified descendants of George Washington from unmarked remains. Credit: Public domain

DNA profiling is an incredibly useful tool in forensics, but the most common method—short tandem repeat (STR) analysis—typically doesn’t work when remains are especially degraded, especially if said remains have been preserved with embalming methods using formaldehyde. This includes the remains of US service members who died in such past conflicts as World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. That’s why scientists at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System’s identification lab at the Dover Air Force Base have developed new DNA sequencing technologies.

They used those methods to identify the previously unmarked remains of descendants of George Washington, according to a March paper published in the journal iScience. The team tested three sets of remains and compared the results with those of a known living descendant, using methods for assessing paternal and maternal relationships, as well as a new method for next-generation sequencing data involving some 95,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in order to better predict more distant ancestry. The combined data confirmed that the remains belonged to Washington’s descendants and the new method should help do the same for the remains of as-yet-unidentified service members.

In related news, in July, forensic scientists successfully used descendant DNA to identify a victim of the 1921 Tulsa massacre in Oklahoma City, buried in a mass grave containing more than a hundred victims. C.L. Daniel was a World War I veteran, still in his 20s when he was killed. More than 120 such graves have been found since 2020, with DNA collected from around 30 sets of remains, but this is the first time those remains have been directly linked to the massacre. There are at least 17 other victims in the grave where Daniel’s remains were found.

DOI: iScience, 2024. 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109353 (About DOIs).

Spidey-inspired web-slinging tech

stream of liquid silk quickly turns to a strong fiber that sticks to and lifts objects. Credit: Marco Lo Presti et al., 2024

Over the years, researchers in Tufts University’s Silklab have come up with all kinds of ingenious bio-inspired uses for the sticky fibers found in silk moth cocoons: adhesive glues, printable sensors, edible coatings, and light-collecting materials for solar cells, to name a few. Their latest innovation is a web-slinging technology inspired by Spider-Man’s ability to shoot webbing from his wrists, described in an October paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Coauthor Marco Lo Presti was cleaning glassware with acetone in the lab one day when he noticed something that looked a lot like webbing forming on the bottom of a glass. He realized this could be the key to better replicating spider threads for the purpose of shooting the fibers from a device like Spider-Man—something actual spiders don’t do. (They spin the silk, find a surface, and draw out lines of silk to build webs.)

The team boiled silk moth cocoons in a solution to break them down into proteins called fibroin. The fibroin was then extruded through bore needles into a stream. Spiking the fibroin solution with just the right additives will cause it to solidify into fiber once it comes into contact with air. For the web-slinging technology, they added dopamine to the fibroin solution and then shot it through a needle in which the solution was surrounded by a layer of acetone, which triggered solidification.

The acetone quickly evaporated, leaving just the webbing attached to whatever object it happened it hit. The team tested the resulting fibers and found they could lift a steel bolt, a tube floating on water, a partially buried scalpel and a wooden block—all from as far away as 12 centimeters. Sure, natural spider silk is still about 1000 times stronger than these fibers, but it’s still a significant step forward that paves the way for future novel technological applications.

DOI: Advanced Functional Materials, 2024. 10.1002/adfm.202414219

Solving a mystery of a 12th century supernova

Pa 30 is the supernova remnant of SN 1181. Credit: unWISE (D. Lang)/CC BY-SA 4.0

In 1181, astronomers in China and Japan recorded the appearance of a “guest star” that shone as bright as Saturn and was visible in the sky for six months. We now know it was a supernova (SN1181), one of only five such known events occurring in our Milky Way. Astronomers got a closer look at the remnant of that supernova and have determined the nature of strange filaments resembling dandelion petals that emanate from a “zombie star” at its center, according to an October paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Chinese and Japanese astronomers only recorded an approximate location for the unusual sighting, and for centuries no one managed to make a confirmed identification of a likely remnant from that supernova. Then, in 2021, astronomers measured the speed of expansion of a nebula known as Pa 30, which enabled them to determine its age: around 1,000 years, roughly coinciding with the recorded appearance of SN1181. PA 30 is an unusual remnant because of its zombie star—most likely itself a remnant of the original white dwarf that produced the supernova.

This latest study relied on data collected by Caltech’s Keck Cosmic Web Imager, a spectrograph at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. One of the unique features of this instrument is that it can measure the motion of matter in a supernova and use that data to create something akin to a 3D movie of the explosion. The authors were able to create such a 3D map of P 30 and calculated that the zombie star’s filaments have ballistic motion, moving at approximately 1,000 kilometers per second.

Nor has that velocity changed since the explosion, enabling them to date that event almost exactly to 1181. And the findings raised fresh questions—namely, the ejected filament material is asymmetrical—which is unusual for a supernova remnant. The authors suggest that asymmetry may originate with the initial explosion.

There’s also a weird inner gap around the zombie star. Both will be the focus of further research.

DOI: Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2024. 10.3847/2041-8213/ad713b (About DOIs).

Reviving a “lost” 16th century score

manuscript page of Aberdeen Breviary : Volume 1 or 'Pars Hiemalis' — Fragment of music from The Aberdeen Breviary: Volume 1 Credit: National Library of Scotland /CC BY 4.0

Never underestimate the importance of marginalia in old manuscripts. Scholars from the University of Edinburgh and KU Leuven in Belgium can attest to that, having discovered a fragment of “lost” music from 16th-century pre-Reformation Scotland in a collection of worship texts. The team was even able to reconstruct the fragment and record it to get a sense of what music sounded like from that period in northeast Scotland, as detailed in a December paper published in the journal Music and Letters.

King James IV of Scotland commissioned the printing of several copies of The Aberdeen Breviary—a collection of prayers, hymns, readings, and psalms for daily worship—so that his subjects wouldn’t have to import such texts from England or Europe. One 1510 copy, known as the “Glamis copy,” is currently housed in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. It was while examining handwritten annotations in this copy that the authors discovered the musical fragment on a page bound into the book—so it hadn’t been slipped between the pages at a later date.

The team figured out the piece was polyphonic, and then realized it was the tenor part from a harmonization for three or four voices of the hymn “Cultor Dei,” typically sung at night during Lent. (You can listen to a recording of the reconstructed composition here.) The authors also traced some of the history of this copy of The Aberdeen Breviary, including its use at one point by a rural chaplain at Aberdeen Cathedral, before a Scottish Catholic acquired it as a family heirloom.

“Identifying a piece of music is a real ‘Eureka’ moment for musicologists,” said coauthor David Coney of Edinburgh College of Art. “Better still, the fact that our tenor part is a harmony to a well-known melody means we can reconstruct the other missing parts. As a result, from just one line of music scrawled on a blank page, we can hear a hymn that had lain silent for nearly five centuries, a small but precious artifact of Scotland’s musical and religious traditions.”

DOI: Music and Letters, 2024. 10.1093/ml/gcae076 (About DOIs).

Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

Ten cool science stories we almost missed Read More »

Graphene-enhanced ceramic tiles make striking art

chemistry, graphene, materials science, Science, science and art / Paul Patrick / October 28, 2024

In recent years, materials scientists experimenting with ceramics have started adding an oxidized form of graphene to the mix to produce ceramics that are tougher, more durable, and more resistant to fracture, among other desirable properties. Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a new method that uses ultrasound to more evenly distribute graphene oxide (GO) in ceramics, according to a new paper published in the journal ACS Omega. And as a bonus, they collaborated with an artist who used the resulting ceramic tiles to create a unique art exhibit at the NUS Museum—a striking merger of science and art.

As reported previously, graphene is the thinnest material yet known, composed of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. That structure gives it many unusual properties that hold great promise for real-world applications: batteries, super capacitors, antennas, water filters, transistors, solar cells, and touchscreens, just to name a few.

In 2021, scientists found that this wonder material might also provide a solution to the fading of colors of many artistic masterpieces. For instance, several of Georgia O’Keeffe’s oil paintings housed in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, have developed tiny pin-sized blisters, almost like acne, for decades. Conservators have found similar deterioration in oil-based masterpieces across all time periods, including works by Rembrandt.

Van Gogh’s Sunflower series has been fading over the last century due to constant exposure to light. A 2011 study found that chromium in the chrome yellow Van Gogh favored reacted strongly with other compounds like barium and sulfur when exposed to sunlight. A 2016 study pointed the finger at the sulfates, which absorb in the UV spectrum, leading to degradation.

Even contemporary art materials are prone to irreversible color changes from exposure to light and oxidizing agents, among other hazards. That’s why there has been recent work on the use of nanomaterials for conservation of artworks. Graphene has a number of properties that make it attractive for art-conservation purposes. The one-atom-thick material is transparent, adheres easily to various substrates, and serves as an excellent barrier against oxygen, gases (corrosive or otherwise), and moisture. It’s also hydrophobic and is an excellent absorber of UV light.

Graphene-enhanced ceramic tiles make striking art Read More »

Meet the winners of Nikon’s 2024 photomicrography contest

microphotography, Nikon Small World Photo Microscopy, Science, science and art, science photography / Rejus Almole / October 22, 2024

This year’s winning entry arose from Cisterna’s research into a protein crucial for building brain cell structure (profilin 1, or PFN1); that structure is essential for functional cellular transport. He found that when the protein and related processes are disrupted, the microtubule highways can malfunction and cause damage to the cells. Capturing the actin, microtubules, and nuclei with photomicroscopy was a painstaking process that took about three months just to perfect the staining process. Cisterna and Vitriol paid particular attention to getting just the right field of view and got the image they were waiting for after three hours of observation.

“At 50 years, Nikon Small World is more than just an imaging competition—it’s become a gallery that pays tribute to the extraordinary individuals who make it possible,” said Nikon Instruments rep Eric Flem. “They are the driving force behind this event, masterfully blending science and art to reveal the wonders of the microscopic world and what we can learn from it to the public. Sometimes, we overlook the tiny details of the world around us. Nikon Small World serves as a reminder to pause, appreciate the power and beauty of the little things, and to cultivate a deeper curiosity to explore and question.”

Here are the remaining top 20 winners of this year’s contest, ranging from close-up views of octopus eggs, green crab spider eyes, and slime molds to capturing the electric arc between a pin and wire, and an insect egg that has been parasitized by a wasp. You can check out the full list of winners, as well as several honorable mentions, here.

And the winners are …

Second place: Electrical arc between a pin and a wire. Marcel Clemens/Nikon Small World

Meet the winners of Nikon’s 2024 photomicrography contest Read More »

Cats playing with robots proves a winning combo in novel art installation

animal behavior, animals, cat behavior, Cats, robotics, Science, science and art / Mike M. / May 18, 2024

The feline factor —

Cat Royale project explores what it takes to trust a robot to look after beloved pets.

Jennifer Ouellette – May 17, 2024 8: 59 pm UTC

Cat with the robot arm in the Cat Royale installation — Enlarge / A kitty named Clover prepares to play with a robot arm in the Cat Royale “multi-species” science/art installation .

Blast Theory – Stephen Daly

Cats and robots are a winning combination, as evidenced by all those videos of kitties riding on Roombas. And now we have Cat Royale, a “multispecies” live installation in which three cats regularly “played” with a robot over 12 days, carefully monitored by human operators. Created by computer scientists from the University of Nottingham in collaboration with artists from a group called Blast Theory, the installation debuted at the World Science Festival in Brisbane, Australia, last year and is now a touring exhibit. The accompanying YouTube video series recently won a Webby Award, and a paper outlining the insights gleaned from the experience was similarly voted best paper at the recent Computer-Human Conference (CHI’24).

“At first glance, the project is about designing a robot to enrich the lives of a family of cats by playing with them,” said co-author Steve Benford of the University of Nottingham, who led the research, “Under the surface, however, it explores the question of what it takes to trust a robot to look after our loved ones and potentially ourselves.” While cats might love Roombas, not all animal encounters with robots are positive: Guide dogs for the visually impaired can get confused by delivery robots, for example, while the rise of lawn mowing robots can have a negative impact on hedgehogs, per Benford et al.

Blast Theory and the scientists first held a series of exploratory workshops to ensure the installation and robotic design would take into account the welfare of the cats. “Creating a multispecies system—where cats, robots, and humans are all accounted for—takes more than just designing the robot,” said co-author Eike Schneiders of Nottingham’s Mixed Reality Lab about the primary takeaway from the project. “We had to ensure animal well-being at all times, while simultaneously ensuring that the interactive installation engaged the (human) audiences around the world. This involved consideration of many elements, including the design of the enclosure, the robot, and its underlying systems, the various roles of the humans-in-the-loop, and, of course, the selection of the cats.”

Based on those discussions, the team set about building the installation: a bespoke enclosure that would be inhabited by three cats for six hours a day over 12 days. The lucky cats were named Ghostbuster, Clover, and Pumpkin—a parent and two offspring to ensure the cats were familiar with each other and comfortable sharing the enclosure. The enclosure was tricked out to essentially be a “utopia for cats,” per the authors, with perches, walkways, dens, a scratching post, a water fountain, several feeding stations, a ball run, and litter boxes tucked away in secluded corners.

Enlarge / (l-r) Clover, Pumpkin, and Ghostbuster spent six hours a day for 12 days in the installation.

E. Schneiders et al., 2024

As for the robot, the team chose the Kino Gen3 lite robot arm, and the associated software was trained on over 7,000 videos of cats. A decision engine gave the robot autonomy and proposed activities for specific cats. Then a human operator used an interface control system to instruct the robot to execute the movements. The robotic arm’s two-finger gripper was augmented with custom 3D-printed attachments so that the robot could manipulate various cat toys and accessories.

Each cat/robot interaction was evaluated for a “happiness score” based on the cat’s level of engagement, body language, and so forth. Eight cameras monitored the cat and robot activities, and that footage was subsequently remixed and edited into daily YouTube highlight videos and, eventually, an eight-hour film.

Cats playing with robots proves a winning combo in novel art installation Read More »

Marbled paper, frosty fireworks among 2023 Gallery of Fluid Motion winners

fluid dynamics, gallery of fluid motion, Physics, Science, science and art / Mike M. / December 10, 2023

Enlarge / Harvard University graduate student Yue Sun won a Milton Van Dyke Award for her video on the hydrodynamics of marbled paper.

Y. Sun/Harvard University et al.

Marbled paper is an art form that dates back at least to the 17th century, when European travelers to the Middle East brought back samples and bound them into albums. Its visually striking patterns arise from the complex hydrodynamics of paint interacting with water, inspiring a winning video entry in this year’s Gallery of Fluid Motion.

The American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics sponsors the gallery each year as part of its annual meeting, featuring videos and posters submitted by scientists from all over the world. The objective is to highlight “the captivating science and often breathtaking beauty of fluid motion” and to “celebrate and appreciate the remarkable fluid dynamics phenomena unveiled by researchers and physicists.”

The three videos featured here are the winners of the Milton Van Dyke Awards, which also included three winning posters. There were three additional general video winners—on the atomization of impinging jets, the emergent collective motion of condensate droplets, and the swimming motion of a robotic eel—as well as three poster winners. You can view all the 2023 entries (winning and otherwise) here.

The hydrodynamics of marbling art

Harvard University graduate student Yue Sun was fascinated by the process and the resulting patterns of making marbled paper, particularly the randomness. “You don’t really know what you’re going to end up with until you have it printed,” she told Physics Magazine.

Although there are several different methods for marbling paper, the most common involves filling a shallow tray with water, then painstakingly applying different ink or paint colors to the water’s surface with an ink brush to cover the surface with concentric circles. Adding surfactants makes the colors float so that they can be stirred—perhaps with a very fine human hair—or fanned out by blowing on the circles of ink or paint with a straw. The final step is to lay paper on top to capture the colorful floating patterns. (Body marbling relies on a similar process, except the floating patterns are transferred onto a person’s skin.)

Sun was curious about the hydrodynamics at play and explored two key questions in the simulations for the video. Why does the paint or ink float despite being denser than the liquid bath? And why don’t the colors mix together to create new colors when agitated or stirred? The answer to the former is basically “surface tension,” while the latter does not occur because the bath is too viscous, so the diffusion of the paint or ink colors across color boundaries happens too slowly for mixing. Sun hopes to further improve her simulations of marbling in hopes of reverse-engineering some of her favorite patterns to determine which tools and movements were used to create them.

Marbled paper, frosty fireworks among 2023 Gallery of Fluid Motion winners Read More »