A 115-year effort to bridge the particle and fluid descriptions of nature has led mathematicians to an unexpected answer. In 1900, the great mathematician David Hilbert presented a list of 23 unsolved ...
The Navier-Stokes equations capture in a few succinct terms one of the most ubiquitous features of the physical world: the flow of fluids. The equations, which date to the 1820s, are today used to ...
The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or mathematician to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the ...
When a fluid is in motion, it must move in such a way that mass is conserved. To see how mass conservation places restrictions on the velocity field, consider the steady flow of fluid through a duct ...
Two mathematicians prove that under certain extreme conditions, the Navier-Stokes equations output nonsense. The Navier-Stokes equations capture in a few succinct terms one of the most ubiquitous ...