What OpenAI's Navier–Stokes breakthrough means for the physics of fluid flow

OpenAI claims its most advanced AI model has solved a Millennium Prize Problem, proving that the nineteenth-century Navier–Stokes equations — which model fluid flow — can produce a "singularity" predicting physically impossible infinite speeds for liquids and gases. The solution examines a stretching vortex; Brown University's George Karniadakis calculated that for air the singularity appears when the vortex is about 70 nanometres wide, roughly the distance an air molecule travels before colliding with another — the point where the equations' assumption of fluids as continuous substances breaks down. The claim has sparked debate over AI's growing mathematical abilities, whether models are absorbing unpublished work by others, and who deserves credit.