Navier–Stokes May Drive Perfectly Smooth Flow to a Singularity in Finite Time

stevenstrogatz · x · 2026-09-09

Strogatz lays out the shocking claim: the Navier–Stokes equations can drive a perfectly smooth initial flow—no discontinuities, no infinitely sharp vortices, nothing pathological—to a singularity in finite time, meaning something becomes infinite. He cautions that picturing the water as simply moving infinitely fast is misleading; that is not what happens.

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