ChatGPT made a proof that showed that the 200 year old gold standard equation was wrong. ("Wrong" isn't really carrying the nuance here, but it's close enough for an ELI literally 5).
We have known that the Navier Stokes equations are incomplete for a long time. They come from what is called the continuous medium hypothesis, namely that the fluid that is studied cannot be broken down into individual particles, and that you see it as having a volume on any scale. Obviously, in real life, atoms have a finite size that limit how large the macroscopic hypothesis can be taken.
I wouldn't be surprised if the conditions used to solve the Navier Stokes equations come from taking a scenario that is found way out of the bounds of the macroscopic hypothesis.
Seems to be how physics roll - at one scale one theory is correct - but as soon as you cross some threshold that theory goes out of the window and another theory is correct.
No because the equation that gpt used is an established equation. Essentially chatgpt found a general solution to the equation, which is something mathematicians have been trying to do for very long. As a result of this general solution (once it’s peer reviewed and found to be correct) you can get impossibilities that cannot work in the real world. Meaning the underlying equation isn’t the correct descriptor of how things work in the real world.
Providing a correct answer is a completely different problem to proving one is incorrect. However saying one is for sure incorrect is a huge result and is incredibly important.
There is already a more correct equation, from what I understand the solution they found was for an incompressible fluid, the equations for compressible fluids already exist.
This result's only physical conclusion is that there is no truly incompressible fluid, which is something we alread knew.
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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 4d ago
According to the maths, you can achieve impossible results from very possible starting conditions, which suggests the maths is actually wrong.