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Concept

Navier–Stokes equations

The image depicts swirling, abstract waves in shades of blue against a dark background, symbolizing the fluid dynamics described by the Navier-Stokes equations.

The system of partial differential equations, formulated by Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes in the 1820s and 1840s, that describes the motion of viscous fluids. They underlie every weather model, every aircraft wing, every prediction of ocean current. Whether they always admit smooth solutions in three dimensions is an open question, formally unsolved since their statement nearly two centuries ago.

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