logoalt Hacker News

semi-extrinsicyesterday at 9:01 PM1 replyview on HN

This is a wrong interpretation. Physicists have a shit-ton of models that produce "aphysical singularities", they just work around those to get meaningful answers anyway. This is a whole trope and stereotype. Some of the most successfull and accurate predictions in all of physics come out after you discard a bunch of singularities.

See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization

Nobody who actually works in fluid dynamics on any sort of application gives a hoot about the N-S millenium problem. Many do not even know what it is. There is no practical effect of this proof on how we do fluid mechanics.


Replies

sobellianyesterday at 9:15 PM

Whether or not ways exist to work around the singularities, that they exist is surely of note. Before von Neumann formalized QM people were still doing QM, okay fine. But it's wrong to then say von Neumann was doing no physics of note.

show 1 reply