Century-Old Problem Solved: Mathematicians Unify Three Theories of Fluid Physics

Mathematicians from the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan have posted a paper to arXiv claiming to have solved a subgoal of Hilbert's sixth problem: unifying three physical theories describing fluid motion—Newton's laws of motion, the Boltzmann equation, and the Euler-Navier-Stokes equations. The achievement bridges the microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels by proving that, in the limit of infinitely many particles with vanishing size, the statistical behavior of Newton's equations converges to the solution of the Boltzmann equation. This strengthens the mathematical foundations of physics.