Orion Crest, Series_2

Chapter 27: The World's Greatest Event

　　The morning of 31 July 2018.

　　Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where mathematicians from all over the world have gathered for the International Congress of Mathematicians.

　　Although the opening ceremony of the Congress is not until tomorrow, the car park outside the Barra da Tijuca Hotel is already a bit crowded at this moment.

　　The upcoming presentation in the main conference hall on the theme of "NS equations" will be given by Professor Orion from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, who will report on the latest research progress.

　　For many people, this presentation is even more important than tomorrow's opening ceremony.

　　It's not just about a million dollars.

　　It is the beginning of a new era. ......

　　......

　　Eight o'clock.

　　Although there was still an hour before the official start of the presentation, the venue was already packed.

　　In addition to the scholars participating in the conference, there were rows full of cameras displayed against the walls on both sides of the presentation hall.

　　If this challenger succeeded, then all these images would become valuable historical information. Such an opportunity was not only something that the media was unwilling to miss, even some famous image museums had applied for filming.

　　Sitting in the back row, looking at that figure, Vera took a deep breath and calmed her somewhat disturbed heart rate. Her presentation was not until two days later, yet at this moment, she was more nervous than if she were standing on the podium herself.

　　Orion originally thought that he had already gotten used to this feeling. What he didn't expect was that when he stood here, it was still difficult to restrain the surging heartbeat.

　　Unlike that presentation at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study's Lecture Hall One, this time he was facing not just the number theory community, but the entire mathematical world ......

　　Standing on the lecture theatre, Orion took a deep breath and let his heart rate gradually calm down.

　　Right at nine o'clock, the venue, which was originally noisy and chaotic due to the whispered discussions, quieted down instantly.

　　Under the attention of all the people, a clear line of title emerged from the silver-white curtain.

　　[Proof of Existence of Solutions and Smoothness to the Three-Dimensional Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equation]

　　"Why a high-speed car doesn't disintegrate itself, and why a still lake doesn't suddenly explode. For too long we have been haunted by the obvious, because the truths we crave are always cloaked in the guise of the obvious."

　　"Even as early as the 19th century, we have concluded the equations that summarise the laws of fluid motion and made it look simple enough, yet to this day we are still at a loss as to the deeper mathematical and physical connotations behind the equations."

　　"Mathematics is a rigorous subject, and propositions involving numbers should not be described in ambiguous terms like maybe or possibly."

　　"Returning to the original question, why doesn't a car travelling at high speed disintegrate itself? Why doesn't a stationary lake suddenly explode? Is there such a mysterious singularity on an infinite time scale that allows our equations to diverge in finite time?"