After 125 years, we finally figured out how weird fluids behave when you hit them with massive amounts of energy.
arXiv · March 13, 2026 · 2603.11762
Why it matters
Since 1901, it was an open question whether the equations for complex fluid flow would hold up when hit with massive, explosive amounts of energy. This result provides the first global proof that these systems stay mathematically stable no matter how much energy is involved, a major milestone for our understanding of fluid physics.
From the abstract
In 1901, Korteweg formulated a constitutive equation for the Cauchy stress tensor to provide a continuum mechanical model for capillarity within fluids. Dunn and Serrin [Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 88(2):95-133,1985] in 1985 further modified the system of compressible fluids based on the Korteweg theory of capillarity. Since then, for the 2D and 3D compressible Navier-Stokes-Korteweg system, the global existence of strong solutions with arbitrarily large initial data have remained a challenging op