Rumors that OpenAI’s “Navier-Stokes” solution stole work may be overblown ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
October 13, 2026—Scientists discover a new 3D shape with special properties. Plus, why menopause is like hitting a biological "cliff." And senior reporter Joe Howlett explains the AI bomb going off in math right now.
—Andrea Gawrylewski,
Chief Newsletter Editor
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S.I.A. Studios/Shutterstock (painting); OpenAI (logo)
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Last month, OpenAI posted an inscrutable 166-page solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, one of math’s famed “million-dollar problems.” Rumors quickly circulated that the solution stole the work of two mathematicians. But according to experts working on the solution, those rumors may have been overblown. Scroll down for more on the AI-math revolution. | 3 min read
Menopause is not a slow progression, but an abrupt, body-wide transition across bone, liver, kidney, blood chemistry, fats, and more, according to a study of more than 1 million women. | 2 min read
Signs of hidden chambers in the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb have raised hopes among researchers of finding hints of Nefertiti's burial place—the boy king's stepmother and mother-in-law. | 2 min read
Astronomers observed a fast radio burst that occurred in a far-distant galaxy some 10 billion years ago—making it the oldest FRB ever detected by far. | 3 min read
Geometry can explain the shape of many flower petals, but roses have remained a mystery for a long time. How do they achieve their incomparable splendor? Mathematicians have found an answer. | 4 min read
Science researchers are using AI in their work—to help brainstorm, refine ideas, or process data. But now those scientists are starting to view AI as more of a competitor than a colleague. | 3 min read
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Math Revolution
Last week, OpenAI dropped AI-generated solutions to 372 important open math problems. This so-called “slop drop” landed on a mathematical community that’s already drowning in a deluge of LLM-written math they don’t yet understand. And mathematicians are freaking out. They will need years to make sense of these AI proofs (and without ever having access to OpenAI’s model). On top of that, mathematicians are grappling with rapid changes to their field—ones they have no control of.
Biggest AI revelations:
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Progress on the Reimann hypothesis: Some call the Riemann hypothesis the scariest problem in math. It centers on a special, complicated equation called the Riemann zeta function—specifically, which numbers you can put into this function to make it come out to zero. OpenAI’s drop contains major results about where these “zeros” don’t lie—a huge step toward the holy grail of proving the hypothesis itself.
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The Kakeya conjecture: Imagine you have to slide a piece of chalk around on a tablet so that it points in every direction, while covering as little of the tablet with chalk as possible. This summer, a mathematician won a Fields Medal for solving the three-dimensional version of the problem. OpenAI just dropped the solution in four dimensions.
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Computer science: The AI also improved some of the most important algorithms in computing, including those that underpin AI itself. This includes how to multiply integers and matrices, as well as the so-called “fast Fourier transform.”
Click here to read about more of the highest-profile solutions from the release.
What this means: About a year ago, a bunch of AI companies decided that math is a great way to prove to their investors that they’re marching toward superintelligence. So they ate up all the proofs and poached all the mathematicians they could. Now, in a matter of months, they’ve successfully made humanity’s oldest academic discipline unrecognizable. Things reached a fever pitch a month ago, when OpenAI solved one of the biggest problems in math—with rumors suggesting they’d stolen others’ work to do so. A closer look has since revealed that those rumors may have been overblown, and that AI exploited a loophole in the wording of the problem, rather than solving it in the way mathematicians hoped. —Joseph Howlett, Senior Reporter
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Researchers discovered a three-dimensional “einstein” tile—a special shape with unique capabilities. This 3D shape, dubbed the Chair44 monotile, can infinitely tile a three-dimensional space by covering it without gaps or overlapping shapes. Moreover, that tiling is aperiodic, meaning that the pattern is never repeated. Read more.
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Wearing shoes changes the physiology of our ankle bones. | New Scientist
Jeff Bezos's space technology company Blue Origin may go public in a few years, he says. | Bloomberg ($)
Hackers targeted hundreds of supermarkets in France, causing food spoilage and fires. | CNET
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It's hard to overstate how much of an existential crisis is happening in mathematics right now. Our reporter Joe Howlett has been talking to mathematicians for a year (a year in which AI math breakthroughs keep coming on like a storm), and their anxiety and worry are very real. Suddenly a machine can do what only the top mathematicians in the world can do ... so why would anyone keep pursuing this field at all? I suspect questions like these will become common in many more fields in the coming years. What is the pursuit of knowledge for, and who will be doing it?
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—Andrea Gawrylewski,
Chief Newsletter Editor
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