3 ms·
Gell-Mann amnesia is a huge reason why I don't trust the popular science press in general, not just Quanta Magazine. In fluid dynamics, their pages on why turb
by btrettel 4y ago
Gell-Mann amnesia is a huge reason why I don't trust the popular science press in general, not just Quanta Magazine.
In fluid dynamics, their pages on why turbulence is hard [0] don't mention the actual reason turbulence is hard: It has a really high computational complexity. There is no mystery here. The math behind it is pretty simple. I guess this doesn't sell the article though, so a journalist won't say that. Though I'm not sure the people at Quanta Magazine are aware!
Quanta Magazine also spends an extremely disproportionate amount of articles on the (constant viscosity) Navier-Stokes existence and uniqueness problem [1]. This is essentially a pure math problem, in my view, of no practical consequence [2]. Contrary to what Quanta Magazine writes, this has nothing to do with turbulence beyond that both use the Navier-Stokes equations.
[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-trouble-with-turbulence-20190128/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-trouble-with-turbulence-2... https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-makes-the-hardest-equations-in-physics-so-difficult-20180116/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-makes-the-hardest-equati...
[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/deep-learning-poised-to-blow-up-famed-fluid-equations-20220412/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/deep-learning-poised-to-blow-... https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-fluid-equations-spring-a-leak-20191218/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-fluid-equations-spring... https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-fluid-equations-a-steady-flow-of-progress-20200113/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-fluid-equations-a-steady-... https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-makes-the-hardest-equations-in-physics-so-difficult-20180116/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-makes-the-hardest-equati... https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-find-wrinkle-in-famed-fluid-equations-20171221/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-find-wrinkle-i... https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-fluid-new-path-in-grand-math-challenge-20140224/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-fluid-new-path-in-grand-mat...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31049535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31049535