Million dollar problem! A Kazakh mathematician claims to have solved an enormously important equation which has a million dollar prize on it.
Mukhtarbay Otelbayev from the Eurasian National University in Astana, Kazakhstan, claims he has proved the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem after working on it for 30 years.
The problem concerns equations that are used to model fluids - from airflow over a plane's wing to the crashing of a tsunami.
The equations is workable, however, there is no proof that solutions exist for all possible situations, giving unrealistic answers, 'New Scientist' reported.
The Clay Mathematics Institute in Providence, Rhode Island, had in 2000, named the equation as one of seven Millennium Prize problems.
They also offered USD 1 million to anyone as prize who could devise a proof for the important equation.
Now, Otelbayev claims to have solved the problem and published it in the paper in the Mathematical Journal.
"I worked on the problem on and off, for 30 years," he said.
Otelbayev said that three colleagues in Kazakhstan and another in Russia agree that the proof is correct.
However, the combination of the Russian text and the specialist knowledge needed to understand the Navier-Stokes equations means the international mathematical community, which usually communicates in English, is having difficulty evaluating it, the report said.
