Beer Review: Navier-Stokes, a Millennium Problem and the Role of AI

🍻 Welcome to the Beer Review.
It's our new talk series: one science or tech story everyone is talking about, the people who actually study it and a beer to debate it over.
Round 1 kicks off with a big one 👇
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10,000 AI agents. 88 hours. One $1 million math problem. Did they really crack it? 🤔
Pour a coffee, ride your bike into the wind, watch smoke curl up from a candle: every fluid around you follows the Navier–Stokes equations. We’ve used them for years to design planes and forecast the weather. Yet nobody could answer one question about them: can a perfectly calm fluid suddenly “blow up”, with its speed shooting to infinity in a finite amount of time?
The question is so hard it became one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems. Since 2000, only one of them has ever been solved.
Then, on 8 September 2026, OpenAI announced that 10,000 AI agents, working for 88 hours, had found the answer: yes, it can blow up. What followed was pure drama: headlines worldwide, a rival team of mathematicians saying they got there first, a public fight over credit and a 166-page proof that experts are still picking apart.
So what actually happened? Is the problem really solved? And what does all this mean for mathematics and for those who study it?
We asked two people who work with these equations every day. Prof. Alessio Falocchi and Prof. Danica Basaric, from the Department of Mathematics at Politecnico di Milano, who will explain:

• What the Millennium Prize Problems are, and why each one is worth $1 million
• What the Navier–Stokes problem is really asking, explained for everyone and not just mathematicians
• Give their take on the controversy around OpenAI’s claim, sticking to the facts

After the talk, there’s time for your questions, then we keep the conversation going over a beer.
🗓 October 20th
🕕 18:00 – Meetup
📍 Upcycle Milano Bike Café, Via A.M. Ampère 59
🎟 Limited spots, register to save yours
🍹 The first 20 to arrive get a free drink

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🍺 Beer Review is for everyone: no prerequisites, any degree, any background. Never heard of the topic before? Even better, you’re exactly who we’re doing this for. Bring your curiosity, the beer’s on tap.