an "immortal solution?"

a few weeks ago i remember the title of a preprint from the arXiv concerning things called "immortal solutions." i didn't think much of the title at the time, and in all honestly, i thought it was a catchy name to make the paper more readable.

but now the term is called an "eternal solution" and has made news, at least on ars mathematica. this work of p. smith contributes to the analysis of the Navier-Stokes equations (see wikipedia entry) which is one of "the biggest games in town." the clay mathematics institute, for example, formulates a problem concerning these PDE.

as i've read secondhand, the theory uses viscosity solutions and c. sormani @ cuny has written a little about it. if she vouches for it, i'll listen.

this world is too small. i've bumped into prof. sormani once, years ago at a conference at CUNY Graduate Center, though i don't think we'd remember one another.

some days i wish i worked in PDE.