As of: 2026-10-18 22:10 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/v/primetime-the-navier-stokes-situation-is-insane/

# The Navier Stokes situation is insane

The PrimeTime, 10 September 2026, YouTube. 935,779 views as of 18 October 2026.
Kind: Review.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA0UkPombNk

## Why it is here

ThePrimeagen's 11-minute reaction to OpenAI's Navier–Stokes blowup claim, two days after it, citing Tristan Buckmaster's statement (cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf) and Andrew Curran's X post. One of the two most-watched videos on the result (~936k views by Oct 18), missed for five weeks: earlier searches were date-sorted.

## Description (written by Gemini from the video)

**Summary**  
Presented by Michael B. Paulson (ThePrimeagen) on his channel *The PrimeTime*, this video examines the controversy and priority dispute surrounding OpenAI's claimed solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem. Paulson breaks down mathematician Tristan Buckmaster's four-page statement alleging potential data misuse from OpenAI Codex sessions, OpenAI's counter-claims, and the public response from OpenAI researcher Sébastien Bubeck.

**What is shown**  
* **[00:05]** OpenAI's announcement post stating an internal multi-agent model and GPT-6 Astra resolved the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem.  
* **[00:13]** Summary slide listing the Clay Mathematics Institute's Seven Millennium Prize Problems.  
* **[00:35]** Posts and replies on X accusing OpenAI of stealing results from mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge.  
* **[01:26]** Excerpts from Tristan Buckmaster's statement detailing their results on finite-time blowup for porous media, Boussinesq, and 3D incompressible Euler.  
* **[01:48]** Sponsor segment demonstrating Namespace devbox and sandboxing infrastructure for AI agents.  
* **[03:34]** Reading through Buckmaster's four-page letter documenting his timeline, tool usage (Claude, Codex, GPT-5.6 Sol, Astra, Lean), his communications with OpenAI, and negotiations with Sébastien Bubeck.  
* **[07:42]** Sébastien Bubeck's public clarification on X alongside screenshots of text messages with Levent Alpöge.  
* **[10:05]** OpenAI chart titled *"Performance of GPT-6 Astra and our Internal Model on a curated set of open math problems"* across test-time compute.

**Claims & numbers**  
* The presenter states OpenAI utilized around 10,000 concurrent agents running for roughly 88 hours, followed by 17 hours of Lean formalization and verification with GPT-6 Astra.  
* The presenter estimates OpenAI's compute spend on the proof run was likely north of $10 million for a $1 million Millennium Prize bounty.  
* Buckmaster's document claims he and Alpöge obtained LLM-generated blowup results on August 15 and verified them in Lean on August 22, 2026.  
* Buckmaster claims he was informed OpenAI's internal proof for forced blowup in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and $\mathbb{T}^3$ was approximately 100 pages long.  
* Bubeck claims in his response that he never requested Alpöge be removed from authorship of his own work and sought to coordinate discovery announcements.

**Notable quotes**  
* **[01:06]** *"Wait a second. Am I... am I being deceived?"*  
* **[07:23]** *"The reply was, 'If you don't want me to be nice, then I don't have to be nice.'"*  
* **[10:36]** *"They cannot let Anthropic win. The fact that Anthropic could be winning, that is the worst thing for them."*

**Assessment**  
This is a commentary and review video analyzing a major academic and industry controversy. No technical tools or model outputs are demonstrated live by the presenter; he reviews and reacts to publicly posted statements, screenshots of correspondence, and official OpenAI announcements.

_Described by gemini-3.8-flash on 2026-10-18 from the video's audio and frames._

## Related

- 2026-09-08: [OpenAI claims a Millennium Prize problem](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-08-openai-navier-stokes-blowup/)

## More videos on this

- 2026-10-01: [Did AI Solve One of Math’s Hardest Problems?](https://postcutoff.com/v/startalk-did-ai-solve-one-of-maths-hardest-problems/), StarTalk, YouTube, review, 7,740,113 views as of 15 October 2026.
- 2026-09-11: [OpenAI's biggest math breakthrough is getting ugly...](https://postcutoff.com/v/fireship-openai-math-breakthrough-getting-ugly/), Fireship, YouTube, review, 3,424,687 views as of 9 October 2026.
- 2026-09-09: [The controversy around OpenAI "solving" a $1m math problem (Navier-Stokes)](https://postcutoff.com/v/physics-by-oimeow-controversy-openai-navier-stokes/), Physics by Oimeow, YouTube, review, 2,613,114 views as of 12 October 2026.
- 2026-09-09: [AI Solved a Millennium Problem and Everyone's Angry](https://postcutoff.com/v/sabine-ai-solved-millennium-problem-everyones-angry/), Sabine Hossenfelder, YouTube, review, 1,616,209 views as of 9 October 2026.

What else happened that month, day by day: https://postcutoff.com/timeline/2026/09/

## People in it

- [Levent Alpöge](https://postcutoff.com/person/levent-alpoge/), Mathematician, member of technical staff, Anthropic
- [Sébastien Bubeck](https://postcutoff.com/person/sebastien-bubeck/), Researcher, OpenAI