@tao@mathstodon.xyz (3/4) Navier–Stokes is a good example. Even just looking at the publicly released construction, one already encounters a large collection of structures worth studying further: concentrating cores, swirl amplification, annular stress, oscillatory realization, moment matching, residual hierarchies, and more. Those are not “used-up” mathematical resources. They are new objects of investigation. If anything, rapidly obtaining a solution may expose mathematical structure sooner than the traditional process would have done. The fact that the entrance was opened quickly says nothing by itself about how large the world behind it is. If an entrance has only just been opened and the first reaction is, “What a shame, another good problem has been consumed,” then perhaps what has really been touched is not a vulnerability of mathematics itself, but a value system that has long tied mathematical worth to difficulty, scarcity, and the privilege of being the one who solves the problem. As obtaining answers becomes cheaper, mathematical value can move upward: from solving a problem to understanding a structure; from proving one theorem to explaining why an entire class of phenomena occurs; from competing over an entrance to exploring the world behind it.