2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/87358Turbulent flows are notoriously difficult to describe and understand based on first principles. One reason is that turbulence contains highly intermittent bursts of vorticity and strain-rate with highly non-Gaussian statistics. Quantitatively, intermittency is manifested in highly elongated tails in the probability density functions of the velocity increments between pairs of points. A long-standing open issue has been to predict the origins of intermittency and non-Gaussian statistics from the Navier-Stokes equations. Here we derive, from the Navier-Stokes equations, a simple nonlinear dynamical system for the Lagrangian evolution of longitudinal and transverse velocity increments. From this system we are able to show that the ubiquitous non-Gaussian tails in turbulence have their origin in the inherent self-amplification of longitudinal velocity increments, and cross amplification of the transverse velocity increments.to be published in PRL, 4 pages, 4 figuresFluid Dynamicstext