Alternative Physics: Discovered by an Artificial Intelligence

Columbia University researchers thanks to a artificial intelligence discovered the alternative physics. A way of trying to explain the physical formulas that describe actions that have not undergone obvious factors. The new AI program only analyzed a fraction of physical phenomena. It is not intended to explain the universe by inventing a new type of physics or to improve upon formulas already known. his goal is something else.

The research team wanted to know if there were any new variables explain why new complicated emerging phenomena. And here came a new physics called alternative. How did the AI ​​find new physics? And one more question: what are the minimum fundamental variables needed to describe what’s going on? It is explained by the video of an oscillating pendulum with four state variables involved: angle and angular velocity of each of the two pendulums. The answer is that the phenomenon would require 4.7 variables to explain.

We tried to correlate the other variables with everything we could think of: angular and linear velocities, kinetic and potential energy, and various combinations of known quantities. But nothing seemed to match perfectly… we still don’t understand the mathematical language he speaks.

Boyuan Chen, a software researcher who led the work

The research team then showed the AI ​​more videos. The first had a wavy “air dancer” arm that blew in the wind (with eight variables identified by the AI). Then the images from the lava lamps also showed eight variables. A movie about flames had 24 variables. Basically, each time the variables were unique.

Without any prior knowledge of the underlying physics, our algorithm reveals the intrinsic dimension of observed dynamics and identifies candidate sets of state variables.

researchers

The AI ​​can therefore be a valid help for the future in the‘identification of the variables underlying new concepts as yet unknown to humans.