Energy, mass and speed make up Einstein's legendary equation E = mc2. However, without the very concepts of these
The program was designed to monitorphysical phenomena with the help of cameras, and then gave him a task: to find the minimum set of fundamental variables that completely describe the observed system. The study was published in Nature Computational Science.
The researchers started by feeding the systemraw video recordings of phenomena for which they already knew the answer. For example, they “fed” the system a video recording of a swinging double pendulum, which, as is known, has exactly four “state variables”: – angle and angular velocity of each of the two arms. After several hours of analysis, the AI returned the answer: 4.7.
The researchers then proceeded to visualizethe actual variables that the program has defined. Retrieving the variables themselves was not easy, as the program cannot describe them in a human-intuitive way. After some research, it turned out that two of the variables chosen by the program corresponded in general terms to the angles of inclination of the shoulders, but the other two remained a mystery.
The team was confident that the AI had found the correct set of four variables, "but we don't yet understand the mathematical language it speaks," – explained the lead author of the work.
The researchers also submitted video recordings of the systems,for which they did not know a clear answer. The first videos showed a rag "dancer" twirling in front of stores. After several hours of analysis, the program produced eight variables. The lava lamp video also produced eight variables. They then loaded a video clip of a fireplace fire, and the program spit out 24 variables.
"I always wondered if weever met an intelligent alien race, would they have discovered the same laws of physics that we do, or could they describe the universe differently? – says one of the scientists.