CERN scientists use AI to reevaluate physics theories

Physicists at CERN are turning to AI to find something wrong with their theories.

The Large Hadron Collider smashes particles together at incredible speeds to test known physics, and those theories continue to stand up. But that’s a problem: The theories are incomplete, and until some flaw is found which can reveal new physics, the field is somewhat stuck.

CERN is using AI not simply to trawl through data, but “to point the way toward theories that they’ve never imagined,” IEEE Spectrum’s AI editor reported.

New instruments “have opened doors to the unexpected throughout the history of science,” such as the telescope revealing Jupiter’s moons, allowing scientists to ask new questions rather than just answering old ones.