AI-Newton: A Concept-Driven Physical Law Discovery System without Prior Physical Knowledge
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Abstract (arXiv)
While current AI-driven methods excel at deriving empirical models from individual experiments, a significant challenge remains in uncovering the common fundamental physics that underlie these models -- a task at which human physicists are adept. To bridge this gap, we introduce AI-Newton, a novel framework for concept-driven scientific discovery. Our system autonomously derives general physical laws directly from raw, multi-experiment data, operating without supervision or prior physical knowledge. Its core innovations are twofold: (1) proposing interpretable physical concepts to construct laws, and (2) progressively generalizing these laws to broader domains. Applied to a large, noisy dataset of mechanics experiments, AI-Newton successfully rediscovers foundational and universal laws, such as Newton's second law, the conservation of energy, and the universal gravitation. This work represents a significant advance toward autonomous, human-like scientific discovery.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 24 of its 57 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Apr 2025.
Builds on
24 of 57 references.
References · 24
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12 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 3.
5 papers.
- 2025NewtonBench: Benchmarking Generalizable Scientific Law Discovery in LLM Agentscited by 36
- 2025On LLM-Based Scientific Inductive Reasoning Beyond Equationscited by 2
- 2026Do Transformers Have the Ability for Periodicity Generalization?cited by 0
- 2026ERBench: A Benchmark and Testsuite for Equation Discovery Algorithmscited by 0
- 2026Machine Learning Meets High-Energy Nuclear Physics: From Pattern Recognition to Physics-Integrated Discoverycited by 0
- 2026Machine Learning Meets High-Energy Nuclear Physics: From Pattern Recognition to Physics-Integrated Discovery8 Oct 2026
- 2026ERBench: A Benchmark and Testsuite for Equation Discovery Algorithms8 Jun 2026
- 2026Do Transformers Have the Ability for Periodicity Generalization?30 Jan 2026
- 2025NewtonBench: Benchmarking Generalizable Scientific Law Discovery in LLM Agents8 Oct 2025
- 2025On LLM-Based Scientific Inductive Reasoning Beyond Equations12 Sep 2025