Two physicists have used generative artificial intelligence (AI) to solve a stubborn mathematical problem in physics that had vexed researchers for more than a decade.
Their solution, described July 1 in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, came about when the physicists chose to revisit a problem they thought they had attempted to solve exhaustively within a topic they knew intimately. This concept, known as jamming, refers to the sudden transition from a fluid system to a rigid-but-disordered one.
The simplest way to understand this idea is to imagine a pool table covered with billiard balls. If you keep adding balls, eventually the table becomes so congested that there is no space for any more and each ball on the table is securely held in place by its neighbors. This is a disordered, completely frozen situation known as a jammed state.
The study authors — Giorgio Parisi, winner of the
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