Tags: Scientific discovery

OpenAI announced that a general‑purpose reasoning model has produced an original proof that overturns a geometry conjecture posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. The company says the breakthrough demonstrates AI’s ability to carry out long, complex chains of reasoning without being tailored for mathematics, a claim that draws both praise from several mathematicians and skepticism after a previous, premature claim by a former OpenAI executive. Read more

A pair of European Space Agency astronomers trained an artificial‑intelligence model called AnomalyMatch to scan the Hubble Legacy Archive. In just two and a half days the system examined almost 100 million image cutouts and flagged nearly 1,400 previously undocumented astrophysical anomalies, most of them interacting galaxies. The findings, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, also include gravitational lenses, jellyfish‑type galaxies, and dozens of objects that defy classification, highlighting AI’s power to extract new science from existing data. Read more

Periodic Labs, founded by former Google Brain and DeepMind researcher Ekin Dogus Cubuk and ex‑OpenAI VP of Research Liam Fedus, announced a $300 million seed funding round backed by top tech investors. The startup aims to create AI scientists that run autonomous laboratories, conducting physical experiments to discover new materials such as advanced superconductors. Leveraging the founders' experience in AI breakthroughs—including a trillion‑parameter neural network and AI‑driven crystal discovery—the company plans to generate fresh physical‑world data to fuel future AI models and accelerate scientific innovation. Read more