The feat is one the first tests of a technique that researchers hope they can use to discover new laws of physics, and perhaps to reformulate quantum mechanics, by finding patterns in large data sets. The results are due to appear in Physical Review Letters 1. To do this, the researchers had to design a new type of neural network, a machine-learning system inspired by the structure of the brain. Conventional neural networks learn to recognize objects — such as images or sounds — by training on huge data sets.
They discover general features — for example, 'four legs' and 'pointy ears' might be used to identify cats. They then encode those features in mathematical 'nodes', the artificial equivalent of neurons. But rather than distilling that information into a few, easily interpretable rules, as physicists do, neural networks are something of a black box, spreading their acquired knowledge across thousands or even millions of nodes in ways that are unpredictable and difficult to interpret.
Because few links connected the two sides, the first network was forced to pass information to the other in a condensed format. Renner likens it to how an adviser might pass on their acquired knowledge to a student.
One of the first tests was to give the network simulated data about the movements of Mars and the Sun in the sky, as seen from Earth. But in the s, Nicolaus Copernicus found that the movements could be predicted with a much simpler system of formulas if both Earth and the planets were orbiting the Sun.
Renner stresses that although the algorithm derived the formulae, a human eye is needed to interpret the equations and understand how they relate to the movement of planets around the Sun. This work is important because it is able to single out the crucial parameters that describe a physical system, says roboticist Hod Lipson at Columbia University in New York City. Renner and his team want to develop machine-learning technologies that could help physicists to solve apparent contradictions in quantum mechanics.
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Galaxies by David Eicher. Astronomy Puzzles. Jon Lomberg Milky Way Posters. Astronomy for Kids. Sign up. Table of Contents Subscribe Digital Editons. In his seminal work, Copernicus formulated a fully predictive model of the universe in which the Earth is just another planet orbiting the Sun, but fear of being branded a heretic by the Christian Church meant that he waited until his deathbed in before publishing the book.
After Sir Isaac Newton invented the reflecting telescope in , it soon became eminently clear that the Earth was not the centre of our solar system. The final nail in the coffin of geocentrism then came after Newton published his Principia Mathematica in which he definitively proves the heliocentric model first proposed by Copernicus.
For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place than this from which it can illuminate everything at the same time? Home About. News Ticker.
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