• Accepted Paper

AI-Newton: A concept-driven physical law discovery system without prior physical knowledge

You-Le Fang, Dong-Shan Jian, Xiang Li, and Yan-Qing Ma

Phys. Rev. Research - Accepted 9 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dvvc-4rsr

Abstract

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 proof-of-concept step toward autonomous, human-like scientific discovery.

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