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  • BBC Science Focus Magazine

    Q&A

    Mar 11, 2020 6 minutes

    JACK STECHER, DALLAS, TEXAS

    WOULD A MODERN COMPUTER BE ABLE TO DERIVE THE EQUATION E=mc 2  ?

    Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have had some success in learning the laws of physics. In 2009, researchers at Cornell University fed data from a swinging pendulum to their AI, and it managed to learn laws such as the conservation of momentum and Newton’s second law of motion. In 2018, researchers at MIT went further, showing their ‘AI physicist’ a bouncing ball in various simulated worlds, which allowed it to derive the laws for each simulation. Like a scientist, the algorithm could even combine individual laws to make unified theories. To discover E=mc2 , we would need to show an AI object behaving according to Special Relativity. For example, we could create a simulated world in which the mass of an object appears to increase with speed. Let an AI loose in this world and it may well figure out Einstein’s famous equation linking mass and energy. LV

    BILLY WILSON, DEAL, KENT

    IS THERE ANY HOPE OF CURING DIABETES?

    Diabetes is actually several medical conditions with one thing in common: they all lead to unhealthy

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