The paper "Can LLMs Uncover Hidden Physical Laws through Free Exploration?" introduces LongChang, an automated framework that generates simulated worlds with altered physics and lets large language models (LLMs) explore these worlds autonomously. The LLMs manipulate objects, build tools, and generate reports without external guidance, while separate agents review scenes, tool designs, and report correctness. In experiments with 12 LLMs, only GPT‑6‑Astra discovered new laws at a 16.7% rate, whereas the others found none, and the exploration records show many uninvestigated anomalies and incomplete law identification.
By Zhen Yang, Wen Wang, Xander Xu, Ying-Cong Chen
arXiv:2605.26087v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Frontier LLMs now perform strongly across a wide range of physics evaluations, but it is hard to disentangle genuine reasoning from recall of...
By Matt L. Wiemann, Lindsay M. Smith, Peter Melchior, Siddharth Mishra-Sharma, Andrew Gordon Wilson, Pavel Izmailov, Carolina Cuesta-L\'azaro
arXiv:2609.01526v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Scientific agents must learn not only how to reason, but also what to believe. However, existing LLM agents typically express scientific hypotheses in...
By Qing Zhao, Haowei Li, Weijian Deng, Pengxu Wei, Liang Lin
arXiv:2607. 05682v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM systems for scientific discovery increasingly assist with ideation, literature synthesis, experiment planning, and report generation, but the first research question they propose can remain difficult to audit: it may sound plausible without exposing the mechanism, falsifier, or assumption that a scientist should inspect.
By Yufeng Wang
The paper presents an explore‑then‑commit protocol that uses a large language model to generate hypotheses, a programmatic planner to collect measurements, and a fresh prompt to synthesize a scientific law from fixed observations. In 576 NewtonBench trials across 12 physics modules, the protocol—especially when interpreter‑enabled planners are used—reduces the number of measurements needed and improves root‑mean‑squared logarithmic error for both GPT‑4.1‑mini and GPT‑4.1. The study demonstrates measurement savings in every module, though it notes that the causal components and generalization beyond noiseless direct‑equation tasks remain unresolved.
By Kautik Mandve, Dileepa Fernando
arXiv:2609.13152v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) perform strongly on static science benchmarks, yet their ability to reason about the physical world through active experim...
By Joseph Chan, Utkarsh Jha, Xiyin Yang, Abhinav Jarajapu, Anik Sahai, Eddie Hu, Robin Jeshua Deepak, Stefano Saravalle, Aditya Shah
SciGame is a new benchmark that transforms scientific literature into structured cards, each providing both an Original and a Counterfactual environment for the same task. It evaluates language‑model agents in identification and discovery scenarios under Prior‑only, Fixed, and Adaptive protocols, using historical canonical laws and a live temporal collection. Experiments with five advanced models reveal that prior knowledge can hurt performance when relations change, adaptive experimentation benefits strong models but not weak ones, and accurate explanations may mask quantitative errors, highlighting the difficulty of recovering exact symbolic laws.
By Yusheng Zhao, Bowei He, Xue Liu, Mingxiao Li
The paper introduces LLM-IDEA, an identifiability‑driven experimental agent that guides large language model scientists in closed‑loop discovery of mechanistic world models. It incorporates an identifiability engine that classifies experimental plateaus as capability limits, resolvable within the design class, or certified exhausted, and demonstrates its effectiveness on benchmarks such as ODEBench, DiscoverPhysics, and a custom Alien Universe testbed. The agent’s ability to distinguish when further experimentation is futile versus when new designs are needed improves the efficiency and reliability of autonomous scientific discovery.
By Surya Shetty, Ulisses Braga-Neto
arXiv:2606. 29315v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to take actions in the real world and support human decision-making, yet most agents rely on parametric knowledge, fixed post-training data, retrieval, or search.
By Abhranil Chandra, Sankaran Vaidyanathan, Utsav Dhanuka, Varun Gandhi, Scott Niekum
arXiv:2607. 00276v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Current large-language-model (LLM) physics benchmarks are usually scored by answer accuracy, which cannot distinguish genuine reasoning from recall of familiar problem patterns and reveals little about where a model's reasoning breaks down.
By Dong Zhang
The paper introduces eXplainable DFT (XDFT), a self‑evolving computational agent that transforms experiment‑simulation mismatches into executable searches for physical mechanisms. XDFT formalizes candidate mechanisms as hypotheses, tests them against experimental data, and refines its search strategy through a learning loop. In a benchmark of 112 cases where standard calculations predicted a metal but experiments found a semiconductor, XDFT resolved 105 cases with evidence‑supported mechanisms, and its top‑ranked hypotheses improved dramatically over initial expert priors.
By Yue Li, Penghui Yang, Yushan Xiao, Zhonghan Zhang, Jianguo Huang, Yuhao Lu, Cuntai Guan, Bo An, Bijun Tang, Zheng Liu
arXiv:2606. 04751v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as autonomous agents in scientific tasks.
By Leonardo Bertolazzi, Katya Tentori, Raffaella Bernardi