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