Nördnytt! 🤓Three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics
The Exponential Time Hypothesis Is False [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251661
- stillpointlab - 24022 sekunder sedanI think OpenAI deserve credit for adjusting their approach after the last math drop. I think Terrance Tao shares some credit here for galvanizing the response.
Including the relevant mathematicians and scientists before dumping this onto the public is sure to go a long way to relaxing fears in those communities. I'm not sure how they will deal with accusations of favoritism but at least they are demonstrating a willingness to participate in a process.
I hope the community can express some positivity that will encourage OpenAI and other foundation labs to continue with this collaborative approach.
- abetusk - 31399 sekunder sedanETH is false! I really would not have believed it.
[0]:
> We give a deterministic algorithm for exactly counting the satisfying assignments of an arbitrary k-CNF formula. For every fixed k â©ľ 2, on a formula with n variables and m clauses, our algorithm uses $poly_k (n, m)$ space and runs in time $(n + m)^{O_k(1)} 2^{n/(\log n)^{1/2 + o(1)}}$
The dominant term there is (roughly) $2^{n / (\log n)^{0.5}}$, so still superpolynomial but less than exponential. Fucking wild.
[0] https://github.com/openai/math/blob/main/preprints/The-Expon...
- martinhath - 33418 sekunder sedanETH is false! This is one of the big long-standing hypotheses that I actually remember from university, and afaik, it was reasonable to assume it would be true; reasonable enough for a lot of papers and results to assume this for bounds or hardness proofs of common problems in parameterized complexity, anyways.
Also glad to see that one of the authors of the paper stating it is also in the loop here.
2026 is weird.
- KolenCh - 9814 sekunder sedanInteresting that the physics result is not released yet. From the limited wordings, “unified completion of the Standard Model of particle physics” is probably SU(5), which is experimentally disproved as one describing our universe. So the wording sounds a bit confusing, ie they are not proving or discovering Grand Unified Theory (GUT), and there’s no Higgs. So it is not really the standard model, but models that’s closely related to that. It is still an impressive result. IMO at the level of the recent quasi Riemann hypothesis level result, shy of getting the millennium prize (no mass gap) but is actually a very meaningful result, both of which arguably more impactful that the one they solved a millennium prize problem (Navier–Stokes).
More comments in https://blog.kolen.dev/link/openai-shepherds
- sharmajai - 19369 sekunder sedanCapital allocation to advance mathematics and sciences is undoubtedly a good thing. But this does beget a few questions:
1. How much did it cost?
2. Would an equivalent allocation to incentivize human effort have borne the same results?
3. Post IPO, will Open AI continue allocating similar levels of capital to further these causes?
#2 is particularly important to answer, given research grants have been getting cut elsewhere: see U.C.L.A's research grant cuts from last year and Terrence Tao's attempt to raise funds (about $60k) by collaborating with Open AI earlier this year [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/math-ai-terence-tao.ht...
- SilverSlash - 21663 sekunder sedanIn 2025, Hong Wang won the Fields Medal for proving the Kakeya conjecture in three dimensions. Here, OpenAI is claiming to have solved a stronger problem that proves the Kakeya conjecture in all dimensions!
That's so insane to me. This top mathematician (and colleagues) at her pinnacle spent years proving it in three dims and now OAI proves it in every dimension...
- mlinsey - 38208 sekunder sedanI understand that the Exponential Time Hypothesis being false doesn't necessarily mean P=NP, but for people who are a lot more knowledgeable about complexity theory, does this update your priors significantly in the direction of P=NP?
- lukeplato - 33559 sekunder sedan> Our models produced a natural language proof for Yang–Mills existence on September 9th, 2026, and then subsequently produced a proof for QCD on September 18th, 2026. Given the length and complexity of the work, we postponed release until the Lean formalization completed. We finished our formalization of Yang–Mills’ existence on October 16th, 2026, which led us to develop the collaboration described here
absolutely insane
- ChaitanyaSai - 21433 sekunder sedanThink openai should start including visual and interactive explainers in these where the viewer can toggle level to get a more accessible/technical explanation as needed. Would also be a great demo, and perhaps increasingly essential for us to know that explainability is not lagging behind provability.
- Daniel_Van_Zant - 34122 sekunder sedanLots of progress recently in formally verifiable domains. Really curious if this is a product of the machine learning folks behind most large language models being much more likely to have a background in math, physics, etc. Or if it is that large language models have some fundamental limitations in the more "scruffy" sciences like biology.
My guess is that in formally verifiable domains you can use RL-esque processes to get lots of good high-quality training data with reward signals (does it verify?), but the same does not apply to "scruffier" work. I would also imagine that the data volume of high-quality scientific work in "scruffy" domains is too low for the large language models to have a good manifold for "high-quality biology research". Would love to be proven wrong if anyone knows of anyone doing great scientific work with large language models in non-verifiable domains though.
- krackers - 38213 sekunder sedanhttps://github.com/openai/math/tree/main/preprints/The-Expon...
>We give a deterministic algorithm for exactly counting the satisfying assignments of an arbitrary k-CNF formula [in superpolynomial but subexponential time]
- rbranson - 38897 sekunder sedanThe title buries the lede quite a bit:
> The Exponential Time Hypothesis is false
- levocardia - 36645 sekunder sedanOh and also:
>Our models produced a natural language proof for Yang–Mills existence on September 9th, 2026
And presumably they are just missing the "mass gap" part of it.
Very clearly these were the results of taking big swings at all millenium prize problems.
- martincsweiss - 22353 sekunder sedanThurston wrote about this in “On Proof and Progress in Mathematics,” including how his own approach changed from proving theorems to helping a community understand the mathematics.
Nicolas Le Roux, a Lagrange Prize winner / prof / strong mathematician, turned me onto that around the time I finished my PhD in ML last year. I have been thinking about it a lot, lately, for obvious reasons.
At first, it felt silly to grapple with what science is only after finishing a PhD. This publication from OpenAI finally pushed me over the line to publishing an essay about this struggle between AI science and human science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253759
- nomilk - 2605 sekunder sedanI glance at the HN headlines but rarely have time to dig into the details (and the few times I read 30 mins or more, a lot goes over my head).
Are there any good accounts to follow (platform agnostic) that give occasional updates on the intersection of AI and math that aren't too dumbed down, i.e. that a layperson can appreciate?
- 3abiton - 36056 sekunder sedanI am not sure if I side with Tao on this, or 3B1B. It's already causing quite a kerfuffle (to say the least) in the academic communities. This is the new norm now.
- rcr-anti - 34299 sekunder sedanWell, this is certainly different, can't say they ignored the criticism. Wonder if this is a monkey paw curls moment; if the findings continue to accelerate, most of it just isn't public now.
- mindwok - 34660 sekunder sedanIt is mind blowing that these long-standing conjectures and open questions are just falling by the dozen every other week. What a time to be alive.
- Kotlopou - 33320 sekunder sedanRegarding Yang-Mills, as of a few weeks ago there has been some expectation that this (specifically completing Balaban's program for the existence part without the mass gap) could happen, though from the Anthropic side: https://nitter.meowing.monster/ElliotGlazer/status/211115394...
(Elliot Glazer seems in general to be a pretty good source to follow, however he does that...)
- sobellian - 15607 sekunder sedanThere's a large logical leap from "we have very useful raw research data" to "we should give this data only to a small group of people." They explain that "the collaborations empower experts to foster unpacking the results and contextualizing them in the broader academic community" but we are left to wonder why the experts need to be empowered to foster anything. In the case of immediate release the experts will have their hands on the same data as the rest of us peasants, and then they can go right on fostering.
- doctoboggan - 33498 sekunder sedanI wonder why the physicists are the only group to not want the full information released upfront? As a casual fan of physics[0] it seems like their completion of the standard model is possibly the biggest deal of all these breakthroughs, am I wrong?
[0]: PBS space time watcher
- zone411 - 30362 sekunder sedanThese resolve 6 entries in my top 500 open problems list (LLM ranked, https://www.proofatlas.ai/open-problems/) and there is partial progress on #3 overall (Yang–Mills Existence and Mass Gap):
Kakeya conjecture — #38
Fourier restriction conjecture — #46
Local smoothing for wave equations — #187
Bochner–Riesz conjecture — #190
Exponential Time Hypothesis — #43
Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis — #63
- lukeify - 19013 sekunder sedanNot enough chatter about the QCD result here! I'm of the opinion that whatever the correct representation of the universe is, the GUT (Grand Unified Theory) will be authored not by humans but by LLMs.
- adverbly - 33574 sekunder sedan> In our view, these manuscripts are best understood as a form of raw research data.
Much better!
> For the computer science collaboration, the group has decided to make the natural language proof and Lean formalization public immediately, and we are publishing them directly to our GitHub repository. For the physics collaboration, the group has decided to hold off on releasing the AI-produced artifacts and instead work on writing it up themselves.
> All of these approaches involve tradeoffs. On the one hand, the collaborations empower experts to foster unpacking the results and contextualizing them in the broader academic community. On the other hand, choosing initial shepherds necessarily shapes who gets involved first and creates asymmetry of information. We welcome feedback on how to broaden participation and make this process more useful.
Very good!
I was highly critical of their approach with the earlier mathematical publications, but this is much improved.
Most importantly, they aren't releasing slop papers that would never have been published in any self-respecting journal or made it past a deep round of peer review questioning.
> We are committed to ensuring funding for researchers to independently examine, explain, and build on the results above.
> We continue to invite feedback on the best way to disclose results and engage with scientists to accelerate discovery.
Well done!
Now you need to actually LISTEN to the community and the feedback, so you aren't done yet, but this is a much better start than last time. Keep it up!
- astrobiased - 21297 sekunder sedanThis is an exciting time, but also there are very real changes at hand. Game changing discoveries will likely not happen at universities but at private AI frontier labs. Moreover, the models that are used on this are not always open to the broader community today.
What will it be like in two years? Will such models that help enable paradigm shifts in science be only accessible to employees of those private companies? Still thinking about the ramifications ... amazing and discombobulating at the same time.
- nhatcher - 10329 sekunder sedanWoah, they got QCD! I didn't think they could do that. Three things jump to my mind: 1. Is it really true? Did they get the basic conditions right? 2. Would I ever be able to understand the proof 3. But the most important one. Can we compute hadronic masses now?
This is an incredible scientific achievement. One of our most fundamental theories is mathematically sound. Without the use of AI is very likely I would have never seen this in my lifetime
- WindyTree - 19770 sekunder sedanIt uses sparseness. I noticed a simple thing way back that for a n-boolean variables, the average size of a satisfiable boolean expression must be 2^n bits - basically every binary number that satisfies it listed out. So if a boolean expression of 4 variables is satisfied by 1111, 1110, and 0000, the number denoting it is 1100000000000001, and for every such number there is a boolean expression of 4 variables and for every expression one number of 16 digits. So it’s a fool’s errand to make a universal solver when average inputs scale at 2^n, if a solution exists it has to leverage the small size of the problems we actually care about, sparsity. Based on the AI description that’s what they did, something with polynomials, but it’s too soon. Looking forward to finding out.
- artninja1988 - 35818 sekunder sedanI wonder how much compute they are throwing at problems in ML like continual learning and sample efficiency. Also how successful they are with these. Results like in the post make me hopeful we'll see some type of so singularity soon
- dooglius - 36443 sekunder sedanThe proof appears to be a sub-exponential algorithm for #3-SAT not just 3-SAT, I think this is considered a much stronger result?
- adalacelove - 10895 sekunder sedanKakeya conjecture is simple enough that anyone can understand it. The surprising part is its connections with other parts of mathematics.
- nixonaddiction - 31780 sekunder sedanthis is the first time one of the big labs has published anything related to my field. and i'm actually pretty excited? im more on the applications side of QFD than the theory side of things, but gosh i actually cant wait for the results to be released to see if i can use it for anything! i kinda hope more results come out, in more ways relevant to what i do, its so cool to see any sort of progress! wow!
- vatsachak - 30170 sekunder sedanThe proof of the Kakeya conjecture is amazing. Only 54 pages. Will probably lead to a lot of theory.
As a non abelian harmonic analysis PhD I am very happy
- qnleigh - 23367 sekunder sedanI thought it was interesting that in the original drop of papers, they announced much more progress on most other Millenium problems than on Yang-Mills existence. At the time I thought this might mean that it was a more stubborn problem, but it turns out that they had made a lot progress after all.
The Yang-Mills Millenium Problem has two parts though. The second part is to show that Yang-Mills theories have a mass gap, meaning that the lightest particle has non-zero mass. This is important because experimentally we know that there is a mass gap, so the theory must have one too to in order to actually be the correct model of nature. I wonder if they again have unannounced progress here.
- nilamo - 28726 sekunder sedanI'm a little surprised the article stresses Lean programs so much, without ever stating what that is or why it somehow proves something. Maybe that's expected knowledge for this sort of thing.
- georgeburdell - 25465 sekunder sedanI do not like this at all. At best, we find that there are classes of problems that even AI cannot help much in solving, in the sense that the rationals are an infinitesimally small part of the reals. At worst, a fundamental result trivializes a problem whose complexity is a key component of a critical system, and there’s societal upheaval. If PhDs ran the government, and thought the latter, we might have already seen military attacks on data centers.
- auntienomen - 23871 sekunder sedanThe QCD and Yang-Mills results don't seem to go beyond what the experts know/expect. Basically, they're saying there is a path integral measure, but shrugging when asked what functions are integrable with respect to it. The latter question is key for mass gap and confinement, and existence of the measure only means that the question of whether a mass gap exists makes sense.
- pfdietz - 22081 sekunder sedanThey resolved the Kakeya conjecture in every dimension! This is very big news; the resolution in dimension 3 was just recently.
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- iperov - 7360 sekunder sedanDoes this bring us closer to an unconditional basic income?
- robswc - 21999 sekunder sedanI'm incredibly skeptical about everything these frontier labs put out. Results are results though.
However, could someone with a firmer grasp on the problems weigh in on how much are these recent results are function of cutting a virtually unlimited budget for some very smart people? I believe the LLMs certainly help iterate on ideas faster... but I am aware of very impressive work that goes on in quantitative finance. Stuff that would not really be published. That stuff is the result of paying smart people millions to produce results which produce $$$.
I have to wonder, would this have been solved if we simply gathered tons of smart people and paid them a ton of money to solve it? Or is it exclusively because they had access to LLMs?
Could they have achieved this result with previous versions of ChatGPT?
- thayne - 12647 sekunder sedan> We do not seek academic credit for the discoveries produced by our internal models.
Sure. But that isn't what they really cared about anyway. They care about notoriety among the general population, and especially among people who decide to pay for their products.
- GMoromisato - 9810 sekunder sedanThe fact that ETH is false when many people expected it to be true is the amazing thing. This isn't AI finishing the last 10% of a proof and stealing the credit--this is AI exceeding human thinking. If nothing else, this buries the "stochastic parrot" position.
That said, AI is spiky, and I fully expect there to be a class of problems that AI is really good at solving and a (maybe larger) class where AI is worse than human mathematicians.
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- rhedak - 26990 sekunder sedanThe question is what are these discoveries going to mean in the long run.
- AIorNot - 27633 sekunder sedanScott Aaronson of Shtel Optimzed and now at OpenAI has a great podcast episode discussing this -worth watching
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- measurablefunc - 31383 sekunder sedanSomeone should take the sub-exponential proof & write something executable.
- stabbles - 32561 sekunder sedan> In our view, these manuscripts are best understood as a form of raw research data. To convert this raw research data into scientific understanding, in this release we are experimenting with a new approach
Mathematics and computer science are turning into an empirical science
- bar8uyr - 24554 sekunder sedanBilly Connolly quote: Aye, did yer
- kylehotchkiss - 11523 sekunder sedanCould these same questions have been solved if mathematicians had most of the GPU and memory in the world accessible to them via another interface?
- lacoolj - 21805 sekunder sedanDont even care anymore. Its an AI discovery.
If it's human, at this point, we will see it in the title
- eluru - 9276 sekunder sedanAnother nail in the P not equal NP theory, imagine if AI ends up destroying encrypting lol
- titzer - 35644 sekunder sedanI'm going to be the cynical one and offer this translation: "Our results are too important to wait for the pesky peer review, so we are dumping a whole ton of money in a fund and giving some elites a breathless first look so our buzz keeps getting jacked up."
The reality that Science is a grind and there are thousands of new results every year discovered by regular humans who use a regular human process to cross-check and review.
Treating every result from the AI like a gift from god is getting tiring.
- jwpapi - 35090 sekunder sedanHonestly, I’m a bit scared but also a bit excited.
I’m currently reading Africa by John Reader which covers a lot of humanity storyline. From HN I get the humanity achievements that are happening right now.
The feeling digesting both daily is in order of magnitudes bigger than what any really exciting tv show did to me.
I honestly at this point don’t know anything about what could be possible and what couldnt.
I understand that this is really freightening, but also especially ETH being false gives even more hope that some fundamental problems could be solved in our lifetime, for example understanding universe, aging, colonization of planets and also our limits. I know I’m the minority, but these answers really interest me.
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- esalman - 37350 sekunder sedanWorking with academic communities lol.
I looked over the announcement for any substantial contribution, and found they're donating $5 million to a research foundation.
$5 million might sustain 5-10 PhD students for 5 years.
Maybe it's just me but I think they should contribute more in exchange for forcing the scientific community into paying for tokens to generate slop and then pouring their time into verifying or falsifying the slop.
- brcmthrowaway - 27496 sekunder sedanI'm too dumb for this.. but does this mean PKI is doomed?
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- wilg - 34644 sekunder sedanIn my opinion its okay for them to work on science and math problems and release the results.
- Kotlopou - 33919 sekunder sedan"In our view, these manuscripts are best understood as a form of raw research data."
They are staying on top of the exact formulations that spread like memes. I think this one was unfortunate. It's an analogy for a new type of thing that stops attempts to figure out what thing that is.
That said, uh, let's go? Let's see if OpenAI earns some goodwill here. It probably can't go worse than the last math drop!
- dyauspitr - 25789 sekunder sedanWhat a fucking time to be alive. I love it.
- hei-lima - 34814 sekunder sedanTerrible title. I was hoping to see more interesting comments on the story, haha!
- casualscience - 23683 sekunder sedanWhere are the papers???
- Rudybega - 35989 sekunder sedanTo give some context:
Kakeya / local smoothing (math): The result would resolve the Kakeya conjecture and Stein’s restriction conjecture across all dimensions together. Mathematicians had been making progress one dimension at a time, so this would settle a whole family of central harmonic analysis problems at once.
ETH is false (computer science): ETH has been used as a computational hardness premise in hundreds of papers, so a disproof would undercut a large body of existing complexity results. It would also change what researchers think is achievable for efficient computation.
QCD existence (physics): It would give a rigorous mathematical foundation to the theory of the strong force, which physicists have used for decades without proving it’s well-defined. It also bears on a Millennium Prize Problem.
- paxy - 37489 sekunder sedanTitle is no doubt crafted to get ahead of the usual online backlash, but here’s the actual announcement:
> We are announcing three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics about harmonic analysis, complexity theory, and quantum field theory.
1. Local smoothing and the Kakeya conjecture
2. The Exponential Time Hypothesis is false
3. Existence of quantum chromodynamics and completions of the Standard Model
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- mentalgear - 35984 sekunder sedan"Working with PR to make us look less like cheating mind leeches".
- calf - 38074 sekunder sedanIn the Star Trek Voyager capstone episodes titled "Scorpion" parts 1 & 2, Chakotay explains to Janeway the behavior of the Borg through the parable of the fox and the scorpion making a transactional deal to cross the river together. After reaching the shore, the scorpion stings the fox, and the dying fox asks why. The scorpion replies, "Because it is in my nature."
(Upside of the story is Captain Janeway's trusted crew works together to formulate a trick up their sleeve precisely in case of predicted contingency...)
- 1ahsgt - 35158 sekunder sedanI wonder how many prompts for proof approaches they stole for these. Nothing on how many tokens were burned.
Proud to funnel money through the Simons Foundation, which is an AI booster itself and completely aligned with OpenAI.
They make it very hard to enjoy a single result with the business and the politics being so dirty.
- metalsiliconYT - 35303 sekunder sedanOpenAi needs to stop trying to please everyone. Just release the findings and give all the credit to your models/collaborators.
- aborsy - 34454 sekunder sedanScience is getting out of the reach of the majority of people. In particular, EU is out of it mostly.
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- noduerme - 18576 sekunder sedan>>> We reached out to external experts and asked them to act as shepherds
Sure, if you meet some resistance to your method of undermining a field, the best go-around is to co-opt the top professionals to help pull the ladder up. Astonishing, the arrogance of whoever didn't bother with this before.