Cornell researchers have developed a computer algorithm that derives natural laws of physics without any prior knowledge of physics.

They have tested their algorithm on simple mechanical systems and believe it could be applied to more complex systems ranging from biology to cosmology and be useful in analyzing the mountains of data generated by modern experiments that use electronic data collection.

Journal reference:

Michael Schmidt and Hod Lipson. Distilling Free-Form Natural Laws from Experimental Data. Science, 2009; 324 (5923): 81 DOI: 10.1126/science.1165893