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Comment by lukeplato | Hacker News Reader

> 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

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Why? Did any physicist really doubt it? 4d QCD has been used for approximate calculations for about 45 years

Yes, people did. Well at least I did. We knew we can use QCD to compute loops and to some degree masses in the lattice. But there were serious doubts the underlying mathematical theory was sound. For many it didn't even matter. It would just mean that at those energies the theory is not even valid.

I am not certain on the extend of this proof but QED is probably not sound on it's own and we have been using that even longer. lambda phi^4 behind symmetry breaking and the higgs is strongly believed to be unsound on its own.

Yes, but it has also been known for 50+ years that QED has a Landau pole and might be UV trivial or inconsistent, whereas QCD has asymptotic freedom and is thus controlled at UV.

More to the point, QCD has been experimentally tested both at UV (deep inelastic scattering) and at IR, while the physical meaning of testing QED at UV Landau pole regime is unclear.

they should point their AI swarm at quantum gravity now

(only half tongue-in-cheek)

The problem here is experimental evidence, which is the general reason they focus on mathematics.

I don't think study of fundamental particles is hamstrung by physical research. Higgs bosons were theorized long before they could be verified (very recently) to exist. Hawking Radiation has not yet been observed.

Testable, purely theoretical hypotheses are partly how the field advances. Proof is often quite difficult & expensive.

I disagree completely. Hawking Radiation has never been proven to exist, which is why Stephen did not earn a Nobel for it.

Merely providing a mathematical possible solution that satisfies all known behaviors would be a tremendous step forward.

We don't actually "know" anything about EM, by example, except how to describe its behaviors in all physically observable instances. Radios work reliably with current. Supernovae behave comprehensibly. Photons carry predictable energies. However, long before we knew there were supernovae, or even photons, Maxwell said pretty much all we know about EM behavior.

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