Abstract
A widespread objection to research on scientific discovery is that
there has been a noticeable dearth of significant novel findings in
domain sciences contributed by machine discovery programs. The
implication is that the essential parts of the discovery process are
not captured by these programs. The aim of this note is to document
for the AI audience a novel finding in particle physics that was
enabled by the machine discovery program PAULI reported previously.
This finding consists of a theorem that expresses the minimum number
of conservation laws that are needed, mathematically speaking, to
account for any consistent experimental data on particle reactions.
This note also reports how a puzzle raised by the theorem - its
conflict with physics practice - is resolved.
full paper