A group of researchers recently developed an AI program to assist them in a complex procedure for an experiment involving finely optimized conditions. But rather than simply assist, the AI showed enough proficiency to run the experiment on its own and faster than humans or previous programs designed for the experiment. "I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," co-lead researcher Paul Wigley, a doctoral student at the Australian National University Research School of Physics and Engineering, said in a statement. The physicists from the ANU, University of Adelaide, and the University of New South Wales Australian Defence Force Academy, were attempting to recreate an experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize – creating a Bose-Einstein condensate, a super chilled gas trapped in between laser beams. Bose-Einstein condensates are able to reach temperatures so low that they are some of the coldest areas of the universe, in some cases less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, the temperature where all atoms stop moving.

The world's first Artificially Intelligent physicist is here, and it has already replicated a Nobel Prize-winning experiment -- one that involved creating an ultracold state of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate. Bose-Einstein condensates -- named after physicists Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein -- are a state of matter created when atoms are cooled to a temperature close to absolute zero (0 Kelvin or -459.6 degrees Fahrenheit). At such an ultralow temperature, all atoms gather in the lowest possible energy state, creating a "giant matter wave." Although Bose and Einstein predicted the existence of such a state of matter in 1924, scientists were only able to create this extreme state of matter in 1995 through an experiment that won them the Nobel Prize in 2001. "I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," Paul Wigley from the Australian National University, who used the AI algorithm to re-create the experiment, said in a statement released Monday.

From there, the algorithm learned how to change different parameters to bring the temperature down even further, and to do it with more efficiency. Primarily by adjusting a trio of laser beams. As the scientists tell it, the results were pretty impressive: The AI learned to do the experiment itself in under an hour, and its methods were beyond what even a highly trained scientist would think of. The team says that the algorithm is able to set itself up each morning and compensate for any changes in the experiment that happened overnight, too. If you want to take a gander for yourself, the researchers have uploaded the algorithm to GitHub and it can apparently be used for quantum chemistry, quantum computing and femtosecond physics.

Physicists are putting themselves out of a job, using artificial intelligence to run a complex experiment. The experiment, developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize. "I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. "A simple computer program would have taken longer than the age of the Universe to run through all the combinations and work this out." Bose-Einstein condensates are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

A team of Australian physicists has employed a new research assistant in the form of an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to help set up experiments in quantum mechanics. For its first task, the algorithm took control of a delicate experiment to create a Bose-Einstein condensate – a weird state of matter that can form in certain atoms at ultracold temperatures. The algorithm didn't need specific training and was able to learn on the job. It developed its own model of the process and tweaking the parameters to get them just right. "I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the Australian National University in Canberra.

The experiment, developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize. "I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. "A simple computer program would have taken longer than the age of the Universe to run through all the combinations and work this out." Bose-Einstein condensates are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. They could be used for mineral exploration or navigation systems as they are extremely sensitive to external disturbances, which allows them to make very precise measurements such as tiny changes in the Earth's magnetic field or gravity.

It could be the moment scientists accidentally put themselves out of a job. Physicists have revealed artificial intelligence software was used to run a complex experiment. The experiment, developed by physicists from ANU and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize. The experiment created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize. Bose-Einstein condensates are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

Two years ago, a lawyer in Indiana sent me a check for seventy-eight thousand dollars. The money was from my uncle Walt, who had died six months earlier. I hadn't been expecting any money from Walt, still less counting on it. So I thought I should earmark my inheritance for something special, to honor Walt's memory. It happened that my longtime girlfriend, a native Californian, had promised to join me on a big vacation. She'd been feeling grateful to me for understanding why she had to return full time to Santa Cruz and look after her mother, who was ninety-four and losing her short-term memory. She'd said to me, impulsively, "I will take a trip with you anywhere in the world you've always wanted to go." To this I'd replied, for reasons I'm at a loss to reconstruct, "Antarctica?" Her eyes widened in a way that I should have paid closer attention to. But a promise was a promise. Hoping to make Antarctica more palatable to my temperate Californian, I decided to spend Walt's money on the most deluxe of bookings--a three-week Lindblad National Geographic expedition to Antarctica, South Georgia island, and the Falklands. I paid a deposit, and the Californian and I proceeded to joke, uneasily, when the topic arose, about the nasty cold weather and the heaving South Polar seas to which she'd consented to subject herself. I kept reassuring her that as soon as she saw a penguin she'd be happy she'd made the trip. But when it came time to pay the balance, she asked if we might postpone by a year. Her mother's situation was unstable, and she was loath to put herself so irretrievably far from home. By this point, I, too, had developed a vague aversion to the trip, an inability to recall why I'd proposed Antarctica in the first place. The idea of "seeing it before it melts" was dismal and self-cancelling: why not just wait for it to melt and cross itself off the list of travel destinations? I was also put off by the seventh continent's status as a trophy, too remote and expensive for the common tourist to set foot on. It was true that there were extraordinary birds to be seen, not just penguins but oddities like the snowy sheathbill and the world's southernmost-breeding songbird, the South Georgia pipit. But the number of Antarctic species is fairly small, and I'd already reconciled myself to never seeing every bird species in the world. The best reason I could think of for going to Antarctica was that it was absolutely not the kind of thing the Californian and I did; we'd learned that our ideal getaway lasts three days.

Physicists are putting themselves out of a job, using artificial intelligence to run a complex experiment. The experiment, developed by physicists from ANU and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize. "I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. "A simple computer program would have taken longer than the age of the universe to run through all the combinations and work this out." Bose-Einstein condensates are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

Physicists are putting themselves out of a job, using artificial intelligence to run a complex experiment. The experiment, developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize. "I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. "A simple computer program would have taken longer than the age of the Universe to run through all the combinations and work this out." Bose-Einstein condensates are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.