Scientists have reduced a vastly complex quantum physics problem requiring 100,000 equations to just four equations using artificial intelligence. The team hope that the "dimensionality reduction" method could "revolutionise" scientific investigation into quantum problems, leading to breakthroughs in ultra-efficient materal design. Potential outcomes could include new materials that have useful properties, like superconductivity, or have applications in fields ranging from neuroscience to renewable energy. "We start with this huge object of all these coupled-together differential equations; then we're using machine learning to turn it into something so small you can count it on your fingers," said Domenico Di Sante, an assistant professor at the University of Bologna in Italy, and a visiting research fellow at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics in New York. "It is essentiall a machine that has the power to discover hidden patterns."