Claude computes nine-loop scattering amplitudes in physics first

New on the Science Blog: Yes, Claude can do Nine Loops. Theoretical physicists predict how particles behave using formulas called scattering amplitudes. These are notoriously hard to compute, so researchers work with layers of increasingly fine corrections called “loops”—each added loop makes the answer more precise but takes exponentially more computation. Most calculations stop at two or three loops. Eight loops was the previous record in a simplified model physicists use as a testing ground (planar N=4 super-Yang-Mills), set by SLAC's Lance Dixon and collaborators. Last month, physicist and science writer @4gravitons issued a challenge: could an AI push past eight loops in this model, using only the compute budget an academic could reasonably access? Given a single prompt describing…

if you didn’t read Anthropic’s blog: > former physicist challenges AI labs > “want to impress me? solve this frontier problem within an academic budget.” > anthropic gives it to claude > human researchers: “keep going, i’m gonna sleep” > claude solves it > budget: ~$1–2k

From the guest post by Matt von Hippel who issued the challenge: 'Things definitely seem to be moving fast. In March, AI was accomplishing physics projects like a student: smaller-scale tasks with a lot of hand-holding and mistakes. In contrast, this is a real frontier calculation, the kind of thing normally tackled by the top experts in amplitudes.'