Did AI crack the first half of a million-dollar physics puzzle? Expert panel says OpenAI proved Yang-Mills theory 'exists,' but the hardest part, the mass gap, is still unsolved ↗
Yang-Mills theory is part of the mathematical foundation for how fundamental particles interact, yet for decades no one has rigorously proven that it can actually be built in math. Together with the even harder 'mass gap,' it is one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Prize Problems. A working group chaired by Nobel laureate David Gross released its assessment overnight on November 10, U.S. time: in its judgment, a computer-checkable Lean proof that OpenAI submitted on October 28 establishes that pure Yang-Mills theory exists. But the group says the mass gap is not proved, the Millennium Problem is not fully solved, and 'we do not claim to fully understand the proof yet.'