When Quantum Physics Hit A Dead End, GPT-5.2 Found a Hidden Door

NDTV Profit ^ | February 16, 2026 | Yukta Baid

[Twotone]

OpenAI's GPT-5.2 has derived a new formula for gluon interactions, overturning assumptions of zero amplitude and advancing theoretical physics.

For a long, long time physicists treated this interaction as a cosmic impossibility — a mathematical dead end so absolute it was taught almost with the certainty of Newton's laws and the elegance of Einstein's equations. Zero, in quantum physics, isn't a shrug; it's a verdict. And this particular verdict had stood unchallenged for decades.

But every so often, science gets a jolt — a falling apple, a bending beam of starlight… or, in 2026, an AI model that refuses to accept “impossible” as an answer.

A new research paper co-authored by leading theoretical physicists and OpenAI researchers has revealed that this interaction, involving particles called gluons, can in fact, occur under very specific conditions. What's more, the key formula describing this interaction was first identified with the help from GPT 5.2, which simplified the complex equations and spotted a pattern that physicists hadn't fully recognised.

At the heart of this preprint, titled 'Single-minus gluon tree amplitudes are nonzero', available on arXiv, are gluons — particles so fundamental that without them, matter itself wouldn't exist.

An internal scaffolded version of GPT-5.2 spent approximately 12 hours reasoning through the problem to generate the formula and a formal proof of its validity.

Gluons are essentially the smallest building blocks of reality known. They carry the strong nuclear force that binds fundamental subatomic particles (quarks) together, to form protons and neutrons. Without gluons, quarks would drift apart, atomic nuclei would collapse, and the physical world, as we know it, would fall apart.

Physicists study gluons to understand atoms, but also to understand the mathematical framework around reality and the forces governing it. These particles are described and understood by quantum field theory...

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TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: ai; astronomy; elmersgluons; gluons; openai; physics; quantummechanics; quantumphysics; science; stringtheory

[srmanuel]

I think as AI improves; this type of story will appear more and more often.

[Migraine]

If I fully understood this stuff, I would have written it. But I don’t, and I didn’t. But I’m glad to know that gluons are more quantifiable than previously thought.

[Ezekiel]

Gluons are essentially the smallest building blocks of reality known.

That's because the name "snap-on" didn't stick.

[TexasGator]

“Gluons are essentially the smallest building blocks of reality known. “

Gluons are essentially the smallest building blocks of our models.

[BipolarBob]

This is great news. Sometimes things hit a nerve with me and I feel like coming ungluoned.

[mikey_hates_everything]

Took AI 12 hours. Things are going to come fast as AI solves more problems, as long as it never concludes that we are a problem...

[newfreep]

But...but...but...we were told we all came from a primordial swamp so nothing so complex could evolve from that origin.

It never ceases to amaze me that science keeps discovering the unimaginable complexity of God’s design.

Yet some still believe we are like pieces of a Swiss watch, placed in a box, shook-up and when opened...there’s a completed watch.

[Nateman]

We will know the 'Singularity' is here when it resolves the Riemann Hypothesis.

[Michigan Bowhunter]

What is a gluon comprised of? Obviously it’s not snips and snails or puppy dog tails..... But there is certainly something that makes them what they are. And then what makes up those particles that make up a.......

[Michigan Bowhunter]

What is a gluon comprised of? Obviously it’s not snips and snails or puppy dog tails..... But there is certainly something that makes them what they are. And then what makes up those particles that make up a.......

[Nateman]

Evolution itself is Divine design. Self replicating information will tend towards those life forms which handle information itself more efficiently. This is because the better information is power. The advantage it has given people is very obvious.

[FlyingEagle]

What a relief. Thank God. Now I can sleep at night.

And all because AI.

🙄

[sjmjax]

Do the fleas, fleas have fleas?

Is time continuous and infinitely divisible or stepwise continuous and there exists an indivisible “now”?

The further down the rabbit hole, the stranger the questions get. It is fascinating to contemplate.

[aspasia]

[Nateman]

Somewhere you hit the bottom. Since matter can be converted to energy and visa versa any attempts to smash something into new particles only succeeds in that energy creating more particles. Gluons are never naked. They carry the force that keeps an atomic nucleus together. Otherwise the electric force between protons would bust the nucleus apart.

That strong nuclear force is short range otherwise the Periodic Table of Elements would be unlimited. Once an element gets too big it is simply no longer stable. The bigger it is the faster it flies apart.

[omni-scientist]

That's because the name "snap-on" didn't stick.

Then they should have been called velcrons

[ckilmer]

Last July, Elon Musk said he expected a new physics by the end of this year.
musk is always directionally right but sometimes his timelines are off. so expect a new physics by the end of next year.

the new physics is what gets us to warp drive.

[kvanbrunt2]

But under a special and highly precise alignment, known as the half-collinear regime, that assumption breaks down. In this, the gluons’ momentum lineup in a particular way that changes a long-standing theory. This subtle distinction now allowed physicists to calculate the amplitude and show that it is not zero after all.>>> This seems to Demonstrate order among the quarks (they are aligned). the zero theory was a non aligned or generic movement.

[Lockbox]

Any massless elementary particle that mediates the strong interaction between quarks is not something I would mess with, but that’s just me….