Physics and scientific discovery: completion history

All area pages | Area definition | Scoring rubric

Created November 7, 2026. The three earlier snapshots are retrospective judgment-based estimates, not scores recorded at the time. The current assessment is unchanged. Historical confidence is very low; current confidence is low. Zero can indicate an evidence gap rather than absent capability.

Chart layout updated November 8, 2026: one graph with four dated lines. Scores and assessment dates are unchanged. Overlapping lines indicate equal values; point labels show November 7, 2026. The table below contains every date's exact values.

Scalable graph | Combined 14-page report

Percentage estimates

Reconstruction notes and component scores

Components below are execution / breadth / agenda-setting / validation / sustained autonomous improvement, each out of 20. Their sum gives the percentage. The component values are judgments, not published statistics. Source links document evidence available by the cutoff, not the numerical estimate itself. The source section lists availability dates and version caveats. No area-wide average is calculated.

Equation recovery

The exact benchmark used in the saved score is pre-anchor. No comparable post-anchor all-system/noise-controlled success rate is reconstructed; zero reflects that narrow evidence gap.

Experiment efficiency

The original 2025 simulation exploration already supplies the bounded proxy. Physical facility time and costs remain unmeasured.

Experimental confirmation

Simulated exploration is not independent physical confirmation; no qualifying experimental numerator is established at any cutoff.

Novel prediction

Agent-generated simulation hypotheses are available throughout. Novel-to-science, prospectively tested physical predictions remain unestablished.

Simulation efficiency

The atmospheric-simulation result predates all snapshots; no matched-error, full-cost improvement is inferred later.

Theoretical novelty

Earlier simulation-based model exploration supports the same precursor-level score as later known-law rediscovery; neither establishes new explanatory theory.

Dated sources

All sources accessed November 7, 2026. Dates below are publication or conservative availability dates, as noted.

feynman | 2020-04-15 - AI Feynman. Pre-anchor equation benchmark; no post-anchor increment established by this source.

gcmpaper | 2024-07-22 - Neural general circulation models, Nature. Hybrid atmospheric modeling; prescribed ocean boundaries and resolution differences limit comparison.

explorer25 | 2025-09-29 - Agentic Exploration of Physics Models, v1. Simulation exploration, not independent physical confirmation.

Future updates

Keep these reconstructions separate from subsequently recorded observations. Append new dated assessments with changed component scores and source evidence; do not silently replace historical reasoning. The shared historical-method notes describe how these snapshots were made.