[The E]

For centuries, scientists have attempted to identify and document analytical laws that underlie physical phenomena in nature. Despite the prevalence of computing power, the process of finding natural laws and their corresponding equations has resisted automation. A key challenge to finding analytic relations automatically is defining algorithmically what makes a correlation in observed data important and insightful. We propose a principle for the identification of nontriviality. We demonstrated this approach by automatically searching motion-tracking data captured from various physical systems, ranging from simple harmonic oscillators to chaotic double-pendula. Without any prior knowledge about physics, kinematics, or geometry, the algorithm discovered Hamiltonians, Lagrangians, and other laws of geometric and momentum conservation. The discovery rate accelerated as laws found for simpler systems were used to bootstrap explanations for more complex systems, gradually uncovering the “alphabet” used to describe those systems

Full release: http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/Science09_Schmidt.pdf

[Bobboau]

it would have been cool if they would hae said something along the lines of "however the system has also come up with a number of other equations who's function we have yet to determine"

[The E]

Well, they are sort of hoping that they will. http://technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25833/?p1=Blogs

There's also a website where you can check the algorithm yourself: http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/eureqa

[Kosh]

Kind of reminds me of the "Jumping Jesus Phenomenon", which states the amount of accumulated knowledge throughout history has been increasing on an exponential rate, eventually leading up to it  eventually doubling every few days, then every few hours, etc.

[General Battuta]

Kind of reminds me of the "Jumping Jesus Phenomenon", which states the amount of accumulated knowledge throughout history has been increasing on an exponential rate, eventually leading up to it  eventually doubling every few days, then every few hours, etc.

That's basically what it is.