If you're looking to prepare yourself for the end of the universe, Asimov's The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1971) is a nice place to start, maybe Herbert Butterfield's The Origins of Modern Science (1949). Maybe you're a bit more anarchic and would rather focus on the "revolutionary" part; then take it from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which should really start with Ludwig Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1935). These things don't happen fast, at least not on the scale of a human life. But these days we are seeing things happen fast. Gravity as we know it is having a kind of identity crisis.
Foundation AI models trained on physics, not words, are driving scientific discovery
Jan 2026, phys.org
"I continue to be awed by the fact that a multi-disciplinary physics foundation model works at all, let alone at this level."While most AI models are trained on text and images, this team trains AI on physics, and then applies the knowledge they gain from one class of physical systems to completely different problems.
These are the models:
Walrus - 15 terabytes of density, velocity and pressure in physical systems like merging neutron stars, acoustic waves and shifting layers in Earth's atmosphere
AION-1 - 100 terabyte astronomical survey of stars, quasars and galaxies
via University of Cambridge: Michael McCabe et al, Walrus: A Cross-Domain Foundation Model for Continuum Dynamics, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2511.15684
Totally unrelated image credit: Monkey with an ice cream cone means something but I'm not sure what - Martin Nicourt for Gibraltar Macaques Project - 2026
Gravity from positivity: Single massive spin-3/2 particle makes gravity logically inevitable, study claims
Apr 2026, phys.org
A single massive spin-3/2 particle simply cannot exist in isolation within a consistent theory. Its scattering amplitudes grow too fast with energy, clashing with positivity inequalities. The theory breaks down barely above the particle's own mass. Therefore, supersymmetry is not a postulate: it is a logical necessity. Famous relations between the gravitino mass, the Planck mass, and the supersymmetry-breaking scale emerge here from the sole demand that probabilities be positive and effects propagate within the light cone.
Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, CEA, Institut de Physique Théorique, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics Santa Barbara, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: Brando Bellazzini et al, (Super) gravity from positivity, Journal of High Energy Physics (2026). DOI: 10.1007/jhep03(2026)028
New quantum theory of gravity brings long-sought 'theory of everything' a crucial step closer
May 2025, phys.org
(This short press article doesn't actually explain much, and they still need to prove it, so let's take it easy here.)
via Aalto University: Mikko Partanen et al, Gravity generated by four one-dimensional unitary gauge symmetries and the Standard Model, Reports on Progress in Physics (2025). DOI: 10.1088/1361-6633/adc82e
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