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Physics

The laws of physics appear to follow a mysterious mathematical pattern

The symbols and mathematical operations used in the laws of physics follow a pattern that could reveal something fundamental about the universe

By Alex Wilkins

21 October 2024

A mathematical pattern links the major equations of physics

Andresr/Getty Images

A strange pattern running through the equations of physics may reveal something fundamental about the universe or could be a sign that human brains are biased to ignore more complex explanations of reality – or both.

This insight comes from a physicist’s version of Zipf’s law, an observation by linguists that the most common word in a language appears twice as often as the second most common word, three times as often as the third, and so on. In…

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