AI Finds Counterexample Disproving the Maxwell Conjecture in Classical Physics

RexDouglass · x · 2026-07-31

A recent arXiv preprint officially claims that the classic Maxwell Conjecture is false, with the crucial counterexample discovered by AI (GPT-5.6 Sol) and communicated by human mathematicians.

The paper points out that researchers found a configuration of five point charges whose electrostatic potential admits at least 24 non-degenerate critical points. This directly violates Maxwell's conjecture that the field of n point charges has at most \((n-1)^2\) non-degenerate critical points.

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