Lyndie Chiou in Quanta:
Understanding elliptic curves is a high-stakes endeavor that has been central to math. So in 2022, when a transatlantic collaboration used statistical techniques and artificial intelligence to discover completely unexpected patterns in elliptic curves, it was a welcome, if unexpected, contribution. “It was just a matter of time before machine learning landed on our front doorstep with something interesting,” said Peter Sarnak, a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University. Initially, nobody could explain why the newly discovered patterns exist. Since then, in a series of recent papers, mathematicians have begun to unlock the reasons behind the patterns, dubbed “murmurations” for their resemblance to the fluid shapes of flocking starlings, and have started to prove that they must occur not only in the particular examples examined in 2022, but in elliptic curves more generally.
More here.