Tag Archives: Astronomy

Astronomers using AI to prepare for ton of data from new telescopes

Astronomers using AI to prepare for ton of data from new telescopes

It’s a problem that will be repeated in other places over the coming decade. As astronomers construct giant cameras to image the entire sky and launch infrared telescopes to hunt for distant planets, they will collect data on unprecedented scales.  “We really are not ready for that, and we should all be freaking out,” says […]

US astronomers want a giant telescope to hunt for new Earth-like planets

Using spectroscopy, which examines how matter and light interact, astronomers will now begin to study the atmospheres of large, hot worlds for evidence of biosignatures, or signs of life on other planets. The second new priority announced in the report: seeking to understand what happened during the earliest moments of our universe by probing the […]

This NASA spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter’s mysterious asteroid swarms

Lucy will take black-and-white and color images, and use a diamond beam splitter to shine far-infrared light at the asteroids to take their temperature and make maps of their surface. It will also collect other measurements as it flies by. This data could help scientists understand how the planets may have formed. Sarah Dodson-Robinson, an […]

This AI could predict 10 years of scientific priorities—if we let it

The survey committee, which receives input from a host of smaller panels, takes into account a gargantuan amount of information to create research strategies. Although the Academies won’t release the committee’s final recommendation to NASA for a few more weeks, scientists are itching to know which of their questions will make it in, and which will be […]

We just got our best-ever look at the inside of Mars

NASA’s InSight robotic lander has just given us our first look deep inside a planet other than Earth.  More than two years after its launch, seismic data that InSight collected has given researchers hints into how Mars was formed, how it has evolved over 4.6 billion years, and how it differs from Earth. A set of three new studies, published in Science this week, suggests that Mars has a […]