Category Astronomy/Space

The exoplanet was detected using machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence

A University of Georgia research team has confirmed evidence of a previously unknown planet outside of our solar system, and they used machine learning tools to detect it.

A recent study by the team showed that machine learning can correctly determine if an exoplanet is present by looking in protoplanetary disks, the gas around newly formed stars.

The newly published findings represent a first step toward using machine learning to identify previously overlooked exoplanets.

“We confirmed the planet using traditional techniques, but our models directed us to run those simulations and showed us exactly where the planet might be,” said Jason Terry, doctoral student in the UGA Franklin Colleg...

A study using data from telescopes on Earth and in the sky resolves a problem plaguing astronomers working in the infrared and could help make better observations of the composition of the universe with the James Webb Space Telescope and other instruments. The work is published April 20 in Nature Astronomy.

“We’re trying to measure the composition of gases inside galaxies,” said Yuguang Chen, a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Tucker Jones in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis.

Most elements other than hydrogen, helium and lithium are produced inside stars, so the composition and distribution of heavier elements — especially the ratio of oxygen to hydrogen — can help astronomers understand how many and ...

A star’s chemical composition strongly influences the ultraviolet radiation it emits into space and thus the conditions for the emergence of life in its neighborhood.

Stars that contain comparatively large amounts of heavy elements provide less favourable conditions for the emergence of complex life than metal-poor stars, as scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Solar System Research and for Chemistry as well as from the University of Göttingen have now found. The team showed how the metallicity of a star is connected to the ability of its planets to surround themselves with a protective ozone layer. Crucial to this is the intensity of the ultraviolet light that the star emits into space, in different wavelength ranges...

It looks like a black hole and bends light like a black hole, but it could actually be a new type of star.

Though the mysterious object is a hypothetical mathematical construction, new simulations by Johns Hopkins researchers suggest there could be other celestial bodies in space hiding from even the best telescopes on Earth. The findings are set to publish in Physical Review D.

“We were very surprised,” said Pierre Heidmann, a Johns Hopkins University physicist who led the study. “The object looks identical to a black hole, but there’s light coming out from its dark spot.”

The detection of gravitational waves in 2015 rocked the world of astrophysics because it confirmed the existence of black holes...