Machine Learning Pinpoints Martian Meteorite Origin
In a new paper, a team of researchers has presented a machine learning algorithm that was used to determine the Martian crater of origin for a meteorite found on Earth.
With new, more advanced telescopes coming online almost annually, the amount of data astronomers are able to collect is astounding — the term petabyte has become more common in my usage these days than ever before. And with all of this new data comes the same old struggle to process it all. This issue is one of the reasons community science projects became popular in the last two decades. We simply needed more eyeballs to find objects like exoplanets and supernovae.
And while community science projects remain popular, one of the hottest topics in research these days seems to be machine learning and artificial intelligence. That’s not to say that human researchers are becoming obsolete, but machine learning can free up those researchers for less trivial tasks than staring at thousands of light curves or images of rocks. Now, instead, they can take the best options from the machine learning results and essentially proofread them.
Not that we want you all to stop counting rocks. That’s important work as well, and not every science…
