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Astronomers at Queen\u2019s University Belfast have launched the online challenge (Liam McBurney\/PA)<\/p>\nVolunteers are being sought for an online challenge to help find stars being torn apart by black holes.<\/p>\n
Astronomers at Queen\u2019s University Belfast and the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands are seeking help to shape how scientists detect massive black holes for the next decade.<\/p>\n
A new project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), will capture the night sky over the next 10 years from the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile.<\/p>\n
Astronomers at Queen\u2019s University Belfast have launched the online challenge (Liam McBurney\/PA)<\/p>\n
Dr Matt Nicholl, from the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen\u2019s, said it is expected to compile more astronomical data than has been available up to now, meaning it is no longer possible for scientists to search it manually.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cHaving access to data from the 10-year LSST will revolutionise astronomy and it is very exciting to think that we could detect thousands of black holes consuming passing stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be a huge amount of data \u2013 an estimated 10 million alerts every night from the LSST alerts stream.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the sky is full of different kinds of sources that change in brightness, so finding what we\u2019re looking for is like searching for a needle in a haystack.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dr Matt Nicholl of Queen\u2019s University Belfast (QUB\/PA)<\/p>\n
Astronomers at Queen\u2019s have come up with simulations of what they believe the data could show.<\/p>\n
Dr Nicholl said: \u201cWe\u2019re calling for any tech-savvy armchair astronomers to use AI and machine learning to work through the simulated data and learn how to pinpoint stars that are getting torn apart and destroyed by black holes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t need to be an expert in black holes \u2013 anyone with experience in machine learning could provide valuable insight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dylan Magill, a PhD student from Queen\u2019s who created the simulations, said: \u201cWe\u2019re particularly interested in objects called tidal disruption events.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is when an unlucky star is ripped apart by the immense gravitational forces it experiences as it approaches too close to a supermassive black hole.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re really hopeful that we can use AI and machine learning so that we\u2019re in a position to unlock so many more mysteries of our universe<\/p>\n
Dylan Magill<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new data will give us a huge opportunity to find more of these but there is a huge amount of data to work through.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy creating simulations and enlisting the help of armchair astronomers, we\u2019re really hopeful that we can use AI and machine learning so that we\u2019re in a position to unlock so many more mysteries of our universe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Sjoert van Velzen from the Leiden Observatory, who co-founded the challenge, says: \u201cTidal disruption events are a relatively recent astronomical discovery and to date we haven\u2019t discovered many.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, those that we have found have proven to be tremendously scientifically valuable, particularly for investigating the properties and feeding conditions of black holes that are very difficult to observe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Information on the online project can be found at kaggle.com\/competitions\/mallorn-astronomical-classification-challenge\/overview.<\/p>\n
There is a top prize of \u20ac1,000 for the participant with the best score.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteers are being sought for an online challenge to help find stars being torn apart by black holes.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-216707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}