“Archival observations from the Hubble Space Telescope now stretch back 35 years, providing a treasure trove of data in which astrophysical anomalies might be found,” says<\/a> O’Ryan.<\/p>\n Astrophysical anomalies are important because they can be outliers that present a different side of nature. A trained scientist might be attuned to them and find them relatively easy.<\/p>\n But there’s just too much data, from our powerful collection of astronomical telescopes. The JWST contributes about 57 GB of data<\/a> every day, depending on what observations are scheduled.<\/p>\n Related: The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For: JWST Zooms Into The ‘Eye of Sauron’<\/a><\/p>\n The Vera Rubin Observatory, with the largest digital camera ever built, will vastly outpace that. It will generate about 20 terabytes of raw data each night and requires special infrastructure just to handle it.<\/p>\n With powerful new telescopes like the Giant Magellan Telescope and Extremely Large Telescope coming online soon, the amount of astronomical data needing scientific scrutiny is growing into a deluge.<\/p>\n These vast quantities of data are bound to hold many hidden surprises. Our technology has outpaced the capacity of organic brains to process it all. But technological AI is catching up to astronomy’s mass data-generation capability.<\/p>\n “Astronomical archives contain vast quantities of unexplored data that potentially harbour rare and scientifically valuable cosmic phenomena,” the authors write<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We leverage new semi-supervised methods to extract such objects from the Hubble Legacy Archive.”<\/p>\n The researchers used a recently developed anomaly detection framework, AnomalyMatch, to rapidly search through almost 100 million image cutouts from the Hubble Legacy Archive<\/a>. The archive contains images going back about 35 years.<\/p>\n AnomalyMatch is a neural network, a machine learning<\/a> tool inspired by the human brain.<\/p>\n “AnomalyMatch is tailored for large-scale applications, efficiently processing predictions for \u2248100 million images within three days on a single GPU,” the authors wrote in a previous paper<\/a> that presented the tool.<\/p>\n It took AnomalyMatch only 2 to 3 days to process this much data, a fraction of the time it would take human minds. It’s the first time the Hubble Legacy Archive has undergone such a systematic search for anomalies.<\/p>\n AnomalyMatch generated a list of likely anomalies. That list contained almost 1,400 anomalous objects, a number that’s handled much more easily by human minds.<\/p>\n Related: Earthquake Sensors Detect Sonic Booms From Incoming Space Junk<\/a><\/p>\n O’Ryan and Gomez went through these 1,400 objects manually and determined that 1,300 of them were in fact anomalies, and that more than 800 of them have never been documented.<\/p>\n Merging and interacting galaxies were the most common type of anomaly detected in the Archive. There were 417 of them.<\/p>\n The researchers also found 86 new potential gravitational lenses. These are important because they bring objects that are otherwise too distant to observe into reach.<\/p>\n They also help scientists study the distribution of dark matter<\/a> in the Universe, measure distances and cosmic expansion, and test general relativity<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We identify many gravitational lenses that are already identified in the literature \u2013 but many candidate new lenses,” the authors write<\/a>.<\/p>\n There were other anomalies in the Archive, too. AnomalyMatch found other rare objects like jellyfish galaxies. These are found in galaxy clusters where ram pressure is stripping gas from the galaxy, leaving a long tail lit up with star formation. There were 35 of them found in the Archive.<\/p>\n The research also turned up some anomalies with uncertain natures. One of them is a strange sight, a galaxy with a swirling core and open lobes.<\/p>\n Related: Microbes in Space Mutated And Developed a Remarkable Ability<\/a><\/p>\n Combing through vast troves of astronomical data is a perfect task for AI, unlikely to be replicated by human minds.<\/p>\n Along with the previously mentioned anomalies, the researchers also uncovered overlapping galaxies, clumpy galaxies, ring galaxies, and even high- redshift<\/a> galaxies so close to detection limits they’re difficult to discern. They also found jetted galaxies and AGN-hosting galaxies.<\/p>\n If all astronomical observations stopped tomorrow, the discoveries wouldn’t stop. Capable AI tools are destined to become more and more powerful. Massive existing datasets from the Hubble and from other missions like the ESA’s Gaia are feeding grounds for future tools.<\/p>\n Who knows what’s waiting to be discovered in all that data?<\/p>\n “This is a powerful demonstration of how AI can enhance the scientific return of archival datasets,” G\u00f3mez said<\/a>.<\/p>\n “The discovery of so many previously undocumented anomalies in Hubble data underscores the tool’s potential for future surveys.”<\/p>\n This article was originally published by Universe Today<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Using a powerful AI tool, astronomers have combed through vast troves of data from NASA’s Hubble and found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-263035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769660107_898_0.jpg\")
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An anomaly from Hubble’s archive, classified as a “collisional ring” galaxy \u2013 one of only two that were found. (ESA\/Hubble & NASA, D. O’Ryan, P. G\u00f3mez (European Space Agency), M. Zamani (ESA\/Hubble)<\/a>)<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769660108_799_0.jpg\")
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