Artificial Intelligence helps find hypervelocity Stars
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An ‘artificial brain’ has been utilised by the European Space Agency to find super fast stars that zip through our galaxy at an incredible rate.
Astrophysicists at the European Space Agency have been crunching data, from the Gaia satellite, with the help of self-learning neural networks, in order to identify Hypervelocity Stars. Thus far six stars have been spotted that are moving at incredible velocities. It is thought that these stars have such an immense velocity because they have had very close encounters with the supermassive black hole (active galactic nucleus) at the centre of our galaxy.
Thus far six stars have been spotted that are moving at incredible velocities. It is thought that these stars have such an immense velocity because they have had very close encounters with the supermassive black hole (active galactic nucleus) at the centre of our galaxy.
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In an article in RT, Self-teaching neural networks help find mysterious stars tearing through the Milky Way, Elena Maria Rossi from Leiden University, in the Netherlands, advised that understanding the velocity and trajectory of these stars can help us understand the gravitational forces that work within our galaxy:
“These are stars that have traveled great distances through the Galaxy but can be traced back to its core – an area so dense and obscured by interstellar gas and dust that it is normally very difficult to observe – so they yield crucial information about the gravitational field of the Milky Way from the centre to its outskirts.”
The stars were initially observed over a decade ago and 5 of them have identical velocities of 360km/s. One of the stars is speeding at 500km/s and they will all likely break free from the Milk Way’s gravitational field at some point. However, astrophysicists are more interested in the set that are moving at the same velocity, as this could shed light on why these stars are behaving this way.
In a bid to find more stars or groups of stars that are behaving unusually, data from the Gaia satellite will be processed using the ‘artificial brain’ that can decipher complex data and identify strange movements within our galaxy. As more hypervelocity stars are detected a fuller picture of the gravitational forces that work within our galaxy will be gained.
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