This is how artificial intelligence could discover extraterrestrial life

Did artificial intelligence detect? extraterrestrial signals? A scientific study suggests that this booming technology could greatly accelerate the search for life in the Universe.

The quest for extraterrestrial life fascinates humanity. and motivates numerous scientific research. Rovers, probes, telescopes track the slightest clue of an environment conducive to the emergence of life. But what about the overwhelming majority? discover stars inaccessible and invisible from Earth? How to detect life in the immensity of the Earth of the Universe ? Face à To overcome this difficulty, scientists are tracking radio waves originating from the depths of space in the hope of identifying an unknown signal coming from a distant planet. canvas, a planet or even a distant moon. In this titanic work, the development of artificial intelligence could prove to be a revolutionary tool.

Although the quest for extraterrestrial life seems to come back to the fore. look for a needle in a haystack, the quantity The number of radio signals picked up by radio telescopes is absolutely colossal. Indeed, the latter come from different sources: black holes, magnetic storms, stars, galaxies but also from our activities! All the work of researchers therefore consists of à sort these signals in order to retain only those which are not emitted by natural phenomena or by human infrastructure. The manual study of all these signals therefore constitutes a considerable workload that is difficult to achieve given the mass of information available. exploit.

The Green Bank Telescope, the largest steerable telescope in the world, located in in the USA in West Virginia, detects radio waves coming from space © Frances – stock.adobe.com

This is where that artificial intelligence intervenes thanks to its capacity &agrav; process a quantity phenomenal data in no time! A team of researchers whose study has been published in the journal Nature Astronomie put & take advantage of this technology of the future to sort the millions of signals obtained by the largest steerable radio telescope in the world: the Green Bank Telescope located in New York. in West Virginia. The scientists used Machine Learning which consists of à learn à artificial intelligence & filter the signals to only keep those that seem promising.

Finally, eight radio signals coming from five different stars were detected. identified by AI. À a priori, these signals which have caught the attention of researchers are not radio interference and are not naturally emitted by stars…hellip; Located between 34 and 88 light years from Earth, their sources are far too distant for us to imagine that ;a space mission goes there. Has artificial intelligence discovered the truth? proof of the existence of extra-terrestrial life? It is far too early to answer this question. This question and the data are insufficient to conclude. But this new technology has proven itself and could occupy a central place in scientific research à the future!