Astronomers GIVE UP and Turn to Artificial Intelligence

 

on a star-lit night an old man looks up to the sky mesmerized by the beauty of the stars and fluffy looking galaxies that can be seen with a naked eye the dinosaurs were doing a similar

 thing millions of years ago as they

 were basking in the wilderness

 grazing on ferns cycads and palms

 but then they heard the sound of

 the asteroids streak across the sky

 and it was too late nothing could

 have prepared them for their fate

 what would happen to humanity should another chick salute size asteroid head straight for earth could we stop it questions like these have led us to create artificial intelligence systems that would be able to spot these wayward sky skaters long before they get close today we're going to take a look at the ai systems that have helped save earth by detecting these planet killing monstrosities at first we had space watch founded in 1980 by dutch american astronomer tom garros and robert s mcmillan also an astronomer from the university of arizona at the kitt peak observatory using the nicholas you may all telescope and the steward observatory's bach telescope they were able to spot objects on trajectory with earth or merely floating by through a 1.8 meter telescope however being just a telescope it is still marginally limited in its capacity and can only see to a certain distance we cannot make use of one telescope only we have to make use of many to get the true picture in 1990 the us congress asked nasa to do whatever is necessary to be able to detect objects in space that pose a threat to our planet workshops by nasa led to the century earth impact monitoring system essentially this system observes various potentially hazardous asteroids that could pose a catastrophic threat within the next 100 years these observations take place a number of times which result in an observation arc indeed this system has worked and some of the more random space rocks were eliminated from the list of threats allowing century to focus its surveys more closely on those that might need to one day be blown to bits or urged off course away from us however due to the shape of our planet detecting systems are only able to map a certain portion of the sky at any given time this of course made it necessary for different countries to take part in the monitoring hence we find a number of systems at different locations across our planet's surface let's take a look at some of these survey systems the asteroid terrestrial impact last alert system simply known as atlas uses 2.5 meter telescopes found at haleakala and mauna loa on two of the hawaiian islands each has a field of view of 30 square degrees these telescopes have been operational since 2017 with nasa obtaining funding for two or more to be positioned in the southern hemisphere namely in south africa and in chile the catalina sky survey or css also uses two telescopes a 1.5 meter casa grain reflector telescope at mount lemon arizona and a 0.7 meter schmidt telescope at mount bigelow also in arizona both sites use the same cameras that show a field of view of five square degrees

 the casa grain reflector telescope takes three to four weeks to survey the sky while the schmidt telescope takes just one week the kiso observatory at mount on taki near tokyo also uses a 1.05 meter schmidt telescope in 2019 a new instrument was included in the telescope known as atomo goes in with the ability to detect fast moving and rapidly changing objects boasting a wide field of view of 20 square degrees it now scans the sky in two short hours several times a night and is considered the fastest survey at present which makes it one of our leading warning systems the large sibnatic survey telescope or lsst is currently under construction at cerro pachon in chile this wide field survey reflecting telescope with an 8.4 meter primary mirror will survey all available sky in its view every third night it aims to be operational by 2022 and will detect both nearby fast-moving objects as well as larger and slower objects further away the near-earth object survey telescope or neo-stell is the most recently designed

 telescope with nasa having approved of

 its design and implementation mid-2021

 equivalent to a one meter telescope it's something completely new with a fly eye design that includes a single reflector with multiple sets of optics and charge coupled devices sensitive photon detectors that produce images with the widest field of view of 45 square degrees it will be able to survey the majority of available visible sky in one night if the first prototype is successful three more will be installed around the

 planet the wide field infrared survey explorer or wise is a 0.4 meter infrared wavelength space telescope that searches for near-earth objects under the neowise mission this system is not found on planet itself instead it's a spacecraft the asteroid spotter works in the sky sending imagery back to our planet the craft initially experienced a few hiccups but since all four of its sensors became operational again wise has made 2.28 million asteroid observations approximately 0.15 million asteroid observations per year the panoramic survey telescope and rapid response system or pan stars includes two 1.8 meter rich accretion telescopes and is located at haleakala in hawaii the panstar's neo survey searches the entire sky north of the celestial equator taking three to four weeks to map the area the space surveillance telescope or sst originally from mexico but now installed in western australia is a 3.5 meter telescope that can detect discern and track small objects in deep space with its wide field of view of six square degrees using advanced speed regulator servo control technology it is one of the fastest and most agile telescopes of its size able to scan all visible sky over six clear nights the zwicky transient facility or ztf was designed to detect transient objects that change or very quickly in brightness as well as fast-moving objects these include supernovae gamma-ray bursts collisions between neutron stars comets and asteroids with a 1.2 meter telescope boasting a field of view of 47 square degrees it can scour and collect images from the entire northern sky in three nights not only that it also scans the milky way plane twice a night doing the dinosaurs to extinction the first massive space rock to reach earth known

 as chiksulub hit down in the area of mexico some 66 million years ago the second known as boltish which has been considered the cause of our warming climate hit 000 years later in the ukraine asteroids are essentially considered minor planets astronomical objects that orbit

 the sun that cannot quite be classified as planets or comets due to their composition as a huge lump of space rock they contain some elements that existing planets do

 but not all they are hard heavy and as we learn from the jurassic era can hit with enough weight to obliterate nothing in our galaxy and

 those beyond stand still everything moves constantly seemingly heading towards some point in the universe with no known direction while it can feel choreographed and predictable it is not like ice skating among first timers with the amount of planetary debris and space rock out there it sure will be bumped again sooner or later do you remember the 2013 chilliambits meteor in russia hundreds of people saw it with a naked eye as clear as daylight yet it all happened so quickly would we be able to stop a similar event according to the united states congress we would need at least five years to prepare any attempt to deflect an asteroid we cannot simply lift the earth's skirt and quick step to the side which leaves us with only one option we would need to blow it up or veer it off course with nuclear explosives or an intense laser pulse before it does the same to us although that's way easier said than done it is also yet to be proven possible but there's a first time for everything and we've not yet made our first time in truth that's a good thing because while we have the technology to spot an object on course to earth we still have the time to improve our technology to deflect one we kind of only get one shot at it with limited resources to test various deflection systems we seem to be waiting for that one shot a make or break moment for humanity these detection systems are ultimately managed and controlled by artificial intelligence computer systems able to perform tasks that would normally be tackled by humans but at a much faster and more in-depth rate ai itself is used across various boards and industries for various results and works by combining large amounts of data with faster than human processing and intelligent algorithms allowing the specifically designed software to learn automatically through patterns and features from the data it is fed much like a child learning at school but faster and far more absorbent the entire process involves multiple data inputs in the case of searching the skies it will identify and review tens of thousands of images of our heavens to find connections between them and then compare that with the information from any previously or currently undefined data with the new ai systems found in more technologically advanced telescopes images are captured of asteroids heated by the sun as these space rocks warm up they release heat which is then detected as faint infrared radiation through studying these infrared signatures scientists are able to determine the size of an asteroid and then compare it to previous observations made by optical telescopes on the ground similar to the way an x-ray generator can see our bones through our skin muscle and tissue artificial intelligence asteroid detecting systems can see through the humongous mass of space matter to spot a moving object it is the same principle but obviously on an unfathomable scale as far as warning systems go and we've only mentioned a few in this article it seems that every inch of our sky certainly is covered fortunately this means that should any asteroid or moving object pose a threat to earth and humanity we will discover it long before it results in any kind of catastrophic extinction event here on earth however suggested systems and craft that will intercept divert or destroy these wayward planet destroying space rocks namely laser and nuclear weaponry are still to be tested for now we'll have to wait to cross that bridge when we get to it so what do you think should we look at ai technology more often tell us in the comments if you enjoyed the article be sure to give it a like and subscribe to our channel for more amazing space articles as always thanks for reading fact nominal