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Looking for volunteers to take part in an online challenge to help find stars torn apart by black holes.
Astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast and Leiden Observatory Netherlands is seeking help to determine how scientists can detect massive black holes over the next decade.
A new project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), will spend the next 10 years capturing the night sky from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Chile.
Dr Matt Nicol from Queen’s School of Mathematics and Physics said more astronomical data is expected to be collected than to date, meaning it will no longer be possible for scientists to manually search for it.
He said: “Having data from the 10-year LSST will revolutionize astronomy, and it’s exciting to think that we will be able to detect thousands of black holes swallowing passing stars.
“There will be a lot of data generated – an estimated 10 million alerts from the LSST alert stream each night.
“However, the sky is filled with different types of light sources that vary in brightness, so finding what we’re looking for is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Astronomers at Queen’s University ran simulations of what they think the data might show.
Dr Nicol said: “We call on any tech-savvy astronomers to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to crunch simulation data and learn how to pinpoint stars torn apart and destroyed by black holes.
“You don’t need to be an expert on black holes – anyone with experience in machine learning can provide valuable insights.”
Dylan Magill, a PhD student at Queen’s University who created the simulation, said: “We are particularly interested in objects called tidal disruption events.
“When an unlucky star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, it can be torn apart by the immense force of gravity.
“New data will give us huge opportunities to discover more of this, but there’s still a lot of data to process.
“By creating simulations and enlisting the help of armchair astronomers, we really hope to be able to use artificial intelligence and machine learning so that we can unlock more of the mysteries of the universe.”
Dr Sjoert van Velzen of the Leiden Observatory, co-founder of the challenge, said: “Tidal disruption events are a relatively new astronomical discovery and we haven’t seen many of them so far.
“However, the ones we found have proven to be of great scientific value, particularly for studying the properties and feeding conditions of black holes that are difficult to observe.”
Information about the online project can be found at kaggle.com/competitions/mallorn-astronomical-classification-challenge/overview.
The participant with the highest score will receive a top prize of €1,000.