Astronomers in
Germany have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm to help them chart
and explain the structure and dynamics of the universe around us. The team, led
by Francisco Kitaura of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam,
report their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society.
Scientists routinely use large telescopes to scan the sky,
mapping the coordinates and estimating the distances of hundreds of thousands
of galaxies and so enabling scientists to map the large-scale structure of the
Universe. But the distribution they see is intriguing and hard to explain, with
galaxies forming a complex ‘cosmic web’ showing clusters, filaments connecting
them, and large empty regions in between.