An AI Identifies Where All Those Planets That Could Host Life Are Hiding

Researchers in Switzerland have built an AI model to uncover potentially habitable worlds that are hiding from view. As detailed in a new study published in the journal Astronomy and & Astrophysics, the machine learning algorithm identified 44 star systems that it suspects harbor Earth-like exoplanets we haven't detected yet, in a promising demonstration of an approach that could accelerate the search for planets teeming with life. It hasn't outright confirmed that the Earth-like planets are actually there — but it's teed up astronomers to investigate those stellar neighborhoods in the future. In simulations, the model achieved an impressive precision value of up to 0.99, meaning that 99 percent of the systems identified have at least one Earth-like planet. "It's one of the few models worldwide with this level of complexity and depth, enabling predictive studies like ours," co-author Dr. Yann Alibert, codirector of the University of Bern's Centre for Space and Habitability, said in ... Read full article.