Machine Learning Is Bringing the Cosmos Into Focus

The telescope offers one of the most seductive suggestions a technological object can carry: the idea that humans might pick up a thing, peer into it, and finally solve the riddle of the heavens as a result. Unraveling that mystery requires its own kind of refraction in perspective, collapsing the distance between near and far as a way to understand our planet and its place in the universe. This is why early astronomers didn't just gaze up each night to produce detailed sketches of celestial bodies. They also tracked the movement of those bodies across the sky over time. They developed an understanding of Earth's movement as a result.