Artificial intelligence used to predict space weather - SpaceRef

A Northumbria University physicist has been awarded more than half a million pounds to develop artificial intelligence which will protect the Earth from devastating space storms. Activity from the Sun such as solar eruptions, known as Coronal Mass Ejections, results in plasma being fired towards Earth at supersonic speeds, which can result in serious disruption to power and communication systems. With our increasing reliance on technology, solar storms pose a serious threat to our everyday lives, leading to severe space weather being added to the UK National Risk Assessment for the first time in 2011. Northumbria's Dr Andy Smith has recently been awarded a Research Fellowship from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to explore how physics-inspired machine learning could be used to forecast space weather more accurately and predict serious space storms. During the Next Generation, Physics-Inspired AI for Space Weather Forecasting project, Dr Smith and his team will analyse huge amounts of data from satellites and space missions over the last 20 years to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which storms are likely to occur.