Researchers use AI to create the Milky Way's family tree

Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped in creating the first complete family tree of Earth's home galaxy – the Milky Way. An international team of researchers, led by astrophysicists Diederik Kruijssen of the University of Heidelberg and Joel Pfeffer of Liverpool John Moores University, published their work in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The researchers used AI to analyse large groups of stars with as many as million stars, orbiting the Milky Way. "The Milky Way hosts over 150 such clusters, many of which formed in the smaller galaxies that merged to form the galaxy that we live in today," a Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) release noted. With the help of the latest models and observations, the researchers managed to use the clusters as "fossils" to generate the history of galaxies, it added.