How AI's data-crunching-power can help demystify the cosmos

We hear about artificial intelligence all the time nowadays--but what is it doing for astronomy? New research papers are published almost every week using AI for some new investigation in astronomy: classifying galaxies, identifying solar flares, exploring exoplanet atmospheres, and more. AI's biggest strength is that it can sort through mountains of data much faster than a human--a skill that's particularly timely as new telescopes are generating more and more data for astronomers to handle. "We can use [AI] to tackle problems we couldn't tackle before because they're too computationally expensive," said Daniela Huppenkothen, astronomer and data scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, in MIT Technology Review. One telescope in particular has many astronomers abuzz about AI: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scheduled to be completed in January 2025, just a few short months away.