🔬 Astronomers have been using machine learning since the late 1980s, decades before ChatGPT existed. The earliest neural networks in astronomy classified stars vs galaxies on photographic plates.
Here's what's interesting about how AI actually works in astronomy:
The AI used in astronomy is almost never a chatbot. It's specialized ML models trained for narrow tasks like classifying galaxies by shape or estimating parameters of gravitational wave signals. These models train on hundreds of thousands of already-classified galaxies, learn which features cluster together, then categorize new ones with a confidence score.
A huge application is outlier detection. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will generate about 7 million alerts per night (tens of billions over its 10-year survey). Most are ordinary or noise. ML systems rank alerts so astronomers can focus on the genuinely unusual ones.
And no, AI isn't replacing astronomers. There are roughly 10,000 professional astronomers worldwide. The volume of data already far exceeds what humans could ever manually inspect.
🌊 In September 2023, seismometers around the world detected a mysterious signal repeating every 92 seconds for nine straight days. The source: a standing wave trapped inside a Greenland fjord.
Here is what happened. A glacier in East Greenland had been thinning for years, no longer supporting the mountain slope above it. On September 16, about 25 million cubic meters of rock and ice collapsed into Dickson Fjord, triggering a tsunami with a runup height of 200 meters near the impact.
The fjord is 540 meters deep, 2.7 km wide, with walls taller than 1,800 meters. That geometry trapped the wave energy. The tsunami stabilized into a seiche, a standing wave sloshing back and forth across the fjord every 90 seconds. Each oscillation shifted millions of tons of water, loading and unloading the crust below, generating seismic waves detected globally.
The signal decayed extraordinarily slowly. It was still detectable after 9 days. A second, smaller event happened October 11 from another landslide in the same gully.
In 2025, the SWOT satellite directly observed the seiche, confirming the theory. The study published in Science calls it the first evidence of fluid sloshing persisting for days without an external driver.
The landslide was preconditioned by climate-driven glacial thinning, the first such event recorded in East Greenland.
@hbons
It does feel a bit sad. Obligatory #KRAZAM video for those who implemented the various "AI" LLMs in service of Key Stakeholders™ and then lost their jobs, this societal satyre from 2021 accidentally aged like fine wine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvhC_RdIwQ
🎥 Masters of the Universe (⭐️⭐️⭐️) #scifi #fantasy #action
Legends aren't born, they're forged. After being separated for 15 years, the Sword of Power leads Prince Adam back to Eternia, where he discovers his home shattered under the fiendish rule of Skeletor. To save his family and his world, Adam must join forces with his closest allies, Teela and Duncan/Man-At-Arms, and embrace his true destiny as He-Man — the most...
The giant red SUV really took me out from the movie being set in England. Having been on country side roads here that thing wouldn’t fit anywhere. The neon sign on the police station was a wild choice too.
A grumpy little human who hops from one complaint to the next, finding fault in absolutely everything. Nothing is ever quite right, and they’ll happily croak about it until everyone within earshot regrets making eye contact.
