Thursday, March 28, 2024

An artificial intelligence of five thousand eyes to reveal the secrets of dark energy

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Jillian Castillo
Jillian Castillo
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The accelerating expansion of the observable universe cannot be denied, but it is not yet clear why. If dark energy is, then determining its nature is one of the greatest challenges in modern astrophysics. To meet this challenge, researchers are enlisting the help of artificial intelligence as part of the Universe Observing and Mapping Program that plans to observe about 35 million galaxies over billions of years.

Since the end of the 1990s, we’ve known thatUniverse It can be seen at Exponential expansion For a few billion years while the cosmic model in place before the turn of the millennium indicated that this expansion had slowed down for about 13 to 14 billion years. Among the hypotheses put forward to calculate this acceleration is expressed in Equations Dr’Einstein From a domain gravity By having a term called The cosmological constant, There is one where this term expresses the existence of energy density a stranger Baptized Dark energy (Einstein’s constant may not be zero without it Dark energy But simply assuming that the observable universe cannot really be treated as homogeneous on a large enough scale as one could do with water, even though it is made up of Molecules).

Nobody really knows what the origin of dark energy is. Two main theories are generally considered, one Quantum vacuum energy And that the existence of a new particle field is analogous to a field Boson By Brout-Englert-Higgs. Unlike the first theory, where dark energy cannot change in time or space because it is a manifestation of quantum fluctuations in the domains under the control of the famous. Heisenberg inequality, The energy density of this new field, is called the intrinsic field in memoryAristotle, It may differ in space and time.

Dark energy is the key to the fate of the universe?

If so, The ultimate fate of the universe We will not know it until we know the exact nature of the essence. In fact, from being disgusting and thus accelerating expansion, it can become attractive and cause a definable future. Collapse Of the visible universe that might (again?) Lead to A rebound with a new big explosion.

To test all of these hypotheses, it is imperative to be able to measure values Speed The visible universe has expanded and that is what Astrophysicists And cosmologists to undertake many projects including the international mission (Desi).A dark energy spectrophotometer), Led by the University of California at Berkeley which has 600 researchers, including researchers from CEA-Irfu, who are heavily involved on various levels.

CEA just announced, Across a CommunicateOn May 17, 2021 telescope Four meters from Desi installed at Kitt Peak in Arizona has begun his search for dark energy secrets and that the data he will gather about Spectra About 35 million Galaxies On the heavenly vault it was to be studied with helpArtificial intelligence (he is).

These 35 million galaxies were selected from 200,000 images taken from 1,405 nights of observations of the celestial vault and from a population of nearly two billion objects. Obviously, the mission required the help of an artificial intelligence that worked on the basis of criteria that would allow it to go in search of galaxies that have classified them into four types that correspond to different eras in the history of the observable universe, between 12 and 4 billion years. Ago.

Expansion acceleration was measured with an error of less than 1%.

The main goal is to measure an accuracy of less than 1% the variation over time in the velocity of the observed universe expansion, a variation dependent on nature physique The reason for the recent acceleration of this expansion. One of the ingredients for achieving this is assumed Redshift measurement Out of every 35 million galaxies to merge in particular with the way in which these galaxies are distributed in three-dimensional form Four volumeV The observed space, and therefore just under 10 billion years.

To do this, Desi will automatically and successively obtain the extension Packages From 5000 Optical fiber On the screen are images of these galaxies. Each fiber connected to a galaxy, it will transmit the received light in one direction of the 10 Spectrum Equip the telescope.

The mission is expected to last about five years, and thus millions of spectra collected using algorithms fromDeep learning Like those used in detectors LHC To identify and quantify rare events in collision deluge Protons.

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So we can hope that in a few years, thanks to artificial intelligence, we will learn more about the nature of dark energy and possibly the origin and fate of the universe.

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