美国国家公共电台 NPR Young Astronomer Uses Artificial Intelligence To Discover 2 Exoplanets

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Astronomers² know of about 4,000 planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. Now they know of two more, thanks to an undergraduate college student using artificial intelligence. Here's NPR's Joe Palca.

JOE PALCA, BYLINE³: Anne Dattilo is a senior at The University of Texas at Austin. Last year, an astronomer¹ talked to her class about his research using a NASA satellite called Kepler to hunt for planets orbiting distant stars.

ANNE DATTILO: And at the very end, he was like, I'm taking undergrads, if any of you want to do research on the subject, finding planets, and I decided⁴ that's what I wanted to do. So I emailed him, and a year and a half later, here I am.

PALCA: She led a team that discovered two Earth-sized planets orbiting stars more than 1,200 light-years from Earth. To find the planets, Dattilo used an artificial intelligence approach called machine learning to comb through a Kepler data set called K2; K2 contains measurements of the light coming from tens of thousands of stars. Dattilo says when a star is what she calls boring, the light coming from it is constant.

DATTILO: But if you can imagine something passing in front of that star, the light we receive would dim. And so if you see that periodically, that would be a signal that a planet is in front of that.

PALCA: The artificial intelligence program looks for these fluctuations⁵ in a star's light that might be associated with a planet passing in front. Now, you don't have to be a NASA scientist to use data from a NASA satellite.

JESSIE CHRISTIANSEN: NASA makes all of the data publicly available. You just have to think of a new idea to do with the data that no one's done before.

PALCA: Jessie Christiansen is a research scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech in Pasadena.

CHRISTIANSEN: This is the first time someone's gone through and done a machine learning process on the K2 data to come up with a uniform list of planet candidates.

PALCA: And that will be valuable beyond just getting a good grade on an undergraduate class?

CHRISTIANSEN: Absolutely.

PALCA: In fact, Michelle Ntampaka at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics in Cambridge says she's seen something remarkable⁶ happen in the last five years or so.

MICHELLE NTAMPAKA: And that is that there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of machine learning research that's happening for astronomy applications.

PALCA: That's because newer telescopes don't so much collect images of stars and galaxies⁷ as digital data about these celestial⁸ objects.

NTAMPAKA: We're just going to see unprecedented⁹ data volumes, and we're going to have to come up with new ways to deal with that.

PALCA: Ntampaka says the next generation of astronomers will have to be comfortable working with artificial intelligence to make sense of all this data. So writing a machine learning program as an undergrad is good preparation for Anne Dattilo as she heads off to get her graduate degree in astronomy. Joe Palca, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF FYZE'S "WANDERER")

1 astronomer   

n.天文学家

参考例句：

• A new star attracted the notice of the astronomer.新发现的一颗星引起了那位天文学家的注意。
• He is reputed to have been a good astronomer.他以一个优秀的天文学者闻名于世。

2 astronomers   

n.天文学者，天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Astronomers can accurately foretell the date,time,and length of future eclipses. 天文学家能精确地预告未来日食月食的日期、时刻和时长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Astronomers used to ask why only Saturn has rings. 天文学家们过去一直感到奇怪，为什么只有土星有光环。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 fluctuations   

波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table. 他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• There were so many unpredictable fluctuations on the Stock Exchange. 股票市场瞬息万变。

6 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

7 galaxies   

星系( galaxy的名词复数 )； 银河系； 一群（杰出或著名的人物）

参考例句：

• Quasars are the highly energetic cores of distant galaxies. 类星体是遥远星系的极为活跃的核心体。
• We still don't know how many galaxies there are in the universe. 我们还不知道宇宙中有多少个星系。

8 celestial   

adj.天体的；天上的

参考例句：

• The rosy light yet beamed like a celestial dawn.玫瑰色的红光依然象天上的朝霞一样绚丽。
• Gravity governs the motions of celestial bodies.万有引力控制着天体的运动。

9 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。