back to article Skynet? More like Night-sky-net. AI hunts for Milky Way's turbo stars

An artificial neural network has detected rare super-fast stars zipping through the Milky Way – by crunching piles of data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia probe. Hypervelocity stars (HVSes) are flung from the Way's Galactic Center and can reach speeds faster than our galaxy's escape velocity. Only 20 unbound …

  1. frank ly

    "flung from the Way's Galactic Center"

    Is that because they're moving way too fast?

  2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

    Why do you need a neural network for this?

    This classification task seems very straightforward.

    Decision trees not hip enough?

  3. Primus Secundus Tertius

    Rarities

    Not many of them: about 20 out of about 10**11 stars in the galaxy.

    Maybe we will learn more about the galaxy from the vast majority of stars measured by the Gaia probe.

    1. druck Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Rarities

      It's surprising there aren't more hyper-velocity stars, I used to have a RISC OS screen saver which simulated galaxies colliding and many stars used to escape before the galaxies coalesced. But then again it might not have been a very accurate simulation on a 200MHz Strong ARM.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "My Way or the Milky Way" (throws dwarf)

        Also, man from the future, we are not currently in a colliding galaxy scenario.

        1. druck Silver badge

          Re: "My Way or the Milky Way" (throws dwarf)

          The Milky Way has already collided with several smaller galaxies, and is in the process of colliding with the large and small Magellanic clouds (small galaxies). Eventually the really biggy will be in 4bn years when it comes together with the massive Andromeda galaxy.

      2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        Re: Galaxy screen saver

        My mom chose a galaxy collision screen saver for her rPi. It is part of the minimal bunch of screen savers you get if you do not install the extras. Is that the same software?

        1. druck Silver badge

          Re: Galaxy screen saver

          It was very similar to that, couldn't say if it was based on exactly the same code.

  4. Francis Boyle Silver badge

    Colliding galaxies is fun!

    (Goes off to reinstall Universe Sandbox.)

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