• Education
    • Higher Education
    • Scholarships & Grants
    • Online Learning
    • School Reforms
    • Research & Innovation
  • Lifestyle
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Fashion & Beauty
    • Home & Living
    • Relationships & Family
  • Technology & Startups
    • Software & Apps
    • Startup Success Stories
    • Startups & Innovations
    • Tech Regulations
    • Venture Capital
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cybersecurity
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Gadgets & Devices
    • Industry Analysis
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy
Today Headline
  • Home
  • World News
    • Us & Canada
    • Europe
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • Middle East
  • Politics
    • Elections
    • Political Parties
    • Government Policies
    • International Relations
    • Legislative News
  • Business & Finance
    • Market Trends
    • Stock Market
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Corporate News
    • Economic Policies
  • Science & Environment
    • Space Exploration
    • Climate Change
    • Wildlife & Conservation
    • Environmental Policies
    • Medical Research
  • Health
    • Public Health
    • Mental Health
    • Medical Breakthroughs
    • Fitness & Nutrition
    • Pandemic Updates
  • Sports
    • Football
    • Basketball
    • Tennis
    • Olympics
    • Motorsport
  • Entertainment
    • Movies
    • Music
    • TV & Streaming
    • Celebrity News
    • Awards & Festivals
  • Crime & Justice
    • Court Cases
    • Cybercrime
    • Policing
    • Criminal Investigations
    • Legal Reforms
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • World News
    • Us & Canada
    • Europe
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • Middle East
  • Politics
    • Elections
    • Political Parties
    • Government Policies
    • International Relations
    • Legislative News
  • Business & Finance
    • Market Trends
    • Stock Market
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Corporate News
    • Economic Policies
  • Science & Environment
    • Space Exploration
    • Climate Change
    • Wildlife & Conservation
    • Environmental Policies
    • Medical Research
  • Health
    • Public Health
    • Mental Health
    • Medical Breakthroughs
    • Fitness & Nutrition
    • Pandemic Updates
  • Sports
    • Football
    • Basketball
    • Tennis
    • Olympics
    • Motorsport
  • Entertainment
    • Movies
    • Music
    • TV & Streaming
    • Celebrity News
    • Awards & Festivals
  • Crime & Justice
    • Court Cases
    • Cybercrime
    • Policing
    • Criminal Investigations
    • Legal Reforms
No Result
View All Result
Today Headline
No Result
View All Result
Home Science & Environment Space Exploration

AI could solve puzzles posed by twin stars in ‘mere minutes or seconds on a single laptop’

June 3, 2025
in Space Exploration
Reading Time: 5 mins read
A A
0
Film still from
3
SHARES
6
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


A new artificial intelligence program could revolutionize our understanding of binary star systems, deeply reducing the time it takes to distinguish the characteristics of their stars. With this program, what typically takes an entire month could be done in just 10 minutes.

The system, a neural network called PHOEBAI, could therefore revolutionize the process of assessing these twin star systems and determining stellar qualities such as mass and size, thus relieving a bottleneck of hundreds of thousands of potential binaries currently waiting to be analyzed.

“More than 50% of sun-like stars and more massive stars are in binary or multiple stellar systems,” research author and Villanova University researcher Andrej PrÅ¡a told Space.com. “What took two weeks plus on a supercomputer now takes mere minutes or seconds on a single laptop.”


You may like

One of the most memorable sequences in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope is when Luke Skywalker gazes up at the twin stars of his home planet, Tatooine, dreaming of space adventures.

However, he wasn’t that far from his own planets’ suns. When staring at twin suns like from much greater distances — many light-years away — astronomers have a much tougher time than young Skywalker in determining two stars from one. The task is especially difficult if those stars cross each other’s faces (as seen from our vantage point on Earth), because this means light from both stars can be seen as a single point source.

To address this difficulty, astrophysicists from Villanova drafted in artificial intelligence (AI) in the hope that it could take what appears to be a single point of stellar light in systems many light-years away and distinguish whether the light is coming two stars, thus identifying a so-called “eclipsing binary system.”

Improving the speed of assessing binary stars by a factor of millions, as presented by PHOEBAI, is so exciting because of just how many stars in the universe exist in binary and multi-star systems.

Luke Skywalker under the twins stars of Tatooine (Image credit: Twentieth Century Fox/LucasFilm)

The importance of PHOEBAI goes beyond the context of simply discovering these systems. This is because the only way scientists can “weigh” the stars is by observing the orbital properties of another body that orbits them.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

“If that other body happens to be a star, it’s great, because we can see it — unlike, for example, a faint orbiting exoplanet. So, binary stars give us stellar masses,” PrÅ¡a said. “Better yet, they can also give us stellar radii. Stars are quite literally at astronomical distances, meaning that, for the most part, we cannot resolve their disks. Enter binaries. If our vantage point is aligned with the orbital plane of the binary system, the stars will undergo eclipses. It is then a matter of simple geometry to figure out what the stellar sizes are.”

That’s how you “solve” a star system.

How do you solve a problem like PHOEBAI?

Prša pointed out that while eclipsing binary stars can give astronomers access to fundamental parameters of stars, accessing these qualities has been costly in terms of time and resources.

“Stars are very complicated thermodynamic bodies that are difficult to model; the models are thus complex, and their computation is time-costly,” PrÅ¡a said. “To ‘solve’ a typical binary star, it takes upwards of two weeks on a computer cluster. This becomes prohibitively long if we are trying to analyze hundreds of thousands of binaries that we currently have at our disposal.”

PHOEBAI is based on a “physical model” called PHOEBE. PHOEBE has been heavily optimized already, and was thus able to provide its offspring with tens of millions of artificially generated observables.

“The role of AI in this context is to act as a drop-in replacement for the physical model. In other words, we assume that the binary nature of the system is already established, and we want to analyze observations and extract fundamental stellar parameters of binary star components,” PrÅ¡a said. “By doing this, we managed to create a robust ’emulator’ of the physical model that performs on par in terms of accuracy, but it outperforms the physical model in speed by a factor of around a million.”

A blue sphere against a black background.

An illustration showing NASA’s exoplanet hunter TESS which could be assisted by a binary star “solving” AI program. (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva))

In terms of the missions PHOEBAI will be used to assist, PrÅ¡a said the most obvious past and ongoing candidates are the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), NASA’s exoplanet hunters, the Kepler Space Telescope, and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). He added that PHOEBAI’s pinnacle results will follow the fourth data release from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) star-tracking spacecraft, Gaia.

“PHOEBAI absolutely has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of binary stars,” PrÅ¡a said. “I expect that the next year will witness a transformation of the binary star field by raising the number of solved binaries from several hundred to hundreds of thousands.

“This will be a treasure trove of stellar population studies for the years to come.”

In the meantime, Prša explained the team is currently in the process of performing last-minute validation of its AI outputs to make sure there are no ghosts in the machine in the form of systematic errors.

“In parallel, we are getting TESS Full Frame Image data ready to be modeled. Over the summer, we will have preliminary results for around 150,000 eclipsing binary light curves, and we will invest a few months to analyze and interpret these data thoroughly,” PrÅ¡a concluded. “Once done, we will disseminate these findings to the scientific audience and the general public in peer-reviewed papers and on the project’s website.“

The team’s research was published in February in The Astrophysical Journal.

Previous Post

Sustainable brewing technology and its effectiveness

Next Post

U.K. grocery market maintains rational pricing, Tesco reinforces dominance todayheadline

Related Posts

a white and black rocket streaks into a blue sky, as seen from below,

SpaceX launches Starlink satellite stack from Vandenberg Space Force Base (photos)

June 5, 2025
4

Pioneer Marc Garneau passes away

June 5, 2025
3
Next Post

U.K. grocery market maintains rational pricing, Tesco reinforces dominance todayheadline

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Family calls for change after B.C. nurse dies by suicide after attacks on the job

Family calls for change after B.C. nurse dies by suicide after attacks on the job

April 2, 2025
Pioneering 3D printing project shares successes

Product reduces TPH levels to non-hazardous status

November 27, 2024

Hospital Mergers Fail to Deliver Better Care or Lower Costs, Study Finds todayheadline

December 31, 2024

Police ID man who died after Corso Italia fight

December 23, 2024
Harris tells supporters 'never give up' and urges peaceful transfer of power

Harris tells supporters ‘never give up’ and urges peaceful transfer of power

0
Des Moines Man Accused Of Shooting Ex-Girlfriend's Mother

Des Moines Man Accused Of Shooting Ex-Girlfriend’s Mother

0

Trump ‘looks forward’ to White House meeting with Biden

0
Catholic voters were critical to Donald Trump’s blowout victory: ‘Harris snubbed us’

Catholic voters were critical to Donald Trump’s blowout victory: ‘Harris snubbed us’

0
15-year-old, pinned by car, is killed at SoCal high school

15-year-old, pinned by car, is killed at SoCal high school

June 5, 2025
Harvard foreign student visas targeted in Trump administration proclamation

Harvard foreign student visas targeted in Trump administration proclamation

June 5, 2025
Russian drones strike dwellings in Ukraine's Kharkiv, several injured

Russian drones strike dwellings in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, several injured

June 5, 2025
Kirk delivers walkoff hit as Jays edge Phillies

Kirk delivers walkoff hit as Jays edge Phillies

June 5, 2025

Recent News

15-year-old, pinned by car, is killed at SoCal high school

15-year-old, pinned by car, is killed at SoCal high school

June 5, 2025
3
Harvard foreign student visas targeted in Trump administration proclamation

Harvard foreign student visas targeted in Trump administration proclamation

June 5, 2025
4
Russian drones strike dwellings in Ukraine's Kharkiv, several injured

Russian drones strike dwellings in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, several injured

June 5, 2025
4
Kirk delivers walkoff hit as Jays edge Phillies

Kirk delivers walkoff hit as Jays edge Phillies

June 5, 2025
6

TodayHeadline is a dynamic news website dedicated to delivering up-to-date and comprehensive news coverage from around the globe.

Follow Us

Browse by Category

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Basketball
  • Business & Finance
  • Climate Change
  • Crime & Justice
  • Cybersecurity
  • Economic Policies
  • Elections
  • Entertainment
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Environmental Policies
  • Europe
  • Football
  • Gadgets & Devices
  • Health
  • Medical Research
  • Mental Health
  • Middle East
  • Motorsport
  • Olympics
  • Politics
  • Public Health
  • Relationships & Family
  • Science & Environment
  • Software & Apps
  • Space Exploration
  • Sports
  • Stock Market
  • Technology & Startups
  • Tennis
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Us & Canada
  • Wildlife & Conservation
  • World News

Recent News

15-year-old, pinned by car, is killed at SoCal high school

15-year-old, pinned by car, is killed at SoCal high school

June 5, 2025
Harvard foreign student visas targeted in Trump administration proclamation

Harvard foreign student visas targeted in Trump administration proclamation

June 5, 2025
  • Education
  • Lifestyle
  • Technology & Startups
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy

© 2024 Todayheadline.co

Welcome Back!

OR

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Business & Finance
  • Corporate News
  • Economic Policies
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Market Trends
  • Crime & Justice
  • Court Cases
  • Criminal Investigations
  • Cybercrime
  • Legal Reforms
  • Policing
  • Education
  • Higher Education
  • Online Learning
  • Entertainment
  • Awards & Festivals
  • Celebrity News
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Health
  • Fitness & Nutrition
  • Medical Breakthroughs
  • Mental Health
  • Pandemic Updates
  • Lifestyle
  • Fashion & Beauty
  • Food & Drink
  • Home & Living
  • Politics
  • Elections
  • Government Policies
  • International Relations
  • Legislative News
  • Political Parties
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Cybersecurity
  • Emerging Technologies
  • Gadgets & Devices
  • Industry Analysis
  • Basketball
  • Football
  • Motorsport
  • Olympics
  • Climate Change
  • Environmental Policies
  • Medical Research
  • Science & Environment
  • Space Exploration
  • Wildlife & Conservation
  • Sports
  • Tennis
  • Technology & Startups
  • Software & Apps
  • Startup Success Stories
  • Startups & Innovations
  • Tech Regulations
  • Venture Capital
  • Uncategorized
  • World News
  • Us & Canada
  • Public Health
  • Relationships & Family
  • Travel
  • Research & Innovation
  • Scholarships & Grants
  • School Reforms
  • Stock Market
  • TV & Streaming
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy
  • About us
  • Contact

© 2024 Todayheadline.co