Wednesday, February 7, 2018

How AI Could Open New Windows into the Cosmos

Our understanding of the universe is poised to progress at warp speed, thanks to new research by scientists at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The NCSA scientists are pioneering the use of GPU-accelerated deep learning to detect and interpret gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time caused by exploding stars, colliding black holes, and even the birth of the universe itself.



Their work, which uses simulations run on traditional supercomputers to train AI, has the potential to speed scientific discovery by slashing the time and computational resources needed to analyze gravitational waves and the astronomical events that cause them. As a result, researchers can spot waves that previously went undetected and to probe them more deeply, putting us closer to understanding how the universe works.