High school student Matteo Paz developed an AI algorithm during an internship at Caltech, which allowed him to discover 1.5 million new space objects, including supernovae and black holes. His groundbreaking work earned him a first-place award in the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search, alongside a $250,000 prize. The objects he cataloged are variable, meaning they exhibit dramatic changes and could help unravel fundamental questions about the universe's expansion and evolution, revealing insights into physics and cosmology that scientists are still trying to decode.
When Matteo Paz scored a high school internship at the California Institute of Technology, the scientists there gave him the daunting task of manually sorting reams of data from a NASA mission.
Instead of manually sifting through the data, Paz built an AI algorithm to do it for him. Ultimately, he discovered 1.5 million new objects in space, including supernovae and supermassive black holes.
The objects in Paz's catalog aren't just plain old stars or planets. They're all variable objects, meaning they change dramatically, violently, and often unpredictably.
For example, they can be used to measure how quickly the universe is expanding from the Big Bang - a puzzle scientists are still trying to solve, which could rewrite physics.
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