The SETI Institute awarded the Davie Postdoctoral Fellowship for AI/ML-driven exoplanet discovery to Isabel Angelo. Machine learning is changing the way we search for exoplanets and making it possible to discover patterns in massive datasets. Angelo’s research will refine and expand ML-driven pipelines for detecting exoplanets, and she will work with SETI Institute researcher Dr. Vishal Gajjar and his team and collaborators at the SETI Institute and IIT Tirupati in India.

The project will enhance supervised Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures and integrate anomaly-detection techniques to identify subtle or unconventional exoplanet candidates hidden in massive datasets. These could include ringed or disintegrating worlds, exocomets, complex multi-planet systems and possibly signs of alien megastructures.

EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite, has successfully tested an advanced onboard control system that allows it to orient itself accurately in space. The breakthrough was achieved using a payload called Wave-Based Control (WBC), a software platform designed by a team at UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering to test new satellite manoeuvring techniques while in orbit.

On May 12, 2008, the magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake shook central China, its destructive tremors spreading from the flank of the Longmen Shan, or Dragon's Gate Mountains, along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau.

Over 69,000 people died in the disaster, nearly a third are thought to be from geohazards like the more than 60,000 landslides that rushed down the slopes of the Longmen Shan.

After more than a decade and a half of work, scientists finally have an account of the fate of the landslide debris. Surveys of a reservoir downstream of the epicenter revealed how and how quickly the region’s major river moved this sediment, as well as the effect it had on the river channel itself. The results, published in Nature, suggest that the hazards caused by megaquakes may last long after the ground has settled. What’s more, they offer insights into a fundamental question of Earth science: How do earthquakes build mountains?

Harvard SEAS and University of Chicago researchers have tested and validated lightweight nanofabricated structures that can passively float in the mesophere, which is about 45 miles above Earth’s surface. The devices levitate via photophoresis, or sunlight-driven propulsion, which occurs in the low-pressure conditions of the upper atmosphere.

In a new study, archaeologists analyzed iron artifacts spanning more than 400 years of American colonial history using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. Their results show that differences in the purity of iron and the trace elements it contains can be reliably used as a diagnostic feature to identify iron artifacts from different time periods.

The scalar magnetometer conceived by Roland Lammegger and Christoph Amtmann at the Institute of Experimental Physics at Graz University of Technology opens up new possibilities in magnetic field measurement thanks to its further development.