High-School Kid Discovers 1.5 Million Previously Unknown Astronomical Objects!

[Yazata]

He's Matteo Paz, a Pasadena high schooler working as an intern at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as part of the Regeneron Science Talent Search. They let him loose on archived data from the already retired WISE spacecraft. And this kid apparently came up with better method to analyze the existing data that produced a huge number of new objects of interest (stars, galaxies, black holes, novae etc.).

"Matteo Paz, 18, of Pasadena, surveyed nearly 200 terabytes of astronomical data in search of undiscovered brightness-variable objects for his Regeneron Science Talent Search space science project. After over a decade of scanning the sky, NASA’s WISE space telescope collected all-sky infrared data, creating a treasure trove of nearly 200 billion lines of data for time-based astronomical research.

In his project, Matteo developed waveform-based machine learning methods to sort the entire catalog and efficiently detect and characterize potential variables within the telescope’s data, including a machine-learning algorithm dubbed VARnet. He produced a complete census of 1.9 million infrared variable objects, 1.5 million of which are new discoveries, including supermassive black holes, newborn stars and supernovae. His project was carried out as a staff researcher under NASA funding."

https://www.societyforscience.org/regene...atteo-paz/

That caught Jared Isaacman's attention, and he wrote:

"Matteo, please apply to work at NASA and I will personally throw in a fighter jet ride as a signing bonus."

Matteo says, "Where do I sign?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-field...y_Explorer

[Image: G9fEVy4WQAAwnVK?format=jpg&name=large]

[Magical Realist]

FANtastic! Now just calibrate it to pick up asteroids, and it just might save us all from extinction!